D.I.E. cis-het white men bun fight [Split from:SWO badge]

[Brad Sallows]

Every proponent of conscription should first agree to participate. (A reasonable scheme of conscription would have public service alternatives for objectors or people unsuited to military service.)

 

[dimsum]

Every proponent of conscription should first agree to participate

and agree that their children would also participate.

 

[GK .Dundas]

Works for me.

 

[Brad Sallows]

I suppose if we had universal conscription, the kids would already be in the mix. To be clear, my peeve is people who advocate conscription having gotten past the age at which they would have had to give up part of their lives.

 

[GK .Dundas]

Yeah ,that might include me on the other hand I tend to be opposed to Conscription.

 

[Spencer100]

If you want to see real discrimination in action, just grow old in a company you have worked a long time for and are collecting and using your benefits and vacation time. HR will work very hard to get rid of you and replace you with a newer, younger, cheaper employee. This effect is stalled for the moment thanks labour shortages, but will come back with a vengeance as soon as possible.

Most companies I know are hiring older more seasoned employees. One they show up for work. Two they know stuff. The new younger ones are painful to deal with. Requiring more, management, HR, training time. I would give you an extra week of vacation if you show up all the other times. We as a society are in for pain going forward. As this whole thread talks about.

 

[SeaKingTacco]

Soldiering is largely a young person’s game. Without over-generalizing, if the ”workforce” is too old, it is very difficult to put up with much of the rigours and realities of “coalface” military work.

 

[mariomike]

If you want to see real discrimination in action, just grow old in a company you have worked a long time for and are collecting and using your benefits and vacation time. HR will work very hard to get rid of you and replace you with a newer, younger, cheaper employee.

Depends on the organization, I suppose.

Towards the end, I burned my sick bank down to 180 days. That covered the nine-month gratuity.
Took all my vacation time too.

It was common practice. I suspect the Stress Leave the "younger, cheaper employee"s have now is costing HR more "non-productive" time than we ever did.

 

[QV]

I suppose if we had universal conscription, the kids would already be in the mix. To be clear, my peeve is people who advocate conscription having gotten past the age at which they would have had to give up part of their lives.

I’m not for universal conscription at all. But the soldier in me seeks to accomplish the mission, and the only way to get the CAF to mirror society is to compel conscription. A basic understanding of evolutionary psychology would inform us we won’t get to the CAF utopia voluntarily. There are similar reasons the roofing trade is not equally representative of society.

 

[Remius]

I’m not for universal conscription at all. But the soldier in me seeks to accomplish the mission, and the only way to get the CAF to mirror society is to compel conscription. A basic understanding of evolutionary psychology would inform us we won’t get to the CAF utopia voluntarily. There are similar reasons the roofing trade is not equally representative of society.

Imagine the most unmotivated troops you’ve run into. Now multiply that by the number of conscripts you bring in…

 

[OldSolduer]

Soldiering is largely a young person’s game. Without over-generalizing, if the ”workforce” is too old, it is very difficult to put up with much of the rigours and realities of “coalface” military work.

Bingo SKT. At 30 the infantry section attack is far more difficult than it was at 22. Then add the knee, ankle, back and other injuries one may experience.

 

[Navy_Pete]

The crappy thing about all this is if it is done properly, some really huge benefits to being more diverse, like having people familiar with the culture/language when we deploy somewhere.

The approach that seems to be suggested by this report though is that gains in these areas are made at the expense of others vice doing it on top of everything else. We lose way more people than we bring in every year, so if you have 3 good candidates, instead of dropping one if the other two tick a box, would it not make more sense to take all 3?

Fully appreciate what that means, but unless we want to cut units, we really need to serious increase our training throughput, fix retention, or a combination of both.

Boggles my mind people want to grow capabilities, when we don't have enough people as it is.

Hopeful this garbage report gets chucked in the bin though, the idea of forcing people to take PATA, hiring people that don't speak either official language and all the other nonsense is just unworkable. Our job isn't to fix Canadian society, just take people from that pool and work together as a fighting force.

 

[MH2022]

Could you help some of us out with appreciating the acknowledged main factors in the 10k/year loss of personnel?

I'll speak on the issues myself have noticed.

1. Our demographic of recruit has been changing from a more rural individual to someone more urbanized who may not see the same alure in living 30 minutes from the closest real "settlement" of 30k people as someone who grew up with that.

2. Pay, while 60k a year after 4 years is good for someone with no post secondary, we're falling flat in retaining specialized in demand people. Our technical side sees the private sector paying sometimes double without the added stressors that come with wearing the green.

3. Burn out, as we lose more pers the workload does not decrease for those left behind which causes a domino effect of people having to fill multiple roles, getting burnt out, then releasing therefore pushing their roles onto the remaining members which leads to their burnout. Apparently the worst off for this is the navy with it not being uncommon for special hardsea trades being swapped from ship to ship going out to sea.

