The Strategic Reserve Program

[a_majoor]

Yet another turn of the Karmic wheel. I did a paper back in 1998 for the Military History Colloquium at Laurier proposing a Territorial Defense role for the PRes, but the calculations for a typical Infantry Regiment came up with a parade strength of @ 350 all ranks. (Rather than Territorial Defense Battalions I actually proposed that the units themselves be organically capable of performing these sorts of tasks).

While many of the attendees loved the idea (some were indeed PRes officers who were understandably excited by the idea of working with a demi battalion), the cruncher was in the numbers. To have a unit that could provide a useful number of "boots on the ground" would involve bulking up current units to two or three times their current effective strengths (or possibly even more, depending on how many people actually parade). The personell costs across the CF would be astounding, and that is even before the training and equipping bill came in. O&M costs also need to be considered.

Now you have not actually spelled out what it is you feel the PRes should actually do, which leads to the question, what makes you think the Canadian public will support the balooning of the Defense budget to support such an expansion? If you can actually answer that question then I'm sure you will find lots of supporters to help you sell a Defense budget that is $50 billion/year (or more).

I am really curious to see your answer.

 

[mariomike]

While I don't automatically subscribe to Infanteer's supposition that a large percentage of PRes leadership are in the civilian emergency services, it is not the "42" out of "5250" (less than a paltry 1%) that should be considered, but how many of that 42 would be significant players (but not indispensible, no one is) if reserves were called-out during a disaster (the example of G8/G20 was not a "disaster", well at least not in the sense of hurricane, flood, snow storm . . .). 

Not sure how many are significant players in the reserves, but I believe that would be 42 out of 7,700 TPS members.

"The Toronto Police Service employs approximately 7,700 members, 30% of whom are civilians.":
http://www.torontopolice.on.ca/careers/civ_job_categories.php

As far as the 851 City Paramedics are concerned, my guess from having worked there is that the ratio would be similar to TPS.


 

 

[Haggis]

I can't speak to how reservists were employed during G8/20 and how closely their summit-related tasks were associated with the primary roles of existing reserve units or even if reserve units were used as organizational structures for that operation.  However if my experience with the Reserves (including a short period as a CO) was any indication, the employment of reservists was probably on an ad hoc basis and the table of organization (including quals of line serials) did not resemble existing units.  That may be fine for a pre-planned operation, but my premise of "built-in leadership redundency" is based on my belief that during a "disaster" reserve units should be employed in the same fashion as would Reg F units.

Reservists were employed in organzied Territorial Battalion Groups (TBG), based on the three Brigade Groups (CBG) in Ontario.  For example, to form 33 TBG troops were drawn from units in 33 CBG.