EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Thursday, November 9, 1995

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[English]

The Chairman: Order.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), the committee resumes consideration of the report of the special commission on the restructuring of the reserves.

We have with us today Major-General E.W. Linden, chief, reserves and cadets, and Brigadier-General A.R. MacDonald, reserve adviser.

Gentlemen, I shall ask you for an opening statement of approximately ten minutes, and I'm sure that then there will be lots of questions and lots of comments from around the table.

Welcome here today. Certainly we're looking forward to going through this review with you people, as we did yesterday with the people who wrote the report, and as we shall with other witnesses who will be coming before us in days to follow.

Major-General E.W. Linden (Chief, Reserves and Cadets, Department of National Defence): Mr. Chairman, committee members, as you're all aware, the 1994 white paper outlined a continuing commitment to the total force concept, which integrates full-time and part-time military personnel to provide Canada with multi-purpose combat-capable forces.

Under the total force concept, regular forces provide a ready-response capability while reservists are intended as augmentation and sustainment for regular units and, in some cases, for tasks that aren't performed by the regular force.

The white paper outlined that the primary reserve will reduce to 23,000 people by 1999. These reductions, along with the impact of the mobilization framework and emphasis on multilateral operations in support of global stability, dictate force structure arrangements along with the reduction of the reserves.

The white paper also identified that while the number of reservists will be reduced, the quality and overall ability to provide trained personnel for unit augmentation will be significantly improved. As well, a supplementary reserve will be maintained, but no longer funded.

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Within this context, of course, as you are aware, in April of this year the minister convened a special commission to investigate and to make recommendations concerning the role, structure and employment of the Canadian forces reserves and to recommend options for restructuring.

I will take a few minutes to provide an overview of Canada's reserve forces as they exist today. Some of it will take the form of maps and wiring diagrams, which we'll present on the overhead.

The reserve consists of four subcomponents: the primary reserve, the supplementary reserve, the Canadian Rangers, and the cadet instructor corps. The two principal reserve components being investigated by the special commission are the primary and the supplementary reserves. I'll restrict my comments today to these components.

The primary reserve consists of officers and non-commissioned members who volunteer to perform such duties and training as may be required. They're generally part of formed units and subunits and train periodically throughout the year. There are four primary reserve elements: the naval reserve, the militia or army reserve, the air reserve, and the communications reserve.

The authorized ceiling this year for the primary reserve is approximately 29,500. This number is spread throughout the country in 169 facilities. The primary reserve provides a vital link between the Canadian Forces and these communities.

The budget for primary reserve pay and for minor operating and maintenance expenses is approximately $260 million. The estimated cost of the primary reserve for 1995-96, reflected in the part III estimates, was $919 million. That reflects all attributable expenditures, including such things as regular support personnel, salaries, base support costs, and dedicated and shared capital expenditures, to mention only a few. This figure of $919 million is recognized to be a very rough one and NDHQ is currently trying to specify reserve costs more accurately.

Turning to the specific reserve elements, the naval reserve is a formation within Maritime Command on the same level as MARLANT and MARPAC, the Atlantic and Pacific navies. As the readiness and reinforcement element of the navy, the naval reserve's mission is to provide Maritime Command with trained personnel for the manning of combat and support naval elements. There are 24 naval reserve divisions spread across the country and grouped into regions, along with a fleet school and the naval reserve headquarters, which are both in Quebec City.

Each naval reserve division is an individual unit arranged loosely on a ship's company concept, such as you'd find, for example, on one of our frigates. It has a commanding officer, departments and so on. The role of each of these divisions is to provide trade and general military training primarily through the fall and winter. It will soon include some MCDV - maritime coastal defence vessel - modularized and decentralized training. The fleet school in Quebec, which opened this spring, is a total force school and is becoming a centre of excellence for maritime coastal defence vessel and coastal operations courses.

The primary role for the naval reserve is maritime coastal defence and the provision of crews for the 12 maritime coastal defence vessels, the first of which, the HMCS Kingston, was recently launched. To provide an entire crew for the MCDVs, regional manning is being used with personnel coming from the various divisions in the region.

In addition, the naval reserve is responsible for harbour defence, naval control of shipping and augmentation of the fleet. Harbour defence is the provision of defence for ports, anchorages and their immediate approaches, while naval control of shipping provides a contingency capability for placing merchant shipping under government control and, if necessary, under naval protection. There are four harbour defence units supported by diving inspection teams and four regional naval control of shipping teams, two for each coast.

Naval reserves have a current paid ceiling of 4,550 and the majority of these personnel are assigned to the manning of minor war vessels. Basic training for officers and non-commissioned members is conducted currently with the regular force.

The army reserve is the largest element of the reserves. The command and control of the land force is based on a geographical area structure. The area establishes a single chain of command, which includes all regular and reserve force units within that area. All work for the area commander. To provide a general-purpose, combat-ready land force, the area headquarters assumes the role of force generator with the ability to augment regular force units with reserve personnel and to prepare total force units for operations.

The land force command is divided into four areas and is composed of about 20,000 regular force personnel and a paid reserve ceiling of 20,109, including nearly 400 positions provided to the communication reserve for the signals militia. At present there is a parade strength of nearly 17,500 reservists who work in 133 units in 125 towns and cities across the country.

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To facilitate this wide span of command, the land force areas are divided into 14 districts, each with a district headquarters. More specifically, Land Force Western Area is composed of four districts and 42 units, with an actual effective strength of 4,083 reservists. These strengths were determined as of early October of this year. Land Force Central Area, Ontario, is composed of four districts and 43 reserve units, with an effective strength of 5,421 reservists. Land Force Quebec Area has a total of three districts and 27 units, with an effective strength of 4,142 reservists. Finally, Land Force Atlantic Area has three districts and 21 units, with an effective strength of 3,475 reservists.

A great deal of criticism has been levelled at the army reserves over the past few years. Many of you heard some of this criticism during the hearings of the special joint committee last year. Despite this criticism, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that the army reserves have done an outstanding job augmenting our peacekeeping operations.

Since 1989, nearly 4,500 army reservists have been deployed for United Nations operations. These reservists represent 18% of the land force participation, and it's widely recognized that their work was excellent. This doesn't mean changes aren't needed, but it does mean a very strong core group of army reservists now exists.

Turning now to the air reserves, the role of the air reserve is to enhance the national emergency capability of the Canadian Air Force and support it in ongoing peacetime tasks and activities. The aim of the air command is to have all units be total-force units with regular and reserve personnel serving in integrated establishments. The degree of integration will depend on readiness.

The current paid ceiling is 1,739 and the main units are as follows. There are two tactical aviation wings of three squadrons each under the command of ten tactical air groups. These are located in Toronto and Montreal. There are two integrated total-force squadrons under the Commander, Fighter Group, which provide electronic warfare and coastal patrol support. One independent squadron provides support to the air navigation school, DASH-8 training support and airlift.

There are also 21 air reserve augmentation flights and detachments that provide trained personnel to support all air command units, providing them with a mix of regular and reserve personnel on all of our Air Command bases.

Air Command is in the process of implementing a contingency support unit. The mission of this unit will be to plan and execute support operations and combined operations in any geographical area. The contingency support elements are air field engineer squadrons, an air combat service support squadron, a command and control communications and intelligence squadron, and security and defence forces.

Two of the three flights of the reserve airfield engineer squadron have already been started at Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, and Gander, Newfoundland.

Air Command has also introduced an industrial reserve. The concept of this program is to enrol in the reserve employees of civilian industry who through DND maintenance contracts are currently applying their trade qualifications and skills on Canadian forces aircraft and equipment. Memorandums of understanding have been signed with Bristol Aerospace and Bombardier or Canadair.

