Recent content by Ostrozac

Yep — ‘leaders’ can be very tone deaf sometimes. Especially when they don’t care, but are trying to give the appearance of caring. Like sociopaths or aliens trying to blend into a society. My own personal example was a commander emphasizing how important it was to take time off over the...

Gagetown is a great example — Army units from two different divisions, as well as the Army Doctrine and Training Centre, plus units from tge RCAF and Int Command. Plus of course representatives from various L1s, MPs, Health Services, etc… Not sure what use a division policy is there.

Urban legend is that is the exact reason why the t-shirt contract was changed (at no additional cost) from green to brown, and that a similar change to the long underwear contract was forgotten about because the decision was made in the summertime.

We could use them as ceremonial troops, but you’d probably have to issue deactivated drill purpose rifles, to get around the firearms bans in their probation orders. Are bayonets and swords controlled ITAR items?

I had a slightly elevated situation when I was on RSS. Soldier court-martailled, which resulted in multiple Class A days not just for the accused but also for other members of the unit who were required to be tasked to support the proceedings. In the end, the member in question was not guilty...

There is what is proported to be a draft version of the proposal floating around. Biggest changes I could see were a ban on hair in unnatural colours and that beard callipers are back, with a maximum bulk of facial hair of 2.5cm, slightly longer than the old 2018 BEARDFORGEN limit of 2cm. No...

The province holds all the cards. Municipalities don’t have any status under the constitution — except for what’s delegated to them by the province — so as long as municipalities do what they are supposed to do, like plow the streets, collect the garbage, and do the work that the provinces can’t...

Face piercings are specifically banned by regulation. (See 8.c. at link) https://www.canada.ca/en/services/defence/caf/military-identity-system/dress-manual/chapter-2/section-2.html If that rather low but clear standard isn’t being enforced, then we do indeed have a problem.

So the actual real measurable value of a provincial civil servant is the coffees and lunches they purchase? Interesting. Maybe accurate, but interesting. Recent studies in The Economist mirror the results of the Stanford study — 10% to 20% loss in productivity from WFH. Given the cost of...

I saw some surprises in the document — the return of long range missiles to the army was one. I remember the Long Range Precision Rocket System project (also known as CANSCUD) which seemed well and truly dead, but it’s made a comeback. Airborne Early Warning was another surprise. The cost...

In some cases the trend was actually in the other direction. Several provinces had their own police forces but adopted the RCMP as a cost savings measure, as contract policing was subsidized by the federal government. BC, Alberta and Saskatchewan followed this model. Newfoundland went halfway...

Oddly enough, even though the French Revolution and the reign of terror are iconic and well-remembered, it wasn’t actually the end of monarchy in France. Aside from the well-publicized Emperor Napoleon and his somewhat less well-known nephew Napoleon III, even the Bourbons managed a bit of a...

I served with some veterans of those pre-1970 battalions. According to them, they weren’t very cohesive between Regular and Reserve — the regular Black Watch thought of itself as the regular regiment of the Maritimes, the militia Black Watch was strongly Anglophone Montreal. In some ways, the...

I’m fine with that, adopt the C8 as the PDW for those who need something smaller than a rifle (or whatever replaces the C8, is SARP II still an ongoing project?) What I’m not fine with is delivering no real pistol training, but giving pistols to people when they arrive in theatre — that’s the...

Oddly enough, the trend is for units to own infrastructure and share equipment — while it probably should be the other way around. It makes sense for units to focus their maintenance money and time on the stewardship of the gear they will take overseas — sharing tents, vehicles, radios and...