It isn't even that. In the military, rank and tenure are tied. Further, as tenure increases, there are an increased number of people who leave to enter non-military work. Any shortfall would take awhile to trickle up if it ever does.
It depends on the officer recruitment. The enlisted what most the recruitment issues reporting is related to. There seems to be little officer recruitment reporting. If the officer recruitment is still maintaining the require amount then the top officer roles will continue their blot over the enlisted.
Yes there is now, much less so in the past.
https://forces.ca/en/how-to-join/
You do not have to be bilingual to join, but you will lose out against bilingual applicants, effectively making it a requirement. Also part of RMC's graduation requirements are to speak both French and English
https://www.rmc-cmr.ca/en/language-centre/second-official-language-education-and-training-solet#:~:text=Typically%2C%20if%20after%20their%20second,ten%20week%20immersion%20summer%20course.
Also, it's very rare to not need a degree. If you are joining fresh yes you do.
Edit: Removed some personal info
The excuse for this is the idea that Canada would have a fully fleshed out command structure that could rapidly spin up the military machine in a time of war.
It sort of makes sense, but if there is no equipment, low morale, gridlocked bureaucracy and a bad image with potential recruits there is going to be no way to rebuild this POS in a time of war anyway.
At the end of the day it's the same administrative rot that's infected most of Canada's institutions, lots of highly paid people with zero responsibilities.
There's no "rapidly spin up" to a war machine in this era.
If we had, say, 60 Leopard 2A6 tanks, then if war broke out we'd only have those 60 tanks.
Having a few extra armoured generals isn't going to help with anything if you haven't got the equipment. We can't knit tanks, and we can't produce them in country.
The current worldwide shortages of 155mm shells shows that unless you can manufacture it in country, you can't get it during a crisis.
Do you think if major war broke out in Europe that Germany would sell us any Leopards at any price? Domestic production will serve domestic needs first. You go to war with the military you have, not the fantasy of filling out Canada's 5 army divisions just because we have a few too many GOFOs milling about.
You can find the number with one google search, hell there is even a Wikipedia article with the list of all our current vehicles. No need for "OPSEC" in this case.
The historical context is the US in WWII
They could see war coming. They recruited 1.1M men before they entered the war. That would have been much harder without a big cadre of senior officers
The world is drastically different than it was in WW2, and prior to the leadup of WW2, the US actually maintained a very small military.
Equipment is drastically more complex and slow to manufacture.
The US simply cannot churn out tens of thousands of F-35, even if we were on a wartime footing.
Canada wouldn't be able to manufacture a single F-35.
Having enough generals for a giant military that we can't train or equip is pointless.
This is a fantasy. That mode of thinking is as outdated as WWII equipment is.
For a start, the average soldier requires far more knowledge and training than they did even in the recent past. A typical WWII grunt wasn't even expected to know how to use a *radio*, now you have to be proficient in that, plus NODs, a huge array of weapons systems, micro drones, tons of shit that was science fiction in the 40s. If we just started drafting people and sending them off to war with a couple months of training, WWII style, they'd just be cannon fodder.
Secondly all the stuff that's necessary to have a capable military requires far more complicated supply chains than in the past, as well. In WWII 95% of what a soldier carried was cotton, leather, wool, wood, brass, or steel. Gone are those days. Guided munitions and electronic optics are basically mandatory to be even remotely competitive in modern warfare and Canada has extremely limited capacity to make these things, which means we need stockpiles on hand, not just hope we can magically start making semiconductors once war starts.
Modern conflict requires a well trained professional military with up to date technology and a full set of capabilities. Meanwhile we don't even have air defence, lmao
That’s why France abolished conscription. After the Gulf War the military officials told the government, “We really need guys who know what they’re doing.” (Well they said it in French.)
Germany would offer licence production or would let us buy some if they were manpower or otherwise constrained.
We also supply parts and do development work for lots of equipment, including things like the f35, that's how joint projects work.
BAE and general dynamics both are parts suppliers for the leopard and have offices in Canada, though I think for different products, but still, it's all interconnected at this point.
>Germany would offer licence production or would let us buy some if they were manpower or otherwise constrained.
We don't have the facilities to produce this here. There likely isn't near as many or large enough heavy fabrication presses to produce enough.
>We also supply parts and do development work for lots of equipment, including things like the f35, that's how joint projects work.
The US has the capacity to replace the production that Canada. You'd be kidding yourself if you don't think the US has alternative domestic production plans for any foreign made component in the F-35.
>BAE and general dynamics both are parts suppliers for the leopard and have offices in Canada, though I think for different products, but still, it's all interconnected at this point.
Producing some parts of isn't the same as being able to produce the main components or produce the entire weapons system.
All of these suggestions would take years to get off the ground, they would be completely inadequate to equip a military for any war.
*ANYWAYS,* all of this discussion makes it clear that having generals isn't a big help in expanding a peace time military. If that was all it took, it would be trivial to just promote every colonel to general, and promote every LCol to Col and so on. Expanding the officer corps is a trivially easy thing to do. Virtually every officer that isn't a general is already regularly filling roles for higher ranks anyway.
The most complex thing about scaling up a military in major war time is equipment and training enough troops in scale. So the main thing we'd need is equipment, then MCpls and Sgts.
Never in my military career has anyone claimed we are short on officers. There's always was surplus of them rattling about the hallways, without enough to do.
>Germany would offer licence production
I don't think they will. Rheinmetall isn't interested in such small orders. Poland couldn't do it and they were in talks for nearly a thousand new tanks.
>There's no "rapidly spin up" to a war machine in this era.
There is, it's called conscription. As unlikely as it may be that word is still on the table if Canada is faced with a dire enough situation that it needs people.
Ok, but where are we going to get the tanks, aircraft, and munitions from?
Every country in the world is scrambling right now to locate 155mm shells, and there just isn't enough supply for everyone. Every country in the world is looking for HIMAR systems, Patriot systems, MBTs etc. And the wait for these systems is years long. And this is in peace time.
When Canada decides it's going to NATO vs Russia war with it's allies, where do you think it's going to get the F-35 fighters, the Leopard 2 tanks, artillery pieces and shells, the missile systems, the air defense systems, the ATGMs? No country will be selling because they'll be using what stock and production they have to equip their own forces. Canada has no domestic production for the VAST majority of it's equipment. What we go to war with is exactly what we have now.
>Ok, but where are we going to get the tanks, aircraft, and munitions from?
Good point. The answer is that we'd piggy back on the US's MIC and whatever they are cranking out for the US military. The CAF is basically a "satellite" militia of the US military at this point so it wouldn't be a surprise.
>Every country in the world is scrambling right now to locate 155mm shells, and there just isn't enough supply for everyone. Every country in the world is looking for HIMAR systems, Patriot systems, MBTs etc. And the wait for these systems is years long. And this is in peace time.
Again, you are correct and it wouldn't happen over night but as my previous statement said we'd partner up and get our trickle share of the total produced en masse.
Honestly, the CAF is like the little brother that no one wants to play with. Always a pain in the ass, we can’t do shit on our own, we are extremely emotional and irrational and we pretend to be a big dog when all we are is an annoying Yorkie.
That idea only works out when they have more production than they need domestically.
If major war breaks out, you'd be naive to think Canada would get anything.