Finally, the communication reserve is part of the ADM information services organization. It consists of 23 units across the country. The current structure includes six regiments, 16 squadrons and one subunit. Of these, the ones located in Regina, Borden and St. John's, Newfoundland are completely integrated total-force units. One is headed by a reserve CO. The remainder are structured in an integrated chain of command.

The communication reserve units are assigned to one of five regional communication groups and a supplementary radio system within the director general of Defence Information Services Organization. Its role is to provide combat-capable augmentees to meet tactical and strategic command, control and information systems missions, including the signals militia function, which is going in the field with the army. The communication reserve also provides general military and information systems training in communication services.

The communication reserve is not tasked with providing formed units but rather almost exclusively with the provision of individual and small formed detachments to augment the regular force. Currently, 14 out of the 52 communicators in Yugoslavia are communication reservists, which is 29% of the total. There are also communication reserve personnel serving in the Golan Heights, Haiti and Rwanda.

At any particular time, there are also more than 100 communication reservists on call-out in direct support of the ADM information services missions across Canada, performing functions like communications centre operators, technicians and linemen.

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The paid ceiling this year is 2,016, which is a combination of 1,624 information services positions and 392 credits transferred annually from the army to recruit, train, and administer the signals militia.

Communication reserve training has been made equivalent to that of the regular force wherever possible. For the ranks of private to master corporal and officer cadet to lieutenant, communication reservists meet the same training standards as regular force personnel. Although equivalency in training standards may not be practical at higher rank levels, they'll be aligned as closely as is practical, bearing in mind the actual augmentation tasking and employment.

The last component I'll mention is the supplementary reserve, which consists of officers and non-commissioned officers who, except when they're called on active service, do not perform any duty or training. Their names are on a list. In general, the supplementary reserve provides a pool of personnel with previous military experience who could be recalled in case of an emergency. Civilians with special skills may also be enrolled.

The two parts of the supplementary reserve, the supplementary holding reserve and the supplementary ready reserve, total approximately 47,000 personnel. While the difference between the two has blurred in recent years, the ready reserve was to provide a pool of individuals who had skills that were current and who had expressed a willingness to volunteer for duty when requested. The holding reserve contained those with less current skill and/or more restricted availability. The commands are responsible for administering their proportion of the ready reserve, while the holding reserve is administered by NDHQ.

To ensure the viability of the ready reserve, the members were to be allowed to retain their uniforms, ID cards, and current security clearances. As well, they were required to report annually to establish their suitability to remain on the ready reserve. For this they received a stipend of $300. Over the past several years the majority of these elements have been eliminated. Most recently, as a result of the 1994 white paper, the $300 stipend was cancelled.

Before concluding, let me just mention a few of the reserve issues that will be of concern in reserve restructuring. The first of these is administration and training. This was to a large degree a focus of the report of the Auditor General.

In response to the shortcomings identified in the report, we've made great improvements in the training administration of reservists. Training standards are to a large degree based on those of the regular force, and we're also quickly changing our career management policies to emulate those of the regular force. This is to some degree being driven by the new roles of reservists.

The air force was the first to adopt these new ways of doing business because of its acting flying role. Now the demands placed on the army reservists for peacekeeping and on the naval reservists for manning the new MCDVs require a high level of training and performance.

Reflecting the move toward total force, just last week we promulgated a policy giving reservists first priority for regular force vacancies and making it much easier for people to transfer from the reserve to the regular force.

A final area of concern is that of pay and benefits. Much progress has been made in this area since the 1987 white paper, but much remains to be done in areas such as pay comparability, specialist pay, vacation pay, and pension and severance benefits. In some of these areas military reservists are denied benefits that are mandated by law for all or virtually all other Canadian employees.

While DND is eager to make changes, it cannot do so until 1997 because of the government restraint legislation. For example, even though a system of pensions for part-time civil servants was approved by Treasury Board during the pay freeze, it has refused to approve implementation of a much less costly severance package for military reservists.

Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, General, for a very good presentation and one that I think will start a lot of questions around the table.

We will start in the usual manner with ten minutes and then have a supplementary round of five minutes.

Mr. Leroux.

[Translation]

Mr. Leroux (Shefford): Gentlemen, welcome to the committee.

I have a number of questions which touch on a number of different areas. These are things I have been wondering about and you may be able to shed light on them.

To combine a civilian job with a reservist career presents a number of difficulties. Do you think it's easier to be in the reserve nowadays? If not, what should we be doing to allow young people who want to become reservists to have at the same time a career in another area? What measures would you propose?

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[English]

MGen Linden: Among the measures that we're trying to take to make it easier, a major initiative has been with our Canadian Forces Liaison Council. Those of you who were on the special joint committee will remember the presentation from Mr. John Eaton, who's the chair of that committee. Over the last two to two and one-half years, Mr. Eaton and the executive director, Léo Desmarteau, have done a tremendous job of going out and contacting employers working with them to try to ensure that their employees are granted time off without cost to their vacation in order that they can complete reserve training.

Some of the other things that we're trying to do are to do more of our training courses at periods other than the summer, which for many business organizations creates difficulties in letting reservists take time for reserve training as well as time for vacations. So in those kinds of policies we're trying to facilitate the ease with which people who are employed in civilian life can work with the reserves.

[Translation]

Mr. Leroux: We often hear that reservists are not the same as regular forces. They aren't trained the same way. I even heard that today, Mr. Chairman.

On the other hand, we know that Canadian reserves take part in peacekeeping missions. As I was saying to the committee yesterday, I even met two of my former students who are now in the reserves and who went to Bosnia - Herzegovina. After having been in the reserves, are those young people sufficiently well trained to do the work required during such missions?

[English]

MGen Linden: Yes, they have been. What we do with reservists when they go on peacekeeping is after a selection process, they train for full-time for three months with the unit they're going to deploy with, in Yugoslavia or wherever the peacekeeping zone is.

In talking with many of the people who have commanded those battalions in Bosnia and Croatia, they have found that after they get there the reservists are indistinguishable from their regular force counterparts. There have been some weaknesses with some of the senior levels. For example, non-commissioned officers, sergeants, have lacked the experience of regular force sergeants and have had some difficulty with the role. By the time the young people with peacekeeping experience at the corporal, master corporal and private levels move up to sergeant, there should be equivalence there as well.

With regard to young officers, they found that there are two ways of training militia officers, one of which entails the same training program the regular officers get. Those people, again, perform indistinguishably from their regular force counterparts. With the people trained on a more part-time basis and to a slightly different standard, it takes a bit more training to get them up to that level. So the level of success has been very high.

[Translation]

Mr. Leroux: In other words, when those youngsters are sent in a detachment with regular forces, they are just as prepared and as well trained as the others. Is that right?

[English]

Brigadier-General A. R. MacDonald (Reserve Adviser, Department of National Defence): Yes, they are. When they complete the three-month training phase, the young reservists have to be approved by the commanding officer of the unit as being trained sufficiently well and integrated into the unit so they can deploy with the unit overseas.

So initially there is a gap. But the reason for the three-month training period is it does solve that, it brings the gap together, and there's no problem once the unit leaves for out-of-country.

If I may add a comment about training and training standards for the units across the country at home in their armoury, the army is busy at the moment bringing together the training standards. We did have a reserve training standard and we had a regular training standard. Those trade qualifications are being brought together. There will be one training standard for the army and everybody will work towards that standard.

For the reservist this does create a bit of a problem in the sense of timing, because he's taking time from his job or as a student and he may not have sufficient time to complete all the course in one block. Therefore, each of the courses has been broken down into blocks so that the reservists can go through the program but at the end have that common training standard.

