Minister O'Connor's Priorities

[Kirkhill]

http://www.forces.gc.ca/site/newsroom/view_news_e.asp?id=1860

These are his speaking notes from this morning's CDAI speech.

Summarizing:

Canada
North America
The Rest of the World

Canadian Priorities
- surveillance and protection of territories and approaches
- assist civilians in response to natural disasters and major emergencies
- search and rescue

Internationally
- stick with Afghanistan
- there will be more like it for the foreseeable future

Canadian Forces
- fix recruiting and training to achieve 75,000 effective Regs and add 10,000 more to the Reserves
- fix procurement

Emphases
- Deployability
- National Surveillance
- Acquire new and upgrade existing equipment
- IMPROVE Infrastructure (emphasis added.  Does this mean better buildings or fewer bases? Or both?)
- Care of personnel (PMQs were emphasized)

He also went out of his way to praise Hillier and Transformation but says he wants more, faster summarized as "A three ocean navy.  A more robust army.  A revitalized air force."

Best of Luck to you all.

 

[Lost_Warrior]

Yea, I saw it today on the news.  It sounds good.  My only question is where they are going to get the money to pay for all this.  A 1 billion dollar a year increase for the next 5 years will just bring our head above water. 

On a side note, don't put your hopes too high.  This is just the sort of thing the Liberals will scare Canadians with come next election.  "See see!  We told you so!!  They want to make our army as big as the US one!!  See see!"

 

[Michael Dorosh]

Yea, I saw it today on the news.  It sounds good.  My only question is where they are going to get the money to pay for all this.   A 1 billion dollar a year increase for the next 5 years will just bring our head above water. 

On a side note, don't put your hopes too high.  This is just the sort of thing the Liberals will scare Canadians with come next election.  "See see!   We told you so!!   They want to make our army as big as the US one!!  See see!"

I'd settle for "as combat capable" rather than "as big", eh.

I hope the public will realize how ambitious some of the plans are for employment of the reserves; our regiment here as a large number of guys out on operations in Afghanistan right now and the CO has publicly expressed the desire to deploy the regiment as its own task force...if/when other units start thinking along the same lines, those 10,000 souls might come in even handier.

 

[Scoobie Newbie]

Forget about the money.  Where is he gonna find the people to recruit, the instructors etc.  I pray to GOD he doesn't water down the training anymore then it is.

 

[Gayson]

He wants to take sub units from the cbt arms units and make them "trainers" until the numbers are up.

 

[Blakey]

He wants to take sub units from the cbt arms units and make them "trainers" until the numbers are up.

Essentially, yes.
He had stated in an interview with Gordon O'Connor of CTV, that they would go so far as to take a whole Infantry Bn offline, and have them train hundreds of recruits.


Link to interview