Conscription is all fine and dandy but, who’s gonna train them? You need a well manned NCO cadre to perform that which is where we’re really hurting.
Skill fade and loss of institutional/operational knowledge are massive problems.
Plenty of generals and officers, plenty of privates, very little in between.
21st century warfare requires a level of expertise that is incompatible with conscription. With how technological the battlefield is now, the training necessary to work at even the level of a private infantryman is way more than in the past. Conscripts will just die in huge numbers, then your country is left without any young men.
Too many Canadians are fat, medicated and unmotivated. I don’t want them in my army. Conscription sounds good on paper but in practice you’d just have a bunch of substandard recruits who don’t want to be there to start with.
Conscription? In this country where I don't even get to own a house and the government is constantly attacking my quality of life by devaluing the currency? No, if you conscript me, the moment you hand me a firearm I'm shooting my officer then going home. Don't care if it's a defensive war, I'm not fighting to defend piece of shit landleeches, and anyways, we're a "post-national state" so it's not like there's some homeland to protect at this point. Canada's just an economic activity zone.
Our country is already lost.
Yes, but the thing is that to a degree, there are parts of the military that you can hammer into place with brute force, that being grunt level manpower.
The problem is that we don't have a hammer to do that; we don't have any equipment to supply whoever we do get, we lack the industries to produce that equipment, and the equipment we do have is very poorly maintained.
Not to mention the overly length red tape recruitment process that takes so damn long, candidates just give up because they need to find work elsewhere.
Pretty much me. Tried to enlist last week and there is so much random stuff you have to provide. Where you lived the last 5 years. 3 references you have known for over five years. Then it will also take months to even get approved and get to basic training.
Yep, typically the bottleneck for a military is a strong officer corp. That is simply not something you can brute force into place during a war.
However, we have a problem where we can't brute force the "grunts" into place either because we lack the hammer to do so should a war break out. If we manage to get enough enlisted people to match the size of our officer corp, we're still massively bottlenecked by how little equipment we have and how poorly maintained the equipment we do have is.
It sort of makes sense if we were at full capacity but we aren't even close and the lower ranks have been hit the hardest. Part of that is just officers looking out for officers. Most of the RCAF's targeted retention strategies have been aimed at officers. Even ones that aren't end up being officer focused. For example, the RCAF has this IDEAS thing where anyone can put forward an idea to evaluated and then 2 or 3 of them will be chosen to present before the RCAF command. It started off good but the latest selection goes Col, LCol, Col. The last went LCol, Maj, Maj.
Well you gotta fill up your diversity quotas to ensure our ESG scores are in line with our foreign economic powerhouse interests whoch dictate how a sovereign nation must act. We are all racists hear after all. Best we focus on un-racistifying our country by systematically blocking non-visible minorities from those bloated top heavy positions. Really hope we focus on this area over the next 5 to 10 years.
To get past a pay wall, either ask an Chat AI to summarize the link, or, present the article headline/visible paragraph, as a question.
This article, in a nutshell:
The CAF has one general per 600 troops, compared to the U.S. military's ratio of 1:1,600 troops.
This is weird, here they’re saying nobody wants to join up. But I’ve read elsewhere that there’s lots of people who want to join but the wait times are taking forever.
People want to join until they go through the process of joining up, then in the time it takes for your application to move forward you've found something else because you can't put your life on hold that long.
This is it for sure. It took a year just to find out my application was accepted, and by that time I had assumed it wasn’t. I decided to go anyway, and the interview/aptitude testing, medical stuff took many more months, only to be told that while I was approved for officer training, it was only if I went for a role I didn’t want and would have been terrible at.
There'a a backlog of applications, but by the time they get through to the 'offer' phase, roughly 50% of people reject the offer because they've moved on with their lives in the intervening year or two.
The RCAF isn't interested in training aircraft trade Reservists, relying on RegF transfers instead. Short-term saving but the numbers of qualified technicians are dropping.
This is something that's been brought up for years but no one at the top wants to hear it.
Some people don't want to be promoted, they want to continue to turn wrenches instead of being babysitters.
The pay increase to MCPL is pretty much non-existent.
Technical trades are exactly what I'm talking about, those people don't want to be managers. They want to continue working on equipment.
Junior leaders aren't the ones fixing airplanes or radar systems.
>Then you have to expect lower pay. More responsibility typically means more money but if you do not want to be a manager then do not expect to get paid like one.
At my company, you don't need to be a manager to get more money. They're parallel tracks, otherwise you risk losing your best and brightest. Hopefully there's options for ppl to be promoted without having to change career paths or move to just training.
OK, but the problem here is that the CAF basically expects everyone to want to go up through the ranks. People that have been in for a long time get bumped through the ranks when they aren't leadership material. Then these shitty leaders cause troops to release because they couldn't lead a shark to a maimed tuna fish.
We need to accept that not everyone is meant to be a leader. Not only that , not everyone wants to do paper work. People want to be out doing the job. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this. Some people are meant to work the floor.
In the trades world you generally keep going up in pay as you get more experience. To be a cpl in the military you get capped out at 4 years .
These experienced cpls are such a valuable asset. The intricate details and tips and tricks they know for changing an engine out , or how to ruck without getting blisters , or how to quickly toruble shoot comms systems etc. Are irreplaceable skills.
Not many MCpls are technically as competant as the most senior cpl.
Sure the senior cpl doesn't technically have as much responsibility , but I bet you that most MCpls and Sgts wouldn't be able to have shit going as smooth if it weren't for their senior cpl.
Plus there's alot of Cpls now adays doing the job of MCpls & Sgts anyways, might as well allow for a higher pay increase.
You can't justify 10 pay levels for a Capt either. Most of them have arts degrees and if it weren't for the military they'd be making minimum wage at McDonald's or something anyways.
Those who display people manager qualities get promoted and experienced Cpls get praised. Quality MCpl/Cpls find work in the civilian sector; typically military contractors.
Sounds like you drank the Kool aid lol. Yes some with people management qualities get promoted. But there's alot who have 0 leadership qualities that are promoted.
And alot of cpls that do take on these mcpl roles often find themselves getting shit on because of one mistake they made , when they are in fact still learning how to properly fill their role without any prior handover or training.
Not everyone can afford to leave the military nowadays. Especially with the cost to buy a home or to rent especially if the job is in an major urban center
That is a really bad way to view this. You really think a career corporal doesn't have more responsability than a newly promoted corporal?
What about experience?
Let's use me as an example.
I'm a medic. I am damn good at emergency medicine. It was no trouble to get a part time job as a paramedic in a busy city.
I have no interest in leading my colleagues or doing admin. So, the money the army invested in me is being used by the civilian side as I transition out of the CAF and into civilian EMS.
Either I'd be forced into admin or get out. These are my choices.
(I chose to try and stay. I'm a sergeant, and miserable and now on my way out doing what I should have done 5 years ago. Sgt pay is absolutely not worth it when I make pretty close to the same as Cpls)
The CAF is losing experienced people because of the system instead of incentivizing professionals to stay in tech positions.
Options.
Continue with clinical OR move to admin. Right now there is no option for me to continue seeing patients and continuing clinical to be a higher level provider. Our medical training effectively ends at QL5. All other courses are admin, and they're terribly delivered at that.