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The Chairman: Thank you very much.

[Translation]

Mr. Leroux: Mr. Chairman, I have a last point to raise. At the end of your presentation, you said that public servants who had worked part-time for a certain number of hours were entitled to a pension, but that reservists were not. In other words, in the reserve you don't get a pension. Is that correct?

[English]

MGen Linden: That's correct. Even if somebody is a full-time employee with the reserves, and we have a number who've been full-time reservists, 365 days a year for 5 or 10 years, they have no access to a pension plan unless they're former members of the regular force, and there's also no pension or severance benefits for any of the part-time reservists.

[Translation]

Mr. Leroux: For example, someone who is in the reserves and who works as a public servant for the government of Canada could not count time spent in the reserves toward its pension, is that correct?

[English]

MGen Linden: No, not at all. They'd be totally separate.

[Translation]

Mr. Leroux: And what you're proposing is that reservists get a pension.

[English]

MGen Linden: Yes.

[Translation]

Mr. Leroux: Have you prepared a paper on it? Do you discuss it in the documents presented to us today? I didn't have time to read everything.

[English]

MGen Linden: Yes. We have a number of submissions that we've made concerning pension and severance benefits, and I can ensure that a copy of that gets to the committee.

[Translation]

Mr. Leroux: Thank you very much.

[English]

Mr. Speller (Haldimand - Norfolk): Thank you, gentlemen, for your presentation.

I come from a rural part of southwestern Ontario where the number of armouries you talked about are dotted across the landscape. Ontario now has close to 40% of the population - 37%, 38%, 39% of the population - and yet this report recommends only two brigades for Ontario. Does that seem enough to you, or should there not be another brigade given the fact that we have this larger population? If you look at the number of units in Ontario, it's much larger than let's say Quebec.

MGen Linden: That would be a decision for this committee to make in the form of a recommendation to the minister. I assume that in your discussions you can assess whether the commission's recommendation in that regard is a sensible one and whether it covers Ontario adequately, and if you feel it doesn't, send the appropriate recommendation to the minister.

Mr. Speller: But I would like in that process to be able to say I talked to a couple of people who are right on the ground here and they say it doesn't seem enough to them. Could you comment?

MGen Linden: We've been asked by the minister not to comment on any specific recommendations of the commission. We were advised to allow this committee to make up their minds on their own given the facts that we present them. So it's not something that I could really comment on.

Mr. Speller: Mr. Chairman, it just doesn't seem enough to me.

I'll move on to the restructuring process. The commission recommends the following restructuring process - and I'm referring to page 76, number 10(2) - which says:

Militia brigade groups, in terms of numbers of units, will be organized with some discretion within each Area.

Do you know what that means? It's number 10(2) on page 76, in chapter 5 ``The Militia'' of ``Consolidated Recommendations''.

MGen Linden: I think all that means is the number of units in each brigade will not necessarily come out of a cookie-cutter. In other words, what makes sense in that particular area will be what the army will do. So there won't be a template that they apply and say every brigade should have six of these and four of those, but rather to assess the units in the local area and to come up with brigades that make sense given local history and traditions and the condition of the armouries and all of the other criteria that the commission mentions.

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Mr. Speller: What do you foresee as the criteria that will be looked at when they're making a decision on what stays? You mentioned one thing, which is, for instance, the condition of the armoury.

MGen Linden: In fact, I think the commission lists a number of them. I tend to concur with the ones they have, because they're actually ones that my office submitted. We stole them from the Australians, who went through a similar exercise.

There are things like the ability of a unit to show a good track record over time.

There's also the local demographic base, although that's not necessarily a critical one, because, as I was mentioning to your chairman, P.E.I., which has a small number of people, takes a tremendous proportion of the reserves. We don't suggest doing to it strictly on demography but by demography related to track record.

There's the closeness to regular-force units. Again, because of the cost of providing support from the regular force to the reserves, if you have them very scattered, it can be more costly.

There's the condition of armouries.

Another one they mentioned is unit traditions and history. When possible, one should to try to maintain the traditions, especially in units that are very firmly embedded into the fabric of a local community. It's probably a good idea to make that a consideration when possible.

Mr. Speller: I'm just wondering if you foresee, at the end of this process, a number of armouries that will stay, such as in Toronto, Hamilton, London, Windsor, Simcoe's disbanded units, Guelph, and the small towns across southwestern Ontario, or indeed across Canada.

MGen Linden: I can ask General MacDonald to comment on that, because he knows the units. But my impression is that there's not necessarily a correlation between the size of the community and the success of the unit. There are several cases, with P.E.I. collectively being one, in both the naval reserve and army and communications reserves in which local traditions and local unit commanders have done a fabulous job of attracting people. So it would not necessarily be an exercise in closing down places in small areas and keeping the ones open in large areas.

With his experience in the Maritimes, I'm sure General MacDonald can comment on that as well.

BGen MacDonald: The criteria that the army will use to do their staff checks and sort out their structure, after we receive direction, are outlined on page 75.

Regarding your question on the location of armouries after restructuring, I would hope they're not all in the large, urban centres. I hope we will have a proper footprint across the country. Certainly there are units out there that I would call rural in setting that have provided very strong units. They have strong units today and have had them historically. The future looks good for them.

Yes, I see a mix, both in a rural setting and an urban one. In urban settings, as an example, there are some unique problems, because now our armouries have been in one location for 20, 30, or40 years, yet the population has moved away. They've moved away from the armoury to the outskirts.

It's a very broad question. It's going to take considerable consideration. We're going to have to look at each area, because each area has its uniqueness, as do the regions in this country.

That's a broad answer to your question, sir. Area commanders and the army commander will have to address each of those points.

Mr. Speller: Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Speller.

Just before I let you go on to that question, Mr. Frazer, I want to follow up on that.

What do you people see as your role if these things are accepted and the recommendations go forward to the government? What do you see as your role in their implementation?

MGen Linden: I'll let General MacDonald comment first, since his role has been specified.

BGen MacDonald: Shortly after direction is issued to us from the minister at NDHQ to the army commander, then it's his intention that will I be much involved in the process as the senior reservist for the army. I'll have a staff with which to sit down and begin to formulate some ideas and suggestions for the commander and the area commanders.

We will use the report and its basis. I'm personally very pleased with the contents of this. We'll use the criteria that are outlined on page 75, plus other directions we receive. We'll work from there.

One of the major interests for us at the moment, of course, is the impact of the budget. That will be one of the major things we will have to address immediately. We'll address the rest of it as quickly as we can.

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It is the intention of the army commander for reservists at all levels to be very much involved in this, to add the community, the history, the heritage and the reservist's point of view, because, as mentioned earlier, reservists do have other considerations to deal with.

MGen Linden: My role, as recommended by the commission report - again, it's up to this committee as to what your recommendation would be - is to monitor the implementation of the report at the NDHQ level.

Here is one of the reasons I believe the commission recommended that. If we go back and look at other reports, such as the auditor general's report, many of the things the auditor general recommended have been carried out, but there wasn't a central repository or a central monitoring and implementation agency to ensure that it was uniformly done across the commands. So it was up to the initiative of each of the individual commanders to do it, rather than a coordinated cell just to sit and ride herd on what was going on.

The Chairman: Thank you.

Mr. Frazer.

Mr. Frazer (Saanich - Gulf Islands): Gentlemen, welcome. Thank you for your presentation. If I may, I would like to start a little off the track. It's in the reserve realm, but it's cadets in the instructor cadre.

I've had a number of approaches from people who are dead keen and seemingly qualified to become cadet instructors, but they don't meet the physical requirements for either a reserve or regular officer. I wonder whether any consideration has been given to these people. I think the ones who really want to get involved and are dedicated are in short supply. Have you given any consideration to perhaps saying that these won't be required to meet the reserve force standards?

