Canadian military will be facing budget cuts.

[Swampy]

The Canadian government will be cutting $25 billion from the defense budget. I don't know if this will leave room for the Sikh Cadet Corps, but this could be worrying to those (like Griffin and I) who want Canada to play a bigger role on the world's stage.

[jerryfmcompushaft]

Everybody's cutting military spending except al Qaida.....should be interesting times.....

[Swampy]

Well, there can be a lot of savings just be getting rid of redundancy. For example, the reserve units in the major cities should be consolidated into one unit instead of being scattered everywhere - this will destroy the individual identities of the regiments, but reform is often painful.

[Swampy]

The Canadian military will be combining its three commands into one, so as to save money. Considering the size of the military, I'm wondering what difference it would make.

[mcnoch]

As somebody who helped disband his unit during his military service as a data typist (10 fingers blind typing is still a highly coveted military skill:-)) I would say joining commands reduces the number of better paid officers, collaboration problems of all kinds and a lot of paper-work all over the military. Might be not the big solution but help.

Biggest problem will be that it will slow down the promotion for more junior officers if their promotion slots are blocked by "office-officers" returning into field service.

[Swampy]

I'm a fan of integrated commands, like the Marine Corps and, yes, the German General Staff. But Canada has no real force, only a brigade's worth of fighting men, so I'm wondering what the fuss and bureaucracy is all about.

That said, I agree that the promotion of junior officers will be slowed down.

[griffin]

Swampy, from the article you hyperlinked:

"The research paper, written for the Centre for Security and Defence Studies at Carleton University, estimates the cumulative effect of the Harper government’s strategic review and the overlapping deficit reduction action plan will carve up to $2.5-billion out of the nearly $21-billion National Defence budget by 2014-2015."

I hope this does not become a trend. Mind you the Chretien-Martin Liberals had cut the budget to $10-11-billion, which gutted the CF and the Harper government should be applauded for returning billions to DND. Sadly some of the more recent actions of the Conservative Government have not gamed them favour, nor will cutbacks to a department that suffered under cutbacks since the early 1960's. What the CF needed was solid consistant funding and instead we may see cutbacks.

[Swampy]

The Prime Minister of Canada has apparently told the Defense Minister that cuts to the defense administration aren't deep enough. I have no doubt there will always be room to cut government bureaucracy without sacrificing effectiveness.