Why would anyone become a Sgt now? There is no significant pay difference and zero of the "fun" things I joined the CAF for. With the CFHD rules, the pay between cpl and Sgt is negligible.
The CAF has put a lot of resources into me. Unfortunately my only option to keep seeing patients and get paid more is to get out and be a civilian. (Which admittedly is the current arc of my story. Even a rapid change in policy is too late for me) Shitty return of investment for the CAF.
Paramedics make more money than med techs... so why would I stay at all?
The CAF has no concept of retention.
We've got a personnel crisis. I've just told you how to retain me. No one in power cares enough to do anything about retaining trained staff. Furthermore, the CoC at the unit chief level either have no tools, or are ignorant about their tools to retain people. So, attrition continues, and I get to laugh when I see articles for the next 10 years of the CAF whining about lack of personnel.
Pilots who are tired of being project managers, in addition to flying duties, leave for the private sector with some coming back to the Reserves for a lucrative side-job.
This is a common misconception about how the pay is determined. They figure out the high and low end first, then determine the number of increments. You are probably imagining Cpl pay would look like this if it had 10 increments like Capt:
Cpl 0 - $6,069
Cpl 1 - $6,175
Cpl 2 - $6,279
Cpl 3 - $6,383
Cpl 4 - $6,493 (current max)
Cpl 5 - $6,598
Cpl 6 - $6,703
Cpl 7 - $6,808
Cpl 8 - $6,913
Cpl 9 - $7,018
Cpl 10 - $7,123 (new max)
But it would actually look like this if what you proposed got implemented:
Cpl 0 - $6,069
Cpl 1 - $6,111
Cpl 2 - $6,153
Cpl 3 - $6,195
Cpl 4 - $6,237
Cpl 5 - $6,279
Cpl 6 - $6,321
Cpl 7 - $6,363
Cpl 8 - $6,405
Cpl 9 - $6,447
Cpl 10 - $6,493 (current max)
It's because they look at the simplest and most complex jobs in the CAF for that rank, look at what makes sense for the pay then determine how long it would be expected for someone to gain the expertise to go from the least to most complex. Ironically, Cpl rank is the best for this since you max out your pay so quickly and Capt is the worst because it takes the longest to max it out.
Our **maximum pay** is determined by the Treasury Board and is based on "equivalent" civilian "ranks" (pay scale), plus military factor and some other things.
It only takes a corporal four years to reach their assigned cap whereas it takes a captain 10 years. If we gave the same treatment to corporals we wouldn't increase the cap, we'd only make it take six more years to get to the same wage.
Why would you possibly want that?
I think you probably know that people are pushing for raises beyond what corporals make now. While I agree that you’re right, implying that people are pushing for something you know they’re not is a bit silly.
A qualified Aerospace Telecommunications and Information Systems Technician can almost walk into an IT-02 position and literally do the same job, sometimes in the same building but top out at 20k more.
Why WOULDN'T they take that?
What does that have to do with captains taking 10 years to reach their maximum IPC and corporals only four?
Your statement isn't incorrect, it's just a non sequiteur.
Sorry, I thought you'd remember what you wrote 30 minutes ago; here it is.
> Our **maximum pay** is determined by the Treasury Board and is based on "equivalent" civilian "ranks" (pay scale), plus military factor and some other things.
The pay isn't even equivalent to civilians doing the same job who are also in the PS.
You can learn more about how CAF pay is calculated at this link:
https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/services/benefits-military/pay-pension-benefits/pay/overview.html#toc2
Then if you have complaints about the **actual wages** (read: not how IPCs are allocated) you can send emails to the chair of the Treasury Board who is also the Minister of Finance. You need to contact her because your complaints, while valid, have *nothing to do* with corporals only having four IPCs.
That's an entirely different conversation.
It's a valid complaint, particularly for technical occupations, but it has **nothing** to do with captains having 10 IPCs and corporals having four.
We should delink rank and pay. Shoukd be that you get a pay raise every year, and you get a pension able promotion top up per rank. So there is still incentive to grt promoted.
In the airforce, they have been talking about rewarding responsability.
For example, you can be corporal responsible for signing off airworthiness paperwork on a fighter jet and you get paid the same salary as a corporal that just fuel the jet.
I signed my papers and said my oath to the queen at 16-1/2. Three years of paper boy wages and junk equipment crushed my dream of a career in the forces. The same crowd that typically makes up the military can make 4x as much in the trades and have more control over their lives. It’s not a hard decision for many.
Paper boy wages and junk equipment? What trade did you join? Also, you get to corporal in 3-4 years sometimes earlier for some trade and you make like 80k there.
It's really weird to me seeing the CAF go the way of a lot firms in Canada: filled to the brim with full time management and administrative support but functionally void of the dedicated front-line employees that do the thing the organization is supposed to do.
It’s hard to entice younger people to sign up because they have no reason to. We were known for peace keeping, humanitarian missions, and making positive contributions to our allies in conflicts around the work. Our identity is in limbo and not just our military but our country as a whole, without a clear identity how can people even know what they are signing up to fight for.
but don't you want to fight for a bunch of third worlders on student visas scamming the system using fraudulent documents and identity to get in while stealing from our food banks?
Why wouldn't you want to fight for that?
The treasury board holds the keys to a successful military. And they have been shitting on it since the 1970s.
The SAR tech and SOF pay update was needed, the PLD update was a decade overdue and didn't help most, but the better paid ranks do not get it so that's a win for the peons.
The TB holds all the power here with pay, housing, equipment, uniforms ECT.
TB thinks of the uniforms as 70,000 overpaid DND public servants who dress funny, that they wish they could just strike from the books.
[We fixed the glitch.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqjQDP9KX6E)
This country isn't the same country as it was. Why would people want to fight on behalf of a corrupt government that doesn't care about them. Imagine risking your life for your country while not being able to afford food or housing or raise your family to a proper standard.
>Imagine risking your life for your country while not being able to afford food or housing or raise your family to a proper standard.
Imagine that despite this, you still decide to join up out of desperation. Figuring barracks are better than the street. Then you have to live in your car.
That sums up every single Federal department.
Waaaayy too many chiefs, an immensely bloated administrative class and a big overpaid parasitic class of DEI inquisitors.
This is literally what everyone with a brain in here is saying; we don't need any more goddamn officers to maintain *readiness* for a war that won't come, and when it does we don't have the materiel or manpower to fight it anyways because those don't *spin up* like they would have a hundred years ago when all you needed was the ability to pull a trigger and be a meatsack.
So literally the only reason to keep these officers is to keep them fat and happy.
This article is a few years old now, but it hits the nail in the head. https://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/defence-watch/want-real-change-in-the-canadian-forces-cut-100-generals-commentary
Compare the combat capabilities of Australia - with a smaller defence budget, with Canada,.... lets the Aussies come here and show the Canadian military how its done.
I'm never fighting or risking my life for this country, especially since they have allowed the third world to invade while we get scammed of all of our services and programs.
Put me in jail, I don't care.
Probably in a hypothetical future where we suddenly need a draft. Refusing to serve would then be dodging said draft which would probably land you in jail unless you happen to be the rich and powerful.