MGen Linden: There are two answers to that.

First, those people can become civilian instructors, as are many of them. That's the niche they tend to fit into.

The other issue the commission considered was the question of whether the cadet instructor cadre should continue to be members of the primary reserve. That means they have to meet some kind of standards. I know that within the cadet instructor group, virtually everybody I talk to is universal in wanting them to stay part of the component of the reserve rather than to be put into a different category, which is what we'd have to do if we wanted to greatly water down the standards. I think we're just going to have to keep accepting the niche of civilian instructors with the course.

Mr. Frazer: Okay. How did you react to their recommendation that senior NCOs should be able to operate as senior NCOs, rather than having to be commissioned? Did you agree with that?

MGen Linden: Again, we've been asked not to describe whether we agree or disagree with the recommendation. I can say that's one of the things a number of people in the cadet --

Mr. Frazer: I guess you have a gag on, but I'm asking you, with your expertise as the chief, to say whether this will work and is a good idea. It appears to me to be an excellent idea. These people would be able to operate in an area with which they're very familiar and have tremendous expertise in. They can bring this to the cadets.

No comment?

MGen Linden: No comment; sorry.

Mr. Frazer: I want to put you on the spot now, since you wouldn't answer that one. One of the things we got wherever we went and talked to reservists was their complaint about the pay system. I'm not quite sure you've been in the position. Do you know what's wrong with it? If you do know what's wrong with it, why haven't you fixed it?

MGen Linden: In my 30 or so years in the reserve, the pay has always been the bane of our existence. The pay system for much of Canada is basically fixed. In most cases, it works well.

The problem is with the IRPPS project, which was implemented in the Atlantic area. The problems with it were related to software, the communications technology, and the training of people.

It became one of these things that we get into in which the experts tell you they will fix it in a month. Then when it breaks down, they'll fix it in another month. You keep on being sucked along by the promise of a new horizon on the future.

The fix now is working at two levels. One is that all of the commanders of the air force, navy and army have instructed their local units that if the IRPPS system breaks down, they are to get a hold of the money in any way possible in order to pay their soldiers, sailors and airmen. I know the navy, for example, put a very heavy investment in working through the Toronto-Dominion Bank through the naval reserve unit in Halifax to make sure people are getting paid.

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With regard to the IRPPS system, the information I have is that the last three runs have been very well done. The department has put together resources internally and a kind of tiger team to try to fix the problem. It's felt that with an investment of another couple of million dollars we should be able to get that system operating smoothly. The problem is that once we got off the IRPPS system, which was obviously a mistake, we should have been running in parallel with the old RDS system. It's almost impossible to get back into RDS because you've lost all of the records for the intervening time period. Also, with the army moving out of St. Hubert, it's doubtful whether or not we're going to be able to support the RDS system across the country.

It's greatly in our interest to get the IRPPS system working well and in fact implemented in other parts. The immediate solution is to work at the local unit level, and if the computer system hiccups, the local unit commander should grab a bag of money from the local base and pay people by hand if necessary, as we did in the old days.

Mr. Frazer: You said ``should''. Are we going to say he will do that?

MGen Linden: They have been instructed to do that, yes.

Mr. Frazer: So if there's a glitch and people aren't being paid, they can in fact override this and make it work.

MGen Linden: Absolutely.

Mr. Frazer: And that's in place now?

MGen Linden: Yes, it is.

Mr. Frazer: I'm not sure you can answer this one either, but the reserve commission mentioned the advisability, in their minds, of permeability; that is, the ability to rotate reservists and regulars back and forth. Do you support this type of action?

MGen Linden: I don't feel comfortable talking about that because the department's position was made eminently clear with the release of a message last week, as I mentioned in my presentation. Reservists will be given first call on any new hiring in the regular force. There are also a number of procedures to administratively make that transfer much easier. The next thing to work on is simply the administrative glitches we have with regulars transferring into the reserves, which sometimes takes a few months more than it should. I think the department is very clearly moving in the direction of greater permeability. I think this is a major accomplishment in terms of total force.

You may recall hearing a couple of years ago that there was a message that went out saying reservists were not to be recruited for regular force vacancies because they wanted to recruit off the street in order to keep the training system ticking over. At one level that makes sense, but at the level of being just to your trained people - and also at the level of the regular force being able to select from already trained reservists - it made no sense at all. That was recognized, and we've now not only solved that problem, we've moved on to a much more positive step.

Mr. Frazer: When a regular goes to a reserve unit for a tour, is there some guarantee or promise made to him that at the appropriate time, provided he meets the qualifications, he is going to be accepted back in the regular force?

MGen Linden: Do you mean somebody going in and out of the regulars or somebody who is a regular support person?

Mr. Frazer: I mean a regular who, for all sorts of reasons - a wife or a husband, for example - elects to leave the regular force and go to the reserves in order to continue their thing, but who wants to rejoin the regular force at a later date. Is there a provision for that?

BGen MacDonald: The only examples of my experience with that question, sir, have been regulars posted to reserve units to do a task there and on completion of the task they go back to the regular.

Mr. Frazer: So they wouldn't be going from the regular to reserve; they're just attached there.

BGen MacDonald: They would not for the reasons you have outlined as an example, no, sir. They would go as a regular tour reserve unit, stay with that reserve unit, and then go back to the regular. There's been no problem that way.

Mr. Frazer: I'll move to the problem of rehabilitation of people who have been in rather traumatic circumstances, such as Bosnia, Croatia or Rwanda. When the regular force member comes back, he or she is welcomed back into the family that surrounds him or her in their home unit. The reservist, if I understand correctly, goes back to his or her home. Is there a provision made for some sort of rehabilitation assistance to these people to allow them to re-accommodate to a normal life after having been in a rather hectic situation?

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BGen MacDonald: When the reservist comes back from a UN operation, yes, he does return to his home location. But a safety net, or line of communication, is there for the individual, structured through his area headquarters and his district headquarters. So if a lad does have a problem, it's a matter of his local unit commanding officer being made aware of it. Then he tells the system and the system reacts.

I've had some experience with this in Atlantic Canada, sir. It has improved as we've had more experience with it, and it's working quite well.

Mr. Frazer: What I'm concerned about is the possibility that he doesn't realize there is a problem. In a unit, other people observing this individual would say maybe this guy needs help or that lady needs help. That doesn't seem to be available in the situation you're mentioning.

BGen MacDonald: The leadership in the local armoury, the local unit, is aware of this. They've received some briefings. They know the signs and the signals to look for. The company commander, the senior NCOs and the local padres are aware of these signs and symptoms. They stay in touch. We maintain a good line of communication with these individuals on the armoury floor. So I feel quite comfortable.

We don't have a 100% solution, but I feel quite comfortable with where we are at the moment. It's been working quite well. That's been my experience in Atlantic Canada, sir.

Mr. Frazer: It seems to be spread very thin. I would hope it would work.

BGen MacDonald: I feel very confident at this stage. Mind you, we could always expand and make it better, but right now I think we're doing quite well.

Mr. Frazer: I'm a little bit concerned about one of the recommendations of the commission.

I very definitely agree with the concept of down-ranking the reserve commissioneds and senior non-commissioneds to provide the ability to spread the finances wider and get more privates and corporals and so on. What concerns me, though, is the impact this will have on progression within the reserves. Reservists tend to progress a little more rapidly than do regular force people now, but that would probably be curtailed substantially. Do you see that having a negative effect on your ability to retain people in the reserve?

