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I thought this already existed; I know of a few people that ended up on a PCAT but stayed in uniform at a terminal rank and finished out their careers.
Needs some common sense to prevent MIR warriors clogging up the system, shifting the burden onto healthy people and burning them out, but for a fully trade qualified, experienced person that doesn't meet UoS as a direct result of injuries sustained in the CAF seems like a no brainer.
Wasn't there a few fairly public PA announcements on this with folks rehabing after IED related injuries continuing to work as instructors? The one that comes to mind was someone that had lost a leg, but don't recall the details.
I agree with you, Max. I was one of them. Back in the mid 1980s I suffered from a fairly serious neurological problem ~ quite painful, suicide was a common outcome (Cluster Headache Variant). The Surgeon General wanted to PCAT me and release me; my boss (someone who, fortunately for me, had considerably more influence in high places than did the Surgeon General) and one quite senior Medical Officer disagreed. I was given a TCAT ~ I had it for over 10 years ~ and was "restricted" to Ottawa, although I spent long periods on duty all over the world because of my job, which I held for over eight straight years (that may have been a record for a uniformed officer to be a director in NDHQ, anyway, so someone said when I finally retired). The point was that I was responding to treatment, some of it was unorthodox but it was working and was, slowly but surely learning how to manage my ailment. (Treatment regimes are much different and much better 30 years later.) I was, by the UoS rules, unfit for service but I was, also, that "experienced person" who, the high-priced-help concluded, was needed for one specific job. Additionally, I was, emotionally, tied to the idea of being a productive member of the CF, of being able to do soothing useful. That senior MO and the CF neurologist and civilian specialists agreed that my "tie" to the military (dependence on it for my own sanity?) was an important factor in not giving up, in not sinking into deep, often fatal, depression.
(Anyway, the good news is that when I retired my CF neurologist (who is still a friend 30+ years later) recommended a treatment that the Surgeon General of the day refused to allow and within 18 months I was about 99% "cured.")
I support the idea of Universality of Service, but I agree, 100% with Max that in a small force like the CF we need to exercise a little personalized common sense to make sure that the needs of the individual and the military are well served.