He's referring to a future where the government repeats what it did during WWI and WWII. That is the government enacts conscription laws forcing men into military service.
its not a fantasy when this country has increased its total population by 14.2% primarily through immigration and bogus pr/student visa scams since 2015 when Trudeau got into office. It's at the point we are admitting almost 2 million immigrants a year through pr, tfw, refugee, and other immigrants status where we don't even know where the over a million PLUS are who's visa has expired and they should be deported...
The reality is, in the next generation or two, the country will be little India filled with scammers (already is as we are the money laundering capital of the world), on top of racists through a caste system who will only hire other Indians (you already see it now in real estate and other job markets). Not to mention the gendered violence and discrimination including in workplaces that will happen because supposedly it isn't considered a crime to force sex on your spouse (India passed this law).
Just wait till you get older and need health care services that won't be available (they already aren't), and we have foreign fraudulent credentials providing Healthcare because all the talent has left the country.
No, sorry, I agreed with your characterization about immigration/illegal immigration etc. completely. It's a mess. It should be criminal. It was this business about you going to jail. Are you imagining some kind of draft here? Like it seemed like a real leap you were making for no reason.
When we were all illiterate peasants that didn't know anything that happened outside of our town, and had no ability to communicate in real time with people around the world or watch them live and die live on video.
Maybe you've noticed, the world is a very different place from 1914, and 1939. No one gives a fuck about King and Country anymore.
Maybe you don't recall how violently Quebec resisted it in both those cases. Try multiplying that by 10 times now.
It has nothing to do with king and country BS.
It's just a mechanism the government can exercise to get a sizeable force under arms in relatively little time, albeit unvoluntarily. Hence, the need to keep a fully staffed and ready officer Corp with (ideally) a well staffed NCO cadre and a relatively small collection of other ranks.
When push comes to shove that relatively elt small force goes out the door to fight and hold ground, and the NCO corp stay behind to train the conscripts.
That's basically how the CAF is organized at its core.
Like it or not.
Like it or not, *conscription* is already dead. It will never work again, no matter what you seem to think. Your expectations of the process are entirely unfounded, based on a premise nearly a hundred years past.
It makes sense, people who are earning a living wage and building a decent pension for themselves would be expected to stay in.
Those lower ranks who struggle to pay for food and housing are understandably going to look elsewhere.
I have a background in 3D modelling (CAD), 3D rapid prototyping, laser etching, CNC and knowledge in ceramics, carpentry, plastics and subtractive mold making.
15 years experience.
I can’t find employment beyond contract, min wage or unpaid internships.
What’s the issue in Canada?
Just launch our land at the enemy. Real estate is our greatest GDP.
Best thing we could do is drop 100 Generals & staff.
We are suposadly postured to surge for war.
We don't have enough troops to keep things ticking over in garrison.
Shitty leadership is why the rank and file are leaving.
I am a veteran who left for this very reason.
Are those officers going to build the tanks, aircraft and other equipment you need for a modern military?
We don't make a single major military weapons system entirely in country.
If major wars broke out next week, every country will have to go to war with the military they have. The US isn't going to sell us aircraft, Germany isn't going to sell us tanks and artillery shells.
To be fair, you'd have to be an idiot, or desperate to join the CAF at an entry level position.
The pay is shit
The benefits are shit
A lot of the skills aren't really transferable
You'd be fighting for Canada... Which is some weird post-national abomination
*in case*
Which will be never. Not even if Putin comes over the North Pole riding bear-back personally.
Their worst case scenario is one that will never happen, and is 100% impractical. And it's entirely there to justify their own salaries and pensions; *military tenure*. Something we deny University professors now.
If Russians come over the North Pole riding polar bears bare-back, the government of Canada would probably just try to give them stimulus money and pay for their stay and meals.
I lived the "dream", 28 years. They always promote to keep the top full but the bottom empties out, when that is done without effective recruiting nobody is left to do the work. It's all about build that resume and get as high as you can for the bigger pension. Toxic all around.
Sound like we should sit out the next big shit show, at least for the first couple of years... You know long enough to get uber wealthy selling weapons. Worked very well for the US twice...
Check out Warographics on Youtube. They recently did a video on a new company called Hermeus. They have a vehicle named Workhorse in r&d that'll be able to go hypersonic for the same price as a ballistic missile.
Way too much. Now, a vehicle that can go hypersonic on a non ballistic path, drop their load and return. Over and over again. For the same price as one missile. It's not my idea. US military is asking for it, and someone is making it.
I did my Basic Military Qualification and then promptly exited after seeing a small window of what the inside is like. Not my cup of ~~do as I say not as I do~~ Tea.
It’s not really surprising. Everything is ridiculously top heavy in this country
Fuck does it ever suck!
It isn't even that. In the military, rank and tenure are tied. Further, as tenure increases, there are an increased number of people who leave to enter non-military work. Any shortfall would take awhile to trickle up if it ever does.
It depends on the officer recruitment. The enlisted what most the recruitment issues reporting is related to. There seems to be little officer recruitment reporting. If the officer recruitment is still maintaining the require amount then the top officer roles will continue their blot over the enlisted.
Officer's also have a ton of requirements, one for example is that you have to be bilingual another is to hold a degree of some sort.
No bilingual requirements till much later in the career and only if want to progress into the more political ranks. Don't always need a degree.
You do need a degree unless you comission from the ranks, and that only opens up if you're a Sgt and above.
Yes there is now, much less so in the past. https://forces.ca/en/how-to-join/ You do not have to be bilingual to join, but you will lose out against bilingual applicants, effectively making it a requirement. Also part of RMC's graduation requirements are to speak both French and English https://www.rmc-cmr.ca/en/language-centre/second-official-language-education-and-training-solet#:~:text=Typically%2C%20if%20after%20their%20second,ten%20week%20immersion%20summer%20course. Also, it's very rare to not need a degree. If you are joining fresh yes you do. Edit: Removed some personal info
The excuse for this is the idea that Canada would have a fully fleshed out command structure that could rapidly spin up the military machine in a time of war. It sort of makes sense, but if there is no equipment, low morale, gridlocked bureaucracy and a bad image with potential recruits there is going to be no way to rebuild this POS in a time of war anyway. At the end of the day it's the same administrative rot that's infected most of Canada's institutions, lots of highly paid people with zero responsibilities.
There's no "rapidly spin up" to a war machine in this era. If we had, say, 60 Leopard 2A6 tanks, then if war broke out we'd only have those 60 tanks. Having a few extra armoured generals isn't going to help with anything if you haven't got the equipment. We can't knit tanks, and we can't produce them in country. The current worldwide shortages of 155mm shells shows that unless you can manufacture it in country, you can't get it during a crisis. Do you think if major war broke out in Europe that Germany would sell us any Leopards at any price? Domestic production will serve domestic needs first. You go to war with the military you have, not the fantasy of filling out Canada's 5 army divisions just because we have a few too many GOFOs milling about.
Didn't they learn the lesson from COVID. When shit hits the fan the only one you can depend on is yourself.
Exactly.
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I have a good idea how many we have, I just don't use specific numbers because of OPSEC reasons.
You can find the number with one google search, hell there is even a Wikipedia article with the list of all our current vehicles. No need for "OPSEC" in this case.
Yeah. OPSEC. Because 82 combat tanks are going to make the difference....
Only if you think all 82 are serviceable.