MGen Linden: I don't think so. If I can draw a parallel with the regular forces, there's avery slow promotion line right now and very much a down-ranking of positions; we moved from128 generals a few years ago to 88 today and we're going down to 70 or 60.

Obviously everybody would like lots of promotions, but we recognize in the reserve as well as in the regulars that downsizing means there aren't going to be as many openings at the top. It's not a factor that enhances morale in the regulars or reserves, but it's something we all have to deal with together. In this case we're going to share the pain of total force.

Mr. Frazer: You realize that and I realize that, but does the private and the corporal on the floor realize that?

MGen Linden: They're going to have to. They're going to have to revise their expectations. The problem is during a time of transition. The transition makes things worse because we have excess people we have to get out of the system, which means there isn't a normal promotion flow. Also, people who joined fifteen or twenty years ago have expectations developed in a much larger force.

So probably, both in the regular and in the reserve, we're going to have to go through a period of about five years when people are going to have to adjust their promotion expectations to something more reasonable.

We can look at the example of the naval reserve. Many of their units of size 200-plus are commanded by lieutenant commanders. I spent last evening at a social event with a commander of Chippawa in Winnipeg who's very happy to be commanding his unit as a lieutenant commander. It's the command that matters to him, not the rank.

Mr. Frazer: I have a departing comment. The commission said they thought training with real-size units would accommodate this tremendous amount. I think that's probably true.

Thank you.

Mr. Bertrand (Pontiac - Gatineau - Labelle): Could you tell me roughly how much a reservist makes a month or a year? What is the pay for a reservist?

MGen Linden: The average for a junior rank in the army or naval reserve would be $3,000 to $4,000 a year. If there's a long period of summer training, it could perhaps get up to $4,500 a year.

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There is some variation. Air reservists, for example, because of the high degree of technical skills required, would perhaps get 80 days of attendance as opposed to an army reservist, who, including summer training, might get about 50 days. So we're not dealing with large sums of money.

Mr. Bertrand: In reference to some of the numbers you mentioned in your report, you said payroll and minor operating and maintenance expenses are approximately $260 million for about 29,000 reservists. I just did a very quick figure and it comes to about $8,800 per reservist.

Now I know the higher ranking officers get more money, but there seems to be a discrepancy between the money being allocated and the amount they are actually receiving.

MGen Linden: Yes. I think the commission has recognized that is a problem with the system and has recommended some ways to alleviate it by placing a priority on getting the most money possible down to the armoury floor.

Mr. Bertrand: Stove-piping.

MGen Linden: To give you an example of the cause of that, within the army there are 14 district headquarters, which is a heavy administrative burden. Within the air reserve, which I am most familiar with because I used to be the commander of it, 40% of my budget was taken up by 10% of my people who were full-time reservists. We needed a heavy component of full-timers in the air reserve, and they represented 10% of my 1,500 people. If there had been 4,000 or 5,000 people, we would have needed the same number of full-timers, so the percentage would have declined as we expanded. We simply needed an administrative cadre within some of our units and within our headquarters.

I think I made a mistake when I was the commander by not being more aggressive about seeking out and cutting some of those full-time positions. We weren't as concerned about budgets in those days. When we were running efficient units, there wasn't any real incentive to make them as cost-effective as they could have been.

Subsequent to my time, air command has been looking at cutting any of those full-time positions as non-essential to try to put the most money on the floor of the armoury. There's going to be a bonus for doing it in the reserves now with the reductions. As the commission pointed out, they're looking at 14,500 in the armoury reserve, but that's a figure upon which your budget is based. If you can figure out how to manage your money better, you can have more reservists.

The commission presented us with some of its graphs, which showed how you can almost have the same size of reserve you do now, given some assumptions. That kind of incentive should alleviate your concern about where that money is going, because it's not getting down to the corporal or private. If you put an incentive to a manager to have more people if he or she operates more efficiently, I think you will have a manager who is focusing in the right direction.

Mr. Bertrand: You also stated that in part III of the estimates there was $919 million, which reflects all attributable expenditures, including regular support salaries and base support costs. Could you just go into more detail as to what that $919 million includes?

MGen Linden: It currently includes the cost of the MCDVs, which is a very expensive capital acquisition program, or at least expensive in terms of the total reserve budget.

While we're looking at perhaps making these costs a little more realistic, one of the things I quarrel with is that if a regular force captain does a tour of peacekeeping in Bosnia, comes back to Canada off that rotation, and instead of going to the Patricia's unit in Winnipeg goes to the Royal Winnipeg Rifles, that cost is charged to the reserve component of the part III estimates. I don't see how that can be a reserve cost because that person will be back in Canada for a couple of years anyway, and whether he's training with the Patricias or the Rifles is irrelevant.

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It's not that those bad guys in NDHQ and the regular force are trying to unload all the costs they can onto reserves. Simply, back in an environment where we weren't as focused on cost, there was really no reason to be concerned about what was lumped into that section of the part III estimates. We were concerned about what DND costs totally without breaking it down because we weren't into cross-centre management and those sorts of things.

It's only been recently that we've sought to break out costs that actually accrue to reserves. The regular force people in NDHQ are more than willing to take an open look at this. Contrary to some of the publicity that's out in things like the Militia Monitor, this isn't a case of them trying to make us look costly so we can be cut. It's simply a case that nobody ever raised the issue before of how much the reserves really cost because we didn't have that kind of orientation.

Mr. Bertrand: If somebody who's not into this sort of thing just looked at these numbers...they're quite impressive numbers. We see almost $1 billion for the reserves. That's a heck of a lot of money.

MGen Linden: It was higher. In one of the previous part III estimates it was about $1.25 billion.

At one of our Merrickville meetings I raised the question of why this number is there and immediately we chopped it by about $300 million. It only took a few weeks to do that because they were saying this really shouldn't have been allocated to the reserves. Really it's just a case of sorting out our accounting practices.

Mr. Bertrand: Thank you.

Mr. O'Reilly (Victoria - Haliburton): Gentlemen, thank you for attending. I hope you don't take the fifth on all my questions, but we'll give it a try.

Does your reserve component have a medical first aid component in it? Is that in your equation anywhere?

BGen MacDonald: Yes, we do.

MGen Linden: I think we just answered that question for somebody, sir.

Mr. O'Reilly: You didn't answer it here, did you? Was I asleep?

BGen MacDonald: No.

In the militia at the moment we do have a medical reserve capability as well as a dental capability in some areas.

Mr. O'Reilly: Is there anything in the report that civilian training, such as ambulance operator training, for instance, would be taken into account as part of training when a person does a tour of duty and then has to drop out of the reserves and lose their rank because of the remoteness of where they live or to raise their family? When they come back in, is there any component to allow civilian training to be taken into account?

BGen MacDonald: Of course, the commission has made some recommendations along those lines, but I'd prefer not to touch that question at the moment.

Mr. O'Reilly: You take the fifth. Okay.

MGen Linden: I can answer that.

Again, it's very consistent with previous policy of the department. Regardless of what the commission says in that regard, we're trying to do things smarter by taking advantage of civilian training and recognizing it.

For example, in the air reserve, we ran a project called Project Helicop that took people with civilian helicopter training, brought them into the military, and did an assessment of their civilian skills by actually flying them in our helicopters in Portage. We identified the difference between what they knew and what they could physically do in a machine, and we based their course on the difference between what they knew and what they needed to attain the military standard. So we were able to train helicopter pilots for the reserve at less than half the cost of starting from the beginning again.

We did the same program with somewhat less success for air maintenance engineers, but it's a project that's continuing, with a liaison between Collège Edouard-Montpetit in Montreal and the reserve wing there.

