In my opinion, long term planning is key, because if we don‘t know where we‘re going, we‘ll just stumble around like fools, totally unprepared and unready to deal with the revolution in military affairs.
However, Bedpan does raise an excellent point. I find it terrible that reserve units run out of money for weekly parades sometimes months before the end of the fiscal year. The amount of money a reserve unit gets is proportional to how many of its members show up for parades I believe. While this is a good way to look at funding, so that the more active, dedicated units, get the funds (well, it‘s more proper to say the units with the more dedicated personnel, even though I‘m reluctant to make that distinguishment) it deserves. However, it is important for us to consider that even though a unit might not have as much active participation as another reserve unit, it is still vital that that unit has enough money to allow the dedicated personnel within it to regularly train.
It is also important to remember that DND gives reserve units a good bit of money, and most make it through on that money. Thus, in addition to better funding for reserve units, DND has to crack down on wasteful spending by those units. I‘m sure there are a few cases where the unit hasn‘t been able to parade because its financial administrators have blown all the funds on unnecessary endeavours.