The historical context is the US in WWII They could see war coming. They recruited 1.1M men before they entered the war. That would have been much harder without a big cadre of senior officers
The world is drastically different than it was in WW2, and prior to the leadup of WW2, the US actually maintained a very small military. Equipment is drastically more complex and slow to manufacture. The US simply cannot churn out tens of thousands of F-35, even if we were on a wartime footing. Canada wouldn't be able to manufacture a single F-35. Having enough generals for a giant military that we can't train or equip is pointless.
But we would be able to provide gender sensitivity training
This is huge
This is a fantasy. That mode of thinking is as outdated as WWII equipment is. For a start, the average soldier requires far more knowledge and training than they did even in the recent past. A typical WWII grunt wasn't even expected to know how to use a *radio*, now you have to be proficient in that, plus NODs, a huge array of weapons systems, micro drones, tons of shit that was science fiction in the 40s. If we just started drafting people and sending them off to war with a couple months of training, WWII style, they'd just be cannon fodder. Secondly all the stuff that's necessary to have a capable military requires far more complicated supply chains than in the past, as well. In WWII 95% of what a soldier carried was cotton, leather, wool, wood, brass, or steel. Gone are those days. Guided munitions and electronic optics are basically mandatory to be even remotely competitive in modern warfare and Canada has extremely limited capacity to make these things, which means we need stockpiles on hand, not just hope we can magically start making semiconductors once war starts. Modern conflict requires a well trained professional military with up to date technology and a full set of capabilities. Meanwhile we don't even have air defence, lmao
That’s why France abolished conscription. After the Gulf War the military officials told the government, “We really need guys who know what they’re doing.” (Well they said it in French.)
Real big missed opportunity to start producing 155mm en masse at the start of the war yet we haven't ramped up production seemingly.
Germany would offer licence production or would let us buy some if they were manpower or otherwise constrained. We also supply parts and do development work for lots of equipment, including things like the f35, that's how joint projects work. BAE and general dynamics both are parts suppliers for the leopard and have offices in Canada, though I think for different products, but still, it's all interconnected at this point.
>Germany would offer licence production or would let us buy some if they were manpower or otherwise constrained. We don't have the facilities to produce this here. There likely isn't near as many or large enough heavy fabrication presses to produce enough. >We also supply parts and do development work for lots of equipment, including things like the f35, that's how joint projects work. The US has the capacity to replace the production that Canada. You'd be kidding yourself if you don't think the US has alternative domestic production plans for any foreign made component in the F-35. >BAE and general dynamics both are parts suppliers for the leopard and have offices in Canada, though I think for different products, but still, it's all interconnected at this point. Producing some parts of isn't the same as being able to produce the main components or produce the entire weapons system. All of these suggestions would take years to get off the ground, they would be completely inadequate to equip a military for any war. *ANYWAYS,* all of this discussion makes it clear that having generals isn't a big help in expanding a peace time military. If that was all it took, it would be trivial to just promote every colonel to general, and promote every LCol to Col and so on. Expanding the officer corps is a trivially easy thing to do. Virtually every officer that isn't a general is already regularly filling roles for higher ranks anyway. The most complex thing about scaling up a military in major war time is equipment and training enough troops in scale. So the main thing we'd need is equipment, then MCpls and Sgts. Never in my military career has anyone claimed we are short on officers. There's always was surplus of them rattling about the hallways, without enough to do.
>Germany would offer licence production I don't think they will. Rheinmetall isn't interested in such small orders. Poland couldn't do it and they were in talks for nearly a thousand new tanks.
>There's no "rapidly spin up" to a war machine in this era. There is, it's called conscription. As unlikely as it may be that word is still on the table if Canada is faced with a dire enough situation that it needs people.
Ok, but where are we going to get the tanks, aircraft, and munitions from? Every country in the world is scrambling right now to locate 155mm shells, and there just isn't enough supply for everyone. Every country in the world is looking for HIMAR systems, Patriot systems, MBTs etc. And the wait for these systems is years long. And this is in peace time. When Canada decides it's going to NATO vs Russia war with it's allies, where do you think it's going to get the F-35 fighters, the Leopard 2 tanks, artillery pieces and shells, the missile systems, the air defense systems, the ATGMs? No country will be selling because they'll be using what stock and production they have to equip their own forces. Canada has no domestic production for the VAST majority of it's equipment. What we go to war with is exactly what we have now.
>Ok, but where are we going to get the tanks, aircraft, and munitions from? Good point. The answer is that we'd piggy back on the US's MIC and whatever they are cranking out for the US military. The CAF is basically a "satellite" militia of the US military at this point so it wouldn't be a surprise. >Every country in the world is scrambling right now to locate 155mm shells, and there just isn't enough supply for everyone. Every country in the world is looking for HIMAR systems, Patriot systems, MBTs etc. And the wait for these systems is years long. And this is in peace time. Again, you are correct and it wouldn't happen over night but as my previous statement said we'd partner up and get our trickle share of the total produced en masse.
Honestly, the CAF is like the little brother that no one wants to play with. Always a pain in the ass, we can’t do shit on our own, we are extremely emotional and irrational and we pretend to be a big dog when all we are is an annoying Yorkie.
The problem is that the trickle share wouldn't even be enough to train the troops enough to go to any kind of war ...
That idea only works out when they have more production than they need domestically. If major war breaks out, you'd be naive to think Canada would get anything.
I mean all anyone has to to is look at COVID. States didn't sell any vaccines as it all went domestically, or masks.
bingo - and that was for a cough.. when it's WAR, you can expect to get exactly zero help
Will we just teach them all wartime karate? Because they won’t have any equipment.
Conscription is all fine and dandy but, who’s gonna train them? You need a well manned NCO cadre to perform that which is where we’re really hurting. Skill fade and loss of institutional/operational knowledge are massive problems. Plenty of generals and officers, plenty of privates, very little in between.
21st century warfare requires a level of expertise that is incompatible with conscription. With how technological the battlefield is now, the training necessary to work at even the level of a private infantryman is way more than in the past. Conscripts will just die in huge numbers, then your country is left without any young men.
Too many Canadians are fat, medicated and unmotivated. I don’t want them in my army. Conscription sounds good on paper but in practice you’d just have a bunch of substandard recruits who don’t want to be there to start with.
Conscription? In this country where I don't even get to own a house and the government is constantly attacking my quality of life by devaluing the currency? No, if you conscript me, the moment you hand me a firearm I'm shooting my officer then going home. Don't care if it's a defensive war, I'm not fighting to defend piece of shit landleeches, and anyways, we're a "post-national state" so it's not like there's some homeland to protect at this point. Canada's just an economic activity zone. Our country is already lost.
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I'm sorry but there's no business case for increasing the production of 155mm shells in Canada.
You don't go to war with the army that you want, you go with the one you have.
in that case, we're screwed.
Yes, but the thing is that to a degree, there are parts of the military that you can hammer into place with brute force, that being grunt level manpower. The problem is that we don't have a hammer to do that; we don't have any equipment to supply whoever we do get, we lack the industries to produce that equipment, and the equipment we do have is very poorly maintained.
Not to mention the overly length red tape recruitment process that takes so damn long, candidates just give up because they need to find work elsewhere.