So we've long had an initiative to try to recognize civilian skills. It has been somewhat challenging at times to get the regular force training system to develop that level of flexibility, but at the senior levels within NDHQ there certainly is a strong commitment to do exactly what you suggest. It really doesn't make sense to train people twice to do the same thing.

Mr. O'Reilly: Sometimes the training they receive when they're outside the military is more consistent. I wouldn't say it's better training, but certainly they use their skills more than when they're in the militia. Taking that into account, I just wonder if there's any flexibility in that rule. There always seems to be a rule that when you drop out of the reserves, your rank is gone. It doesn't matter if you come back a year later. Even if you've been working on the same thing you're going to work on, say in another tour of duty, that isn't taken into account.

.1650

I suppose I'm asking if there's less rigidity that way.

MGen Linden: The model we want to apply is a skills assessment and then a training to the standard from the level you're at. Even within the regular force they're moving to that.

I was just at 403 squadron in Gagetown, where they're getting the new helicopters, the Griffons, delivered. Normally, when making a transition to a new aircraft in the air force, everybody goes through the same course, whether they have 5,000 hours on helicopters or 150. Now the CO of that unit has a flexible program, and if you can get through all the objectives faster, why hang around Gagetown? Go home and get back to work in your unit.

This philosophy is being imbued throughout the military, although it has its greatest application for a reservist because of all the training they get outside.

The Chairman: Just before you leave that, on page 6 of your presentation you talk about the industrial reserve. That brings the same thing into being, right? People are working in the industrial sector with DND contracts and are also applying their skills to the military aspect of it.

MGen Linden: Yes, and there's potential in other areas as well. For example, because of the force reductions, we're looking at having to civilianize some of the personnel support services - trades such as steward and physical education instructor. That leaves a hole, though, when you go off into the field. Often those are the kinds of people you need on board ships or on deployment in camps if you want to run physical education programs.

One of the options that has been presented is that when we hire civilians to do those jobs, a condition of their employment be that they become members of the reserve, so that in the event they're needed on a ship in the Adriatic or in a peacekeeping encampment in the Sinai, they can come in uniform to do the jobs they were doing in base Winnipeg or Gagetown as civilians.

Mr. O'Reilly: In the last paragraph of page 1 of your briefing, you indicate you're going to reduce the number of reservists, improve the quality and do better training. I don't know how you're going to do that with less funds, closing armouries and everything moving into the big city centres.

My experience shows that in the town of Lindsay, after the Korean War, the armoury was closed and people like me, who were in the reserves, were faced with the option of driving 50 miles to Oshawa and 50 miles back if we wanted to stay in. Obviously it wasn't in our ability to do that. The reserves there were put out of business and the unit was disbanded.

I see this happening again, and I wonder how you're going to accommodate rural Canada when you're isolating them even more by moving the bases and closing.... I'm not saying you're doing it, but I don't know how it is going to improve, as you suggest in here, when in fact you're going to be faced with that reality.

I would like you to expand on that particular statement you've made here.

MGen Linden: First of all, the direction to become smaller, better trained and more efficient is given in the white paper, so it's in fact government policy, so that's what we're going to do.

Mr. O'Reilly: That doesn't mean I agree with it. I just want you to know that.

MGen Linden: It means I have to agree with it, though.

In terms of the rural question, again, we addressed that to some degree earlier, but I don't think this necessarily means there's going to be a purge on rural units. There are many variations of retaining rural units. You might talk about some of the innovative ways you've done it in the Maritimes.

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Mr. O'Reilly: If you're going to talk about Prince Edward Island, I just want to interject. My riding is twice the size of Prince Edward Island and I have the same number of people. Geographically, everything is closed. I have 18 legions and all kinds of veterans wondering why the reserves have gone to the big cities, and why the cadet corps are ignored. So it's great in Prince Edward Island where it's only 75 miles across.

The Chairman: We're a province.

Mr. O'Reilly: Well, my area is bigger than a province.

The Chairman: We're a province, you see, and you're not.

Mr. O'Reilly: My area is twice as big as your province and I have no power at all. It takes four of you to cover half of my area.

The Chairman: Obviously, we're having better success.

MGen Linden: Brigadier-General MacDonald will have some examples in rural Nova Scotia that may fit your area better.

I think one of the criterion the commission recommended in its fix was to maintain a footprint in Canada. That will be part of the mandate of restructure if this committee and the minister elect to adopt that recommendation of the commission.

Mr. O'Reilly: In my estimation, a footprint is something that's left.

MGen Linden: I don't think that was their intention.

BGen MacDonald: Our interpretation of footprint is to be there in the community, to be a part of it, and to be seen in the community. We want to be represented across this country in rural and urban areas.

The Chairman: And you'll be there, O'Reilly.

BGen MacDonald: It's going to be an interesting challenge, there's no doubt about it. There has been a lot of discussion about it. I've had some experience with this and we have formed different training structures.

The brigade structure was an experiment that I've had some work with in the Atlantic in the last number of years, and it worked quite well. It allowed us to go to the locations of each of the reserve units, take soldiers from those units, put them into building blocks or smaller organizations, build up and then go to the field with a viable training component - something that justified the expense of training. That's one possibility of working our way through this.

I don't want to get too deeply into what may follow in the future, but I think we have to look at the viability of strong units. I don't think it's anybody's intention to do away with them. We need all the reserves we have, but we must get a better return on our investment, and I know we will.

There are several ways this can be addressed. The respective area commanders and the army commander, once they get their direction, will have to sit down, do the number crunching and work out the best possible arrangement. But it's not the intent to consolidate them all in big cities, I don't believe. I hope not, because I'm a rural guy.

MGen Linden: One of the possibilities is that where the population base may not sustain a regiment or a battalion, one still retains the unit there but it exists at company or platoon-size strength and then becomes part of a regionally based unit.

In General Macdonald's former command, when he was running the Atlantic area, they were able to maintain the viability of units by giving a unit a significant size so you could take it into the field, but also keep the footprint - and this one with somebody in it - across the area he was commanding.

I think we'll really have to look at creative ways of doing that, especially when we tend to be closing bases all over within the regular force and focusing on a few super-bases for reasons of economy. We recognize that we simply have to maintain the viability of a presence of the military across the country.

Mr. O'Reilly: I have a cadet corps 50 miles from the town of Lindsay in the Village of Cobocank that has taken Hood as its naval name. We've been able to find some artifacts and so forth from the Hood and the cadets are very pleased with that. They don't have a navy sabre so they have a home-made one.

The boys from Trenton were there and promised they'd get a sabre two years ago. I finally went to Admiral Mifflin and asked what to do and he suggested I go to some reserve stores somewhere and maybe I could find one. That gives you an indication of how the cadets are presently not properly funded and not fully supported.

.1700

I specifically would like to know how you're going to improve your cadet training and give them more support.

MGen Linden: One of the problems now is that our regular support bases are closing down across the country. For example, with the closure of the base in Calgary we've lost a place that did an outstanding job of supporting cadets.

So what do we do to deliver the service? Currently within the department we know how much the direct costs of cadets are. There's a budget of $60 million to $70 million of cheques that are signed for cadets. There are also the buses, the meals, all the supply systems, all the medical services at camps, and all the other things.

What we're in the middle of now is an exercise to identify all those indirect costs, to recover that money in bookkeeping terms from all the support bases, and then to allocate that money directly to the cadet units. So if you don't have a bus coming from the Calgary base to take you to your training any more, you'll have the money in your hand to go and rent a civilian bus. What we're trying to do is to devolve those budgets with the previous indirect services directly to the local cadet units. They can either buy services on the market or buy them back from their support bases.