4. A lack of support to the member. As a soldier I expect a few things. To be paid in a timely manner and if due to the whims of a spreadsheet I'm posted across the country the army has a roof for me to live under. I might be an extremist is saying this but I think a military should have enough places for every member/family if they have one to live doesn't need to be fancy but that safety net should be there in case the local market cannot provide. But after years of tearing down PMQs and selling off DnD land there just isn't enough. Heck even just the shacks on base don't have enough rooms for the yearly FSTE let alone APS so you could worst case go on IR

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Some countries do conscription with a lottery as they don't need everyone. You could have a very basic infantry course or better training/job for those that volunteer.

 

[Good2Golf]

I'll speak on the issues myself have noticed.

1. Our demographic of recruit has been changing from a more rural individual to someone more urbanized who may not see the same alure in living 30 minutes from the closest real "settlement" of 30k people as someone who grew up with that.

2. Pay, while 60k a year after 4 years is good for someone with no post secondary, we're falling flat in retaining specialized in demand people. Our technical side sees the private sector paying sometimes double without the added stressors that come with wearing the green.

3. Burn out, as we lose more pers the workload does not decrease for those left behind which causes a domino effect of people having to fill multiple roles, getting burnt out, then releasing therefore pushing their roles onto the remaining members which leads to their burnout. Apparently the worst off for this is the navy with it not being uncommon for special hardsea trades being swapped from ship to ship going out to sea.

4. A lack of support to the member. As a soldier I expect a few things. To be paid in a timely manner and if due to the whims of a spreadsheet I'm posted across the country the army has a roof for me to live under. I might be an extremist is saying this but I think a military should have enough places for every member/family if they have one to live doesn't need to be fancy but that safety net should be there in case the local market cannot provide. But after years of tearing down PMQs and selling off DnD land there just isn't enough. Heck even just the shacks on base don't have enough rooms for the yearly FSTE let alone APS so you could worst case go on IR

Good points. Thanks.

How does the CAF address the NIMBY factor for #1? Canadians don’t mind someone coming to shovel them out of a snow storm, or bag sand for their flooding property, or help fight a fire near them, but those big noisy bases with loud equipment and planes and stuff? Those bases would also take up prime land that Canadians would rather see used for more housing, etc.

2 - agreed. Base not bad out the gate, but non-officer specialist/technology doesn’t seem to get the same support as say doctors, dentists, lawyers and pilots. Agree a compensation structure needs to be more wide-sweeping.

3 - a classic negative feedback loop, worsening as the loss increases. The ‘do more with less’ is a classic own goal, but much is the CAF’s own doing with the ‘can do’ attitude. That said, I remember the Navy’s “we’re going to stop sailing for a bit” and the government screamed blue murder that ‘we give you money, you bloody well sail!’ without appreciating the need to recover out of a vicious cycle. Folks are quick to point to this attempt to reconstitute as a transactional betrayer to the Canadian taxpayer, but that’s a pretty myopic view. Perhaps a less drastic ‘we stop sailing tomorrow for X months!” and more a “there’s only so much depth, so we’ll prioritize
Like this until we have more people…”

4 - a fundamental issue of a nation treating its military like civil servants who happen to have a slightly different dress code. The whole “but we HAVE to charge military families the same for housing as civilians are paying, it wouldn’t be fair otherwise!” thing, yet paying lip service to the other side of the two-way street covenant of looking…no…caring for our service personnel and families. Not sure Canada/Canadians are actually ready to see their service members treated much more specially than them.

Thanks for your thoughts, ThaMattHan.

 

[Ostrozac]

Bermuda does this, it works for them as it is more to address the rich/poor divide in their country. It is the only way to achieve this perfect representation of society. But I would always argue against it as to me conscription is inherently wrong.

Bermuda has recently discontinued conscription. As a result, and due to that island’s economy and cost of living pushing up wages, their new volunteer soldiers are now paid extremely well. A Bermuda Regiment Corporal makes slightly more than a Canadian Warrant Officer — but he will spend every penny.

 

[daftandbarmy]

Good points. Thanks.

How does the CAF address the NIMBY factor for #1? Canadians don’t mind someone coming to shovel them out of a snow storm, or bag sand for their flooding property, or help fight a fire near them, but those big noisy bases with loud equipment and planes and stuff? Those bases would also take up prime land that Canadians would rather see used for more housing, etc.

It's largely a marketing/ stakeholder engagement and programming problem, not a NIMBY problem, IMHO.

We tend to do a great job at looking and working inwards, and then bitching when the civvies don't bow (or even notice) when we enter the room.

Just like other large organizations that need to stay connected with their stakeholders to secure social license to operate, we need to do more, and better, to connect with Canadians in a meaningful way.