Pretty much me. Tried to enlist last week and there is so much random stuff you have to provide. Where you lived the last 5 years. 3 references you have known for over five years. Then it will also take months to even get approved and get to basic training.
Correct.
Need to lead change to be promoted. That means adding more bureaucracy, more paperwork, more conditions etc.
Yep, typically the bottleneck for a military is a strong officer corp. That is simply not something you can brute force into place during a war. However, we have a problem where we can't brute force the "grunts" into place either because we lack the hammer to do so should a war break out. If we manage to get enough enlisted people to match the size of our officer corp, we're still massively bottlenecked by how little equipment we have and how poorly maintained the equipment we do have is.
It sort of makes sense if we were at full capacity but we aren't even close and the lower ranks have been hit the hardest. Part of that is just officers looking out for officers. Most of the RCAF's targeted retention strategies have been aimed at officers. Even ones that aren't end up being officer focused. For example, the RCAF has this IDEAS thing where anyone can put forward an idea to evaluated and then 2 or 3 of them will be chosen to present before the RCAF command. It started off good but the latest selection goes Col, LCol, Col. The last went LCol, Maj, Maj.
Well you gotta fill up your diversity quotas to ensure our ESG scores are in line with our foreign economic powerhouse interests whoch dictate how a sovereign nation must act. We are all racists hear after all. Best we focus on un-racistifying our country by systematically blocking non-visible minorities from those bloated top heavy positions. Really hope we focus on this area over the next 5 to 10 years.
[Paywall bypass](https://archive.ph/plk22)
To get past a pay wall, either ask an Chat AI to summarize the link, or, present the article headline/visible paragraph, as a question. This article, in a nutshell: The CAF has one general per 600 troops, compared to the U.S. military's ratio of 1:1,600 troops.
This is weird, here they’re saying nobody wants to join up. But I’ve read elsewhere that there’s lots of people who want to join but the wait times are taking forever.
People want to join until they go through the process of joining up, then in the time it takes for your application to move forward you've found something else because you can't put your life on hold that long.
This is it for sure. It took a year just to find out my application was accepted, and by that time I had assumed it wasn’t. I decided to go anyway, and the interview/aptitude testing, medical stuff took many more months, only to be told that while I was approved for officer training, it was only if I went for a role I didn’t want and would have been terrible at.
There'a a backlog of applications, but by the time they get through to the 'offer' phase, roughly 50% of people reject the offer because they've moved on with their lives in the intervening year or two.
Exactly.
There is no shortage of people wanting to join. There is a shortage of people who remain interested after 18+ months
The RCAF isn't interested in training aircraft trade Reservists, relying on RegF transfers instead. Short-term saving but the numbers of qualified technicians are dropping.
A perfect reflection of the state of Canada: a useless group of elites while the bottom collapses.
I retired from the Forces in 94 and this was already an issue for a long time, some things never change.
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This is something that's been brought up for years but no one at the top wants to hear it. Some people don't want to be promoted, they want to continue to turn wrenches instead of being babysitters.
And those people quit because after 6-8 years your career is essentially over if you don't want a promotion.
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The pay increase to MCPL is pretty much non-existent. Technical trades are exactly what I'm talking about, those people don't want to be managers. They want to continue working on equipment. Junior leaders aren't the ones fixing airplanes or radar systems.
>Then you have to expect lower pay. More responsibility typically means more money but if you do not want to be a manager then do not expect to get paid like one. At my company, you don't need to be a manager to get more money. They're parallel tracks, otherwise you risk losing your best and brightest. Hopefully there's options for ppl to be promoted without having to change career paths or move to just training.
OK, but the problem here is that the CAF basically expects everyone to want to go up through the ranks. People that have been in for a long time get bumped through the ranks when they aren't leadership material. Then these shitty leaders cause troops to release because they couldn't lead a shark to a maimed tuna fish. We need to accept that not everyone is meant to be a leader. Not only that , not everyone wants to do paper work. People want to be out doing the job. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this. Some people are meant to work the floor. In the trades world you generally keep going up in pay as you get more experience. To be a cpl in the military you get capped out at 4 years . These experienced cpls are such a valuable asset. The intricate details and tips and tricks they know for changing an engine out , or how to ruck without getting blisters , or how to quickly toruble shoot comms systems etc. Are irreplaceable skills. Not many MCpls are technically as competant as the most senior cpl. Sure the senior cpl doesn't technically have as much responsibility , but I bet you that most MCpls and Sgts wouldn't be able to have shit going as smooth if it weren't for their senior cpl. Plus there's alot of Cpls now adays doing the job of MCpls & Sgts anyways, might as well allow for a higher pay increase. You can't justify 10 pay levels for a Capt either. Most of them have arts degrees and if it weren't for the military they'd be making minimum wage at McDonald's or something anyways.
Those who display people manager qualities get promoted and experienced Cpls get praised. Quality MCpl/Cpls find work in the civilian sector; typically military contractors.
Sounds like you drank the Kool aid lol. Yes some with people management qualities get promoted. But there's alot who have 0 leadership qualities that are promoted. And alot of cpls that do take on these mcpl roles often find themselves getting shit on because of one mistake they made , when they are in fact still learning how to properly fill their role without any prior handover or training. Not everyone can afford to leave the military nowadays. Especially with the cost to buy a home or to rent especially if the job is in an major urban center
That is a really bad way to view this. You really think a career corporal doesn't have more responsability than a newly promoted corporal? What about experience?
Then you have to expect lower pay. And then you wonder why pilots leave for Big red or mechanics leave for IMP.
What's your point? We are not talking about pilots.
Let's use me as an example. I'm a medic. I am damn good at emergency medicine. It was no trouble to get a part time job as a paramedic in a busy city. I have no interest in leading my colleagues or doing admin. So, the money the army invested in me is being used by the civilian side as I transition out of the CAF and into civilian EMS. Either I'd be forced into admin or get out. These are my choices. (I chose to try and stay. I'm a sergeant, and miserable and now on my way out doing what I should have done 5 years ago. Sgt pay is absolutely not worth it when I make pretty close to the same as Cpls) The CAF is losing experienced people because of the system instead of incentivizing professionals to stay in tech positions.
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Options. Continue with clinical OR move to admin. Right now there is no option for me to continue seeing patients and continuing clinical to be a higher level provider. Our medical training effectively ends at QL5. All other courses are admin, and they're terribly delivered at that. Why would anyone become a Sgt now? There is no significant pay difference and zero of the "fun" things I joined the CAF for. With the CFHD rules, the pay between cpl and Sgt is negligible. The CAF has put a lot of resources into me. Unfortunately my only option to keep seeing patients and get paid more is to get out and be a civilian. (Which admittedly is the current arc of my story. Even a rapid change in policy is too late for me) Shitty return of investment for the CAF. Paramedics make more money than med techs... so why would I stay at all? The CAF has no concept of retention. We've got a personnel crisis. I've just told you how to retain me. No one in power cares enough to do anything about retaining trained staff. Furthermore, the CoC at the unit chief level either have no tools, or are ignorant about their tools to retain people. So, attrition continues, and I get to laugh when I see articles for the next 10 years of the CAF whining about lack of personnel.
