I'll believe it when I see it.
Justin Trudeau hints at boosting Canada’s military spending
- Thread starter Maxman1
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Denmark has lots of people with a living connection to a time their country was occupied by a foreign invader, that tends to inspire people to care about defending their country in a way Canadians don't.
The last thing the CAF needs is more people coming into the messes to drink, and misbehave.
Maxman1
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What does the career path look like for a finance officer? I've also heard candidates with a degree can sometimes skip OCdt and even 2LT.
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This Home Guard organization is about exactly that. Organizing those people that would show up in any case and making them more useful.
And I agree that most of the time the Army's contribution is a photo-op rather than meaningfully changing the course of the event. That usually gets done locally. We agree.
Yes it does. We spend something like 215 million dollars annually doing exactly that for 60,000 13 to 18 year olds in the Cadets and Junior Rangers.
This programme in essence is continuation of the Cadet programme. Cadets, or as was said, Boy Scouts for adults. The Danes spend, in equivalent terms, 650 million dollars for 326,000 willing adults. We spend 1,500 million, 1.5 billion, on Canadian Heritage. Use some of that budget.
Turn it into an Aussie Legion.
Colin Parkinson
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Where the eff do they park them all, glorified City State
RangerRay
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On that point, an employer might be fine losing a volunteer FD employee for the afternoon. But I know that same employer isn’t so keen on losing a volunteer GSAR employee for a few days to look for a missing hiker/skier/hunter/mushroom picker.
Add to that the calls usually come at 8 pm on a Sunday night, it’s hard to find and retain volunteers for anything because of life.
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In fairness, that is IF we bought at the same rate that they bought. Divide those numbers by find and park them in Nova Scotia and you aren't far off their reality.
We might have to encroach on New Brunswick
daftandbarmy
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Denmark is the cork in Russia's Baltic bottle, so no surprise really.
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Right.
Which is why those three full summers of PRes training during high school helped prepare for when full-time training was reduced to two weeks every summer.
DLN.
Brad Sallows
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They can go to Burning Man like everyone else.
I remember back when I joined, we had QL2 and QL3. They’d run both courses essentially back to back during the summers, so a brand new recruit was an employable private by the time he/she went back to their unit.
I scratch my head at how long courses are now, and yet it still seems to take longer to bring a recruit up to basic qualified standard than it used to.
3 full summers? I don’t even know if many would still be motivated. I don’t think I would be.
Same with recruiting.
lenaitch
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Comparing a Danish-type Home Guard with some kind of pan-Canadian national volunteer force strikes me as a bit problematic. We don't have the history that inspired their creation of their Home Guard. What is being exampled for our volunteer forces sounds like it would include few if any skills that would be useful to a military service should the need arise.
The numbers quoted for volunteerism is Canada is impressive, but it is such a broad category. Elderly retirees helping out at a blood clinic are difficult to compare with a volunteer firefighter if, for no other reason, there are provincial standards for fire services. Even at that, Ontario is proposing a system of certification for VFFs, which departments are concerned will crater their staff. In our area, fire services are having difficulty in attracting volunteers. It seems most local employers are pretty good about it, but unless you are employed locally, you're not much help. Many folks in rural areas travel a lot farther for work now and many rural areas are 'graying-out'. Response time is important. It's one thing to organize a bag-filling team for tomorrow than it is to staff a truck to head to a burning house RFN.
For such a volunteer force, what is the hook? Helping your community? You need to be lot more specific because things like training, risk and personal interest are important. Someone interested in GSAR might not want to pull mangled bodies out of a car wreck. Someone willing to fill sandbags might not be physically able to stomp through the bush. Someone willing to show up and help shelter evacuees probably isn't at risk of hurting themselves or others.
I have been both a volunteer and 'managed' volunteers (term used very loosely - it's often like herding cats). If the goal is to fill sandbags, the person who hasn't shown for training in a year but seems to know which end of a shovel to hold will probably work, but I wouldn't send them into a burning house or drop them in the deep bush with a pump. Sometimes good intentions are all you need - sometimes not.