That will probably amount to another $60 million or so that will go out to the local cadet units. Some will be retained for services at cadet camps. That's really the only way we're going to ensure that there's a consistent level of support for cadets across the country. It's quite an interesting challenge to break out every service that every base provides for cadets and figure out what the costing is.

Mr. O'Reilly: Of course, my reason for asking that question is that I find the cadet service to be invaluable in small communities in rural Canada, and this one in particular is one I've spent some time with; I have watched them grow. They're very enthused. In an area of poverty and high unemployment, it's a great vehicle for youth. I think it's a great vehicle for youth all across Canada, certainly not just in my riding.

I hope that when the white papers and the reports and everything are filed, the decisions will be not political but more military and more in keeping with what it takes to provide that base support from cadets to rangers and right up through.

The Chairman: Thank you.

Mr. O'Reilly: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You're going to cut me off now, I see.

The Chairman: Admiral Mifflin, you can have a very short intervention.

Mr. Mifflin (Bonavista - Trinity - Conception): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I welcome General Linden and General MacDonald. I've certainly enjoyed the discussion that's been going on.

I have three questions. I suppose they're in ascending order of discussionability, if there's such a word. The first one is a very simple one, and it's really for my own benefit. Has the fact that this study was being done had a positive impact on reserves?

MGen Linden: From my point of view, it definitely has, because the direction to cut led to all kinds of anxiety. Nobody knew what criteria were going to be used.

I think the fact that the minister was able to get three of Canada's most outstanding citizens to put their minds together to try to build us a good reserve for the future was an invaluable opportunity. Many of the things in that report were parts of projects that were going on in DND.

I think the chance to have these people go out and consult with hundreds and hundreds of people, to put their minds together and come up with something, ensures that we'll have a much better reserve in the future than would have been the case if we had done it all internally without that input and without having these people and their very excellent staff working on the report for six months.

I think from the army point of view -

BGen MacDonald: Absolutely, sir. I think it's excellent. I'm just delighted. It has the approach of the young soldier and some of us older soldiers, some over three decades, but it has focused on the reserve and a number of questions that, as General Linden has stated, we've been discussing and addressing for some time. It has brought focus to them and I sincerely hope it will bring resolution now. I'm very optimistic.

Mr. Mifflin: Good. I'm very pleased to hear that.

As you know, we on the special joint committee on defence policy are keenly interested in the reserves. Several presentations were made, and I think General Linden made one of them. We of course were not able to bring to bear the kind of focus the commission did, so I'm delighted the response is as you say.

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The second question is perhaps a little more technical, but it's one I can't come to grips with in the sense of what's really involved.

Is the transition from 14 districts to the 7 brigade groups going to be very difficult? Will it involve a lot of upset, upheaval, given that most people don't particularly like to change? Do you foresee any great difficulty in making that change if we go ahead and recommend it should be done?

BGen MacDonald: It's going to create some challenges, but I believe they're doable. I'm going to be on thin ice here, but I feel very strongly about the brigade group concept. I think it has much to offer.

Yes, it's going to cause some change from the way we've been doing business in the past. But when you talk to the reservists and the soldiers, they're ready for change. They're proud to be part of the total force and they're extremely proud of the contribution they've made to the UN. If the brigade group is recommended, it lines up with our doctrine and the things we teach in our military schools and colleges. There will be some concern, but I think it's doable.

We have some time to adjust and work this out, but the goals we set must be attainable. We must make every effort to do what we set out to do because the reserve, over the years, has been made many promises and not all of them have been fulfilled. I hope we set goals that are attainable and achievable.

Mr. Mifflin: So in your mind is this goal of moving to seven brigade groups attainable?

BGen MacDonald: I'm not sure about the number.

Mr. Mifflin: Okay. Let's forget about the number and talk about moving to a brigade group concept spread across this country.

BGen MacDonald: The consensus of my peer group and the lads I talked to before the report was issued was yes, they liked that concept. We have some who aren't with us, but there's a broad base of agreement out there saying that's fine, Admiral.

MGen Linden: Another thing you would be interested to know is while he was the acting commander of the Atlantic area, General MacDonald structured his reserves in Atlantic area in the form of a training brigade and took it out on the field. I was fortunate enough to visit and see how that worked. So he has had direct experience working with that kind of formation.

The other response I want to make is in terms of talking about the human cost of restructuring and where this is going to be painful. We can talk about getting rid of some of the senior hierarchy, and should this committee and the minister elect to close them, the people working the districts will be the ones affected. Theoretically, many long-time reservists who are lieutenant-colonels, majors, and so on will be out of work.

The commission did not make a recommendation in regard to some form of compensation for those reservists. I asked Mr. Granatstein why, and he said he felt if we creatively managed our resources, the overall numbers wouldn't decline. I agree with him that's possible. However, the individuals are going to be the same. If you have to let one lieutenant-colonel go to add four privates, that lieutenant-colonel is gone. His or her services are terminated, not necessarily because of any weakness on the part of the lieutenant-colonel, but simply because they're redundant.

The regular force has a force reduction program. The civilian workforce has a civilian workforce adjustment program. When the American reserves were restructured they had a reserve restructured gratuity.

One of the things I would liked to have seen in the commission report was not necessarily a great deal of compensation, but some kind of compensation for a 25-year reservist who worked nights, weekends, holidays and vacations, and whose career has now been terminated through no fault of his own. I guess that would be within the purview of your committee to make, should you find it a concern. But there is going to be pain out there, as there is in any downsizing process.

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Mr. Mifflin: It's certainly an interesting point. I think it's very good of you to bring it up. It's something I think we probably have to look at.

The third point is the old chestnut of legislation. Maybe my memory is dim or selective, but I seem to recall a sort of common thread from the reservists when we were doing our special committee study. The reason I remember this is because I was quite disappointed. I was expecting a great thundering roar of support that, yes, the committee should have legislation. There was some hesitation and in fact a preponderance of the view that it would be all right, but the problem with legislation is that you might indeed preclude an employer from hiring a reservist. I'd like your views on that.

MGen Linden: I think the reserve commission said that was not their experience. In their experience most of the people down on the armoury floor wanted it.

My view on it has changed several times. I think when I presented to the special joint committee I recommended that there be legislation. Let me give you two answers.

The department currently has an initiative under way to draft legislation to put on the shelf in the event the government deems it necessary to call out reservists for some national emergency. I successfully advocated to armed forces counsel to get them to draft that because we want to have a good package that allows the mechanism of appeal for employers; allows compensation for employers, for example, small business people who may be unduly affected; and allows for compensation for the income of people like doctors who may be removed from their practices. At best we have a year or two to draft that and make sure we have something good, rather than trying to do it in thirty minutes when an earthquake devastates the west coast and we have to call in reservists, or when there's a surprise invasion of some country that we feel a need to rescue. So I think the bottom line is we're going to do that in the department anyway.

What I might deem to be acceptable from the point of view of reservists is legislation that would implement that package of legislation, but only if the reservist is called out for some sort of national emergency. Having it available would give the commanders the confidence that they would have a reserve force they could rely on. Having better trained reservists with better equipment doesn't mean much to the commanders if they don't think they're going to be able to get them.

There is the old expression that you never know when they're going to get off the bus. Well, so far every time we've asked them to get off the bus they've been there. There have been three bus loads instead of one. But some commanders still feel this gnawing insecurity, and I think actually implementing that legislative package we're preparing would help protect that.

The next stage will protect reservists' employment while they are on voluntary call-out to peacekeeping or voluntary summer training. I do not personally think that's a good idea. My friends in the American reserve are concerned that this is now being abused by individuals who volunteer time and time again. Some employers have actually complained to the national employers' support body that they're being harassed by somebody who volunteers for 32 consecutive two-week commitments in a row and becomes a non-usable employee. If there is going to be discrimination by employers, that would be where you'd get it.