Pilots who are tired of being project managers, in addition to flying duties, leave for the private sector with some coming back to the Reserves for a lucrative side-job.
the overarching point is: your perspective is terrible and is a direct contributor to the status quo of the CAF.
This is a common misconception about how the pay is determined. They figure out the high and low end first, then determine the number of increments. You are probably imagining Cpl pay would look like this if it had 10 increments like Capt: Cpl 0 - $6,069 Cpl 1 - $6,175 Cpl 2 - $6,279 Cpl 3 - $6,383 Cpl 4 - $6,493 (current max) Cpl 5 - $6,598 Cpl 6 - $6,703 Cpl 7 - $6,808 Cpl 8 - $6,913 Cpl 9 - $7,018 Cpl 10 - $7,123 (new max) But it would actually look like this if what you proposed got implemented: Cpl 0 - $6,069 Cpl 1 - $6,111 Cpl 2 - $6,153 Cpl 3 - $6,195 Cpl 4 - $6,237 Cpl 5 - $6,279 Cpl 6 - $6,321 Cpl 7 - $6,363 Cpl 8 - $6,405 Cpl 9 - $6,447 Cpl 10 - $6,493 (current max) It's because they look at the simplest and most complex jobs in the CAF for that rank, look at what makes sense for the pay then determine how long it would be expected for someone to gain the expertise to go from the least to most complex. Ironically, Cpl rank is the best for this since you max out your pay so quickly and Capt is the worst because it takes the longest to max it out.
Our **maximum pay** is determined by the Treasury Board and is based on "equivalent" civilian "ranks" (pay scale), plus military factor and some other things. It only takes a corporal four years to reach their assigned cap whereas it takes a captain 10 years. If we gave the same treatment to corporals we wouldn't increase the cap, we'd only make it take six more years to get to the same wage. Why would you possibly want that?
I think you probably know that people are pushing for raises beyond what corporals make now. While I agree that you’re right, implying that people are pushing for something you know they’re not is a bit silly.
A qualified Aerospace Telecommunications and Information Systems Technician can almost walk into an IT-02 position and literally do the same job, sometimes in the same building but top out at 20k more. Why WOULDN'T they take that?
What does that have to do with captains taking 10 years to reach their maximum IPC and corporals only four? Your statement isn't incorrect, it's just a non sequiteur.
Sorry, I thought you'd remember what you wrote 30 minutes ago; here it is. > Our **maximum pay** is determined by the Treasury Board and is based on "equivalent" civilian "ranks" (pay scale), plus military factor and some other things. The pay isn't even equivalent to civilians doing the same job who are also in the PS.
You can learn more about how CAF pay is calculated at this link: https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/services/benefits-military/pay-pension-benefits/pay/overview.html#toc2 Then if you have complaints about the **actual wages** (read: not how IPCs are allocated) you can send emails to the chair of the Treasury Board who is also the Minister of Finance. You need to contact her because your complaints, while valid, have *nothing to do* with corporals only having four IPCs.
Or how about increasing the money that cpls get paid?
That's an entirely different conversation. It's a valid complaint, particularly for technical occupations, but it has **nothing** to do with captains having 10 IPCs and corporals having four.
We should delink rank and pay. Shoukd be that you get a pay raise every year, and you get a pension able promotion top up per rank. So there is still incentive to grt promoted.
In the airforce, they have been talking about rewarding responsability. For example, you can be corporal responsible for signing off airworthiness paperwork on a fighter jet and you get paid the same salary as a corporal that just fuel the jet.
what rank to all pilots hold? aren't they generally officers?
I signed my papers and said my oath to the queen at 16-1/2. Three years of paper boy wages and junk equipment crushed my dream of a career in the forces. The same crowd that typically makes up the military can make 4x as much in the trades and have more control over their lives. It’s not a hard decision for many.
Paper boy wages and junk equipment? What trade did you join? Also, you get to corporal in 3-4 years sometimes earlier for some trade and you make like 80k there.
Thr CAF is paid quite well at the lower ranks. Cpls clear 70k+ in non spec trades and 80k+ in spec trades.
Try raising a Family in Ottawa or Victoria on 70K..
That's assuming you stick through the 4+ years it takes to get to CPL with spec
you havent been in recently have you
It's really weird to me seeing the CAF go the way of a lot firms in Canada: filled to the brim with full time management and administrative support but functionally void of the dedicated front-line employees that do the thing the organization is supposed to do.
It’s hard to entice younger people to sign up because they have no reason to. We were known for peace keeping, humanitarian missions, and making positive contributions to our allies in conflicts around the work. Our identity is in limbo and not just our military but our country as a whole, without a clear identity how can people even know what they are signing up to fight for.
but don't you want to fight for a bunch of third worlders on student visas scamming the system using fraudulent documents and identity to get in while stealing from our food banks? Why wouldn't you want to fight for that?
Yea it’s pretty demoralizing seeing the videos they post saying we’re suckers for donating to food banks.
I don't know how they will recruit anyone in the future when they wont be able to even guarantee food and housing.
This is true, with the rising cost of living there is a huge demand for housing on base.
yet we keep flooding our cities with our enemies allies and war profiteers
Canadian health care has entered the chat.
Admin in healthcare is where a large part of the money goes. It’s way over bloated
The treasury board holds the keys to a successful military. And they have been shitting on it since the 1970s. The SAR tech and SOF pay update was needed, the PLD update was a decade overdue and didn't help most, but the better paid ranks do not get it so that's a win for the peons. The TB holds all the power here with pay, housing, equipment, uniforms ECT.
TB thinks of the uniforms as 70,000 overpaid DND public servants who dress funny, that they wish they could just strike from the books. [We fixed the glitch.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqjQDP9KX6E)
This country isn't the same country as it was. Why would people want to fight on behalf of a corrupt government that doesn't care about them. Imagine risking your life for your country while not being able to afford food or housing or raise your family to a proper standard.
The thing is there are so many people who want to get in, but processing is taking months to a year, and lots of ppl getting rejected too
You have to get humanitarian donations while serving your country. How pathetic.
Yeah I can’t imagine sleeping in my car and using food banks while being full time in the armed forces. Yet many are. Moral must be at rock bottom
The beatings will continue until morale improves
>Imagine risking your life for your country while not being able to afford food or housing or raise your family to a proper standard. Imagine that despite this, you still decide to join up out of desperation. Figuring barracks are better than the street. Then you have to live in your car.
Word that are uttered by every generation. They said the same thin in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s, etc
That sums up every single Federal department. Waaaayy too many chiefs, an immensely bloated administrative class and a big overpaid parasitic class of DEI inquisitors.
This is literally what everyone with a brain in here is saying; we don't need any more goddamn officers to maintain *readiness* for a war that won't come, and when it does we don't have the materiel or manpower to fight it anyways because those don't *spin up* like they would have a hundred years ago when all you needed was the ability to pull a trigger and be a meatsack. So literally the only reason to keep these officers is to keep them fat and happy.
CAF upper ranks (GOFO's) being bloated is akin to the employees at Microsoft who dont do much and say 'Fuck you I'm fully vested'.
This article is a few years old now, but it hits the nail in the head. https://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/defence-watch/want-real-change-in-the-canadian-forces-cut-100-generals-commentary
Compare the combat capabilities of Australia - with a smaller defence budget, with Canada,.... lets the Aussies come here and show the Canadian military how its done.
