So we're definitely getting the people in the door. We're not doing it as fast as we should. The median time to process files is still over 200 days, I believe. So I'm not really keen on a demographic where if you've got nothing better to do than sit in your parents' basement for nearly seven months,
then you're the person we're looking for. But the key is Canadians who want to can get into the Navy, the right ones. We're still selective. You've got to meet certain criteria. You've got to make sure they're the right person. But for a long time, our system was driven by it was really hard to kick people out.
So we had to make sure we didn't get the hiring decision wrong. I am very much of the mindset. We've now got a probationary period. I would like to make it relatively easy to get in, but also very easy to get out if you're not the right person for us.
And we're moving in that direction with the Navy. We pioneered a number of different things. The Naval Experience Program started less than three years ago. It's now a source of one-third of all recruits into the Navy are that way. We're seeing tremendous increase in the number of permanent residents we're bringing in.
We've widened the pool of Canadians and prospective Canadians who can join. They all eventually have to become Canadian citizens in order to remain in. We've also moved away from the idea, you know, historically, we said, if you're going to come in the military, we need to know exactly what occupation you're going to do.
That's a tough thing to do. You're a young kid, you know, like, and we struggle to describe them all, right? So even if I were to tell you that an NCI op is a naval combat information operator, I'm not sure that tells you what that job is.
Our experience has been it's better to bring people in the door, give them some exposure to the Navy, and then let them pick the occupation that makes sense from their perspective. And the one that we've assessed is probably the best fit for them. We're looking to expand the role of Naval Reserve divisions across Canada.
So there's 24 right now. We're already exploring creating one up in Whitehorse. We're probably going to double the size of the Naval Reserve and expand the number of Naval Reserve divisions like HMCS York right here in Toronto, probably up to around 30 or 32 of those with the vision that every Canadian joins
the Navy through the Naval Reserve the way they used to do it for most of our history. well i want to do all the initial entry training there as well so rather than you enroll and we immediately send you off to to saint jean quebec or borden in ontario
and then all and you're in at 24 7 and there's a lot of anxiety and we're seeing about a 20 attrition rate through basic training i'd much rather okay congratulations you've joined uh you joined here in toronto so hmcs york show up monday morning um and uh we're going to give you a uniform and monday would be
basically here's your uniform here's how you put it on let's make sure it fits okay great congratulations come back wearing it tomorrow And if that kid can't figure out how to get themselves to work on time, Monday to Friday of that first week, then thank you very much.
Maybe try again next year when you've grown up a little bit. But why would we invest more time? And we also want to develop a whole better understanding of the individual. They share our values and ethics and only invest in the residential training of
basic training once they've hit stuff that we can teach when they're just doing a nine to five type job. And so it eases the burden on our training system because it's a lot to supervise somebody 24 seven. And it I think it would allow us to speed the recruiting process.
It's easier to bring people in when you do risk things like that. We've got a physical fitness test that confirms that you are fit for what we call universality of service. You can do all general military duties. My view is it's not a lot to ask a Canadian who wants to join the military to pass
that test before they join. In fact, we run it in high schools and most kids pass it. And those who want to join should be able to pass it. It de-risks, again, a bunch of stuff for us. So I think there's a way where we can change the paradigm for recruiting.
And we're going to start running a basic naval qualification, so Navy-specific basic training. Just about every Navy in the world runs this. Even the New Zealand Navy, all 2,000 of them run their own basic naval training. We're going to go back to that so that when a sailor graduates from basic Navy training,
they're fully employable as a general-duty sailor, and we save, again, another couple of months. So we're at the point now where we believe we can start enrolling and training about 2,000 people a year. That fills our needs to grow back to health and beyond if required.
en.wikipedia.org