I don't think many employers would object to having a well-thought-out package that protects employers as well as employees in the event that our downsized military is called out for a national emergency. We're dealing with 60,000 regulars. We may need those 23,000 reservists for something that is really not very large in scope. Since employers recognize that to save money in their taxes we have reduced our military costs, I don't think they would object to putting something back - especially if they'll be compensated for any damage done to them - in the sense of having that emergency package drafted. But I don't think most reservists want it for training purposes. An individual might, but if you sort of think about it globally, it's probably not a good idea.

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Mr. Mifflin: They don't want it for job protection purposes.

MGen Linden: Not for training, but they definitely would for emergencies.

Mr. Mifflin: A corollary of what you say, then, is that the Canadian Forces Liaison Council should be sufficient.

MGen Linden: Absolutely. I think they're doing a tremendous job. They're just getting rolling. They're trying to meet all of the employers of all the reservists in Canada.

We have to remember that this revitalized council has only had its act together for about a little over two years. In government time, that's about a nanosecond. When we look at what they've accomplished in that period, I think it portends well for the future.

Mr. Mifflin: General MacDonald, do you have any dissenting views?

BGen MacDonald: No, I have nothing to add. I've had experience with reservists, civilian employers, and the work that CFLC has done. I certainly agree with everything that's been said. We should differentiate between training and national emergency. But I agree with the comments, sir, the way it's been stated.

Mr. Mifflin: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman: Thank you. One of the things the commission said about the liaison council in particular was that they felt the employers they were talking to represented a very small number of the people who were actually reservists. So they didn't think they had talked to the right people.

They also said that just the idea of debating this is going to make better awareness of what's needed out there. That was another thing they brought to my attention, at least.

MGen Linden: Could I just comment on the employer support? Who are the employers contacting? As I mentioned, the CFLC is a relatively new organization in its active incarnation. It was inactive for many years.

They implemented a number of different programs, the most recent of which is the reserve unit support program. That means that every reserve unit in the country has an employer support officer. One of their officers is assigned to that duty. We're now encouraging, at the grassroots or local level, each reservist to call their particular employer for functions.

So rather than working with national organizations and so on, which is what we're still doing, I think this reserve unit support program is really going to be the bread and butter of employer support. That's how we're actually going to get to the personnel manager of McGavin's bakery in Edmonton, if this happens to be the person employing Corporal Smith. To work at that individual, grassroots level is how we're going to get the pay-off.

The first training in that program was done this spring, so it's just beginning to roll now.

The Chairman: Being an unbiased chairman, but a former trade unionist, it's hard for me to believe that's going to work. Anyway, thank you.

Mr. Frazer.

Mr. Frazer: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have just a brief one, if I may. When you were talking about helicopter training, General, you mentioned that you were taking people who were already skilled and wanted to upgrade their capabilities.

All training in the armed forces is expensive, but flying training is particularly expensive. It is also a very saleable commodity that people can get and then take away with higher qualifications.

Was there any sort of compulsion tied to that training, as there is, for instance, when going to a service college? You get the training, but then you owe us so many years of service. Was there any sort of incentive or requirement for people who did receive this type of training to say they would commit to provide x days or years of service?

MGen Linden: There never has been. I went through a reserve training program. The day I graduated, I got a job offer from American Airlines. I could have thanked the Canadian Air Force for the training and gone to Chicago to start flying B-727s. In fact, there were people who did exactly that. There weren't many, but -

Mr. Frazer: You don't look like a bus driver, General.

MGen Linden: There weren't many, but there were enough to aggravate me. So it's been a crusade of mine for a number of years to try to bind people to the reserves because of the valuable training.

The JAG people, at least in the past, had been able to say why we couldn't do stuff, rather than helping us do stuff. I find the current JAG has a much different attitude. The answer I kept getting from the JAG people was that we can't do that because it's only part-time service. We can't interfere with their civilian lives.

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I think some of the work we've done lately has focused on the RETP program. In fact, some of the work I've done is reflected in what the commission recommends, which is a system in which you cannot necessarily bind somebody to reserve service because it would interfere with their liberties as a civilian employee, but if they choose not to serve in the reserves, then they're liable to repay.

I think if that's brought in for something like RETP, we should also bring it in should we spool up reserve pilot training and some of the other valuable things we do. I'm very firmly convinced that we should do that.

With regard to our reserve pilots, it's not a serious drain. We lost very few people like that, but even one is too much. I find it very irritating when that happens.

Mr. Frazer: I'm sure most people like you would not do that, but there are some who would take advantage of it and just push off. It's very expensive.

This is my last question, if I may. The reserve commission recommended - I agree with this - that the idea would be that when units are provided from reserve to regular, they should proceed as formed units.

The only problem I see - I guess General MacDonald is the one I'm approaching here - is that it's all very well to say two or three people from a reserve unit will join a regular unit, but to get thirty or forty people to all commit and be available at one time is surely a very difficult proposition, is it not?

BGen MacDonald: Certainly, it's going to be more of a challenge than it has been in the past, Until now, it's been individuals. The chap goes if he's qualified, as I mentioned earlier, and the CO accepts, if he's up to the training standard.

I'd almost have to comment on the report, but it has always been a dream of mine that, when I was in Atlantic, I could send a formed sub-subunit or a platoon-sized organization. I could let them go as a collective group with cap badges, which is the regimental system that has served us well.

I think that is doable if we extend the time. In other words, instead of coming in and saying we have a draft coming up in six weeks and we need x guys for such and such -

Mr. Frazer: Give more notice you mean?

BGen MacDonald: Yes. What about two years? Once we go through this, get ourselves sorted out, and get our reserve component better structured than it is today, I think that might be doable.

Mr. Frazer: That might be thinking ahead, which we're not particularly famous for.

MGen Linden: Just to put this in another context, the commission is recommending larger units. Say you have a unit of 300 to 400 people, rather than one of 128, with a notice of 18 months to say you're going to be responsible for a platoon. If you've got 18 months to do it, I think there would be units lined up at the door asking for a chance to send their platoon next.

Mr. Frazer: I agree. Except that gets into what John and Bob Speller were saying a moment ago. When you get your large unit, that means consolidating people, and you lose the impact of the unit in the rural area. For every plus there's a minus sort of thing.

BGen MacDonald: If I may comment on that, it really doesn't mean consolidation of units, because we could still have a number of locations in a number of counties. They have a common thread there of command and control. So the geography is certainly a factor, but -

MGen Linden: Why don't you describe one of those units in Atlantic Canada to them. Say where the companies and platoons are.

BGen MacDonald: I could do that. As an example, we have a bit of a highland tradition in Nova Scotia. We have two highland battalions there, both infantry. They stretch from Amherst, on the New Brunswick-Nova Scotia border, to Sydney.

So in terms of geography, we're looking at pretty near 400 miles in terms of length. Of those subunits - there are seven there in the winter. When I built a battalion for the summer to go to the field for training, those units were brought into one unit. They were brought down to three or four companies.

That was doable. It is manageable. Even in a winter scenario that would be manageable from command and control, with the ability of a CO who is a part-timer to get around, visit, stay in touch and know what's going on in each of those locations. Yet in the summer it paid us a great dividend.

I would suggest applying that across the country. We can keep rural. We can keep the urban area involved. It is doable.

Mr. Frazer: Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, gentlemen. It's been a very interesting afternoon.

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I appreciate your presentation and your comments on your view of the reserves as to where they are and where you feel they should be going.

This will all be considered. Hopefully, we are going to be able to come to a conclusion before December 15 on this. Thank you very much.

[Proceedings continue in camera]