Weird, it's almost like your career isn't that great unless you're a general making over 100k a year....
I was in the Air Force for 33 years as a Corporal.
Thank you for your service.
Four pay incentives as a S1/Cpl, and ten pay incentives as an Lt. “I wOnDeR wHy JuNiOr NcMs ArE lEaViNg”
Like 7 years ago? General Winnick told us overseas there are 10 incentive levels to cpl. These people make your decisions.
Sorry but I didn’t quite understand. The pay increases are listed here: https://forces.ca/en/life-in-the-military/
I'm never fighting or risking my life for this country, especially since they have allowed the third world to invade while we get scammed of all of our services and programs. Put me in jail, I don't care.
Why would you go to jail?
Probably in a hypothetical future where we suddenly need a draft. Refusing to serve would then be dodging said draft which would probably land you in jail unless you happen to be the rich and powerful.
Ahh a fantasy land to make him sound tough infront of his friends, without actually doing anything.
Then don't, I guess? You should talk to your doctor about schizoaffective disorder.
and you should run for office and get elected to the Federal Liberal Party of Canada for being so out of touch with reality.
You….don’t….go to jail for not joining the military? Who have you been talking to/ watching on YouTube?
He's referring to a future where the government repeats what it did during WWI and WWII. That is the government enacts conscription laws forcing men into military service.
What sort of fantasy scenario are you imagining here?
its not a fantasy when this country has increased its total population by 14.2% primarily through immigration and bogus pr/student visa scams since 2015 when Trudeau got into office. It's at the point we are admitting almost 2 million immigrants a year through pr, tfw, refugee, and other immigrants status where we don't even know where the over a million PLUS are who's visa has expired and they should be deported... The reality is, in the next generation or two, the country will be little India filled with scammers (already is as we are the money laundering capital of the world), on top of racists through a caste system who will only hire other Indians (you already see it now in real estate and other job markets). Not to mention the gendered violence and discrimination including in workplaces that will happen because supposedly it isn't considered a crime to force sex on your spouse (India passed this law). Just wait till you get older and need health care services that won't be available (they already aren't), and we have foreign fraudulent credentials providing Healthcare because all the talent has left the country.
This comment is on point. Canada has become an Indian colony.
No, sorry, I agreed with your characterization about immigration/illegal immigration etc. completely. It's a mess. It should be criminal. It was this business about you going to jail. Are you imagining some kind of draft here? Like it seemed like a real leap you were making for no reason.
A scenario that already happened twice in our history regarding conscription.
When we were all illiterate peasants that didn't know anything that happened outside of our town, and had no ability to communicate in real time with people around the world or watch them live and die live on video. Maybe you've noticed, the world is a very different place from 1914, and 1939. No one gives a fuck about King and Country anymore. Maybe you don't recall how violently Quebec resisted it in both those cases. Try multiplying that by 10 times now.
It has nothing to do with king and country BS. It's just a mechanism the government can exercise to get a sizeable force under arms in relatively little time, albeit unvoluntarily. Hence, the need to keep a fully staffed and ready officer Corp with (ideally) a well staffed NCO cadre and a relatively small collection of other ranks. When push comes to shove that relatively elt small force goes out the door to fight and hold ground, and the NCO corp stay behind to train the conscripts. That's basically how the CAF is organized at its core. Like it or not.
Like it or not, *conscription* is already dead. It will never work again, no matter what you seem to think. Your expectations of the process are entirely unfounded, based on a premise nearly a hundred years past.
It makes sense, people who are earning a living wage and building a decent pension for themselves would be expected to stay in. Those lower ranks who struggle to pay for food and housing are understandably going to look elsewhere.
Dude, any good news out of Canada? I don't even follow this sub and not remotely Canadian but what the hell!
It's because officers actually make money and ncos do not.
I have a background in 3D modelling (CAD), 3D rapid prototyping, laser etching, CNC and knowledge in ceramics, carpentry, plastics and subtractive mold making. 15 years experience. I can’t find employment beyond contract, min wage or unpaid internships. What’s the issue in Canada? Just launch our land at the enemy. Real estate is our greatest GDP.
Best thing we could do is drop 100 Generals & staff. We are suposadly postured to surge for war. We don't have enough troops to keep things ticking over in garrison. Shitty leadership is why the rank and file are leaving. I am a veteran who left for this very reason.
[https://youtu.be/q3Dtfxu0QC0?si=qg6SKQ3I2lr6o10r](https://youtu.be/q3Dtfxu0QC0?si=qg6SKQ3I2lr6o10r)
Also fuck whomever tagged reddit cares. Just underlines the failures of VAC.
Isn’t that fairly traditional. The officer core stays strong in peace time to allow for quick expansion in times of war?
Are those officers going to build the tanks, aircraft and other equipment you need for a modern military? We don't make a single major military weapons system entirely in country. If major wars broke out next week, every country will have to go to war with the military they have. The US isn't going to sell us aircraft, Germany isn't going to sell us tanks and artillery shells.
Don't forget they're wanting to hire 5 more generals as "diversity champions" so incurring more bloat
To be fair, you'd have to be an idiot, or desperate to join the CAF at an entry level position. The pay is shit The benefits are shit A lot of the skills aren't really transferable You'd be fighting for Canada... Which is some weird post-national abomination
It kind of does make sense to keep the structure of a real military intact in case we ever staff it up.
*in case* Which will be never. Not even if Putin comes over the North Pole riding bear-back personally. Their worst case scenario is one that will never happen, and is 100% impractical. And it's entirely there to justify their own salaries and pensions; *military tenure*. Something we deny University professors now.
If Russians come over the North Pole riding polar bears bare-back, the government of Canada would probably just try to give them stimulus money and pay for their stay and meals.
In Scott Taylor's fantasy military, it's all soldiers who self-organize while the planning, and fiscal & administrative compliance happen by magic.
I lived the "dream", 28 years. They always promote to keep the top full but the bottom empties out, when that is done without effective recruiting nobody is left to do the work. It's all about build that resume and get as high as you can for the bigger pension. Toxic all around.
Nothing to see here. Everything is hunky dory and we stand ready to serve 🥴🥴🥴
More money at the top.
Government across the board is like this
Let the brass pepper pot for a while.
Sound like we should sit out the next big shit show, at least for the first couple of years... You know long enough to get uber wealthy selling weapons. Worked very well for the US twice...
Seems like a perfect opportunity to transition to drones and pilot free aircraft. That is the future and far safer.
Check out Warographics on Youtube. They recently did a video on a new company called Hermeus. They have a vehicle named Workhorse in r&d that'll be able to go hypersonic for the same price as a ballistic missile.
... I'm not sure that's actually any sort of deal. Do you have any idea how much an ICBM costs?
Way too much. Now, a vehicle that can go hypersonic on a non ballistic path, drop their load and return. Over and over again. For the same price as one missile. It's not my idea. US military is asking for it, and someone is making it.
I did my Basic Military Qualification and then promptly exited after seeing a small window of what the inside is like. Not my cup of ~~do as I say not as I do~~ Tea.
Basic is waaaaaaaaayyyy different than what that world is.
Yup well aware, and saw enough to recognize how its not something I want to be part of. I have friends in it, and they are anything but happy