And we can't rely on the Reserves to 'tick the box' for us. We're much worse, in many ways, than the Reg F is at that kind of stuff. For example, I can't think of any time when we made an attempt to reach out and bring in the elected representatives from our catchment areas for social events or other 'getting to know us' type activities.

You'd think that a regiment with over 100 years of history in the same community would have those bridges well established, but it was much the opposite I'm sad to say. It's not surprising, really, as the CO's job, available resources and training are not geared towards any of those requirements.

 

[Eye In The Sky]

Bermuda has recently discontinued conscription. As a result, and due to that island’s economy and cost of living pushing up wages, their new volunteer soldiers are now paid extremely well. A Bermuda Regiment Corporal makes slightly more than a Canadian Warrant Officer — but he will spend every penny.

With the current COL in Canada, I’m spending every penny as well. Times have changed in Canada since 2015…even with a few meagre pay increases.

 

[TacticalTea]

Late reply, but I was at sea. Anyhow.

It's unethical to simply accept that acceptable representation by various demographic groups at "leadership" levels should be represented based upon the demographics of the organization as a whole, when systemic discrimination drives certain types of people to either leave the organization early or not join in the first place, while others "fit right in".

You can't use the bigotry inherent in the system to justify the bigotry inherent in the system.

If you're gonna state that something is ''unethical'', you ought to explain why. There is no reason to believe that men and women have the same priorities and wants in life. There is no reason to believe that urban and rural Canadians have the same priorities and wants in life. There is no reason to think that Anglos and Francos in this country have the same priorities and wants in life. There is no reason to think that immigrants and native Canadians have the same priorities and wants in life.

You're engaging in cultural marxism. The idea that every one is exactly the same at the individual level and should be assimilated to nothing more than just another member of their cultural group. The reality is that no, groups are not homogeneous and individuals are not firstly and above all, members of groups. They are human beings with individual experiences. Neither individuals nor groups are mirrored in one another. One would think you would understand that, given how much you preach about diversity, but it seems it might be just for show as Eye in the Sky pointed out. A good photo op.

Likewise sexual assaults or harassments, which in the CAF are predominately targeting women, are poorly investigated, leading many victims to leave due to the lack of support, or to be revictimized when they do report and instead the system as a whole moves to target them and smear their reputation, rather than the person who actually deserves it (for this, see the 2nd most recent article by he-who-shall-not-be-named-on-this-site-because-the-moderators-couldn't-be-bothered-to-remove-defamatory-comments). Likewise a similar approach is often taken against folks who try to support victims, as we saw with LCdr Trotter.

I don't know what organization you work for, but seemingly not the CAF. Op Honour content and values are instilled at every step of training, assessed for every PER, and expected on every board. I understand the perception you may have developed by reading the news, but the cases that have come up recently were decades-old. Nothing to do with current culture in the CAF.

Actually the “union” is making it slower to deal with senior NCOs accused of sexual misconduct. More assistance on appeals, more appeals, more foot dragging.

It’s lengthened the process and protects the people accused of Conduct violations.

Sounds like an argument in favour of unions. Canadian society in recent years seems to have forgotten about simple concepts like due process, the rule of law, and the presumption of innocence.

I'll speak on the issues myself have noticed.

4. A lack of support to the member. As a soldier I expect a few things. To be paid in a timely manner and if due to the whims of a spreadsheet I'm posted across the country the army has a roof for me to live under. I might be an extremist is saying this but I think a military should have enough places for every member/family if they have one to live doesn't need to be fancy but that safety net should be there in case the local market cannot provide. But after years of tearing down PMQs and selling off DnD land there just isn't enough. Heck even just the shacks on base don't have enough rooms for the yearly FSTE let alone APS so you could worst case go on IR

The current situation is disgustingly appalling. Nellies block in Esquimalt is a national disgrace. Yet nobody cares.

 

[Good2Golf]

It's largely a marketing/ stakeholder engagement and programming problem, not a NIMBY problem, IMHO.

We tend to do a great job at looking and working inwards, and then bitching when the civvies don't bow (or even notice) when we enter the room.

Just like other large organizations that need to stay connected with their stakeholders to secure social license to operate, we need to do more, and better, to connect with Canadians in a meaningful way.

And we can't rely on the Reserves to 'tick the box' for us. We're much worse, in many ways, than the Reg F is at that kind of stuff. For example, I can't think of any time when we made an attempt to reach out and bring in the elected representatives from our catchment areas for social events or other 'getting to know us' type activities.

You'd think that a regiment with over 100 years of history in the same community would have those bridges well established, but it was much the opposite I'm sad to say. It's not surprising, really, as the CO's job, available resources and training are not geared towards any of those requirements.

D&B, are you talking pam-CAF, or is that more an Army comment?

So no issue finding new ranges then, for example? Just a matter of some positive public engagement and all will be well again?