I just don't see how some all-singin'all-dansin' highly-trained-but-still-generalist group of domestic volunteers would somehow adequately address our domestic emergency needs and still somehow be an adjunct to the military. Although I don't know much about them, are even the Canadian Rangers trained in some level of military tactical skills, other than perhaps some range work with their finally-new rifles?
The numbers quoted for volunteerism is Canada is impressive, but it is such a broad category. Elderly retirees helping out at a blood clinic are difficult to compare with a volunteer firefighter if, for no other reason, there are provincial standards for fire services. Even at that, Ontario is proposing a system of certification for VFFs, which departments are concerned will crater their staff. In our area, fire services are having difficulty in attracting volunteers. It seems most local employers are pretty good about it, but unless you are employed locally, you're not much help. Many folks in rural areas travel a lot farther for work now and many rural areas are 'graying-out'. Response time is important. It's one thing to organize a bag-filling team for tomorrow than it is to staff a truck to head to a burning house RFN.
For such a volunteer force, what is the hook? Helping your community? You need to be lot more specific because things like training, risk and personal interest are important. Someone interested in GSAR might not want to pull mangled bodies out of a car wreck. Someone willing to fill sandbags might not be physically able to stomp through the bush. Someone willing to show up and help shelter evacuees probably isn't at risk of hurting themselves or others.
I have been both a volunteer and 'managed' volunteers (term used very loosely - it's often like herding cats). If the goal is to fill sandbags, the person who hasn't shown for training in a year but seems to know which end of a shovel to hold will probably work, but I wouldn't send them into a burning house or drop them in the deep bush with a pump. Sometimes good intentions are all you need - sometimes not.
I just don't see how some all-singin'all-dansin' highly-trained-but-still-generalist group of domestic volunteers would somehow adequately address our domestic emergency needs and still somehow be an adjunct to the military. Although I don't know much about them, are even the Canadian Rangers trained in some level of military tactical skills, other than perhaps some range work with their finally-new rifles?
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High school students can join PRes when 16 ( with parental consent ), as I and others did.
Or, wait to join the PRes until after graduation, and hope your employer is agreeable to giving you time off for your part-time job.
From this super-thread, and others like it, YMMV from employer to employer.
Reservists Job Protection Superthread
From the CFLC rep: training is training, regardless of what it is. That's great. Saw this on their website, having the right to do something is one thing, but actually doing it can be something else altogether. And if you have to fall back on legislation to get military leave for Reserve...
www.milnet.ca
Some reservists I knew were marginally employed, so time off worked out ok for them.
daftandbarmy
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I've worked with the Danish Home Guard, and the Norwegian equivalent, on various NATO exercises.
There is no way that they are anything like our reservists, who are trained to the same standards - ish as the Reg F to facilitate augmentation etc.
They are good at what they are intended to do: fight a defensive battle - within about 1 km of their homes - for key points like bridges etc. as a delaying tactic to enable mobilization to successfully take place before the Russians roll through.
We can see some of this playing out in the Ukraine right now, I believe, with their Home Guard equivalent.
A nation without the same threats of invasion and occupation by an overwhelmingly powerful and aggressive neighbour, that happens to have armoured divisions a mere couple of hour's drive from their capital, has no need for such a force.
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Fixed the spelling of neighbor, and for our Armored Divs and added some of the other forces
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The invasion has begun!Fixed the spelling of neighbor, and for our Armored Divs and added some of the other forces
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We don't need more democratsThe invasion has begun!
TacticalTea
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Those are absolutely not fixes!Fixed the spelling of neighbor, and for our Armored Divs and added some of the other forces
daftandbarmy
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Fixed the spelling of neighbor, and for our Armored Divs and added some of the other forces
Thank you! And as for the source of the colors of your flag, you're welcome
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