Preserving capacity, General Tom Lawson, Chief of the Defence Staff, Keys to Canadian SAR
Issue link: http://vanguardcanada.uberflip.com/i/235053
Land Force L We are not there yet. Could that be a possibility? There is certainly interest from countries that I have talked to that would like exposure to the Arctic. My response has been, we'll bring them to the cold first – let's start with Edmonton or north of Quebec City and then we can talk about the Arctic. Q What has been the most significant impact of budget reductions? This is the reality of fiscal constraint – we have to roll up our sleeves and contribute like the other departments. It is not business as usual, not just because of the budget but also because we are in a post-Afghanistan era and we don't have to produce a battle group every six months. So we have to readjust our managed readiness plan over a one-year period. We need to have a different cycle that makes sense for the time being, but still protects the operational capability of the army. So I have a few lines that we need to be very careful not to cross. Training at the team level is key to me, what we call level 5. We have a 36-month cycle and if you are on the one-year road to high readiness, you will do concentrated training every three months. We used to do this every six months. I think we have accepted that not all forces need to be at high readiness all the time – just a portion within each division, such as the first reaction unit. If you are not on the road to high readiness and not one of those designated response units, then you will be subject to reconstitution and training at a lower level, which is acceptable. Q Have budget reductions affected your ability to train and exercise abroad? I think we need to be wiser. We need to leverage opportunities and one is the joint piece. With budget constraints, we have an opportunity to look at who is doing what, where and contribute together. Let's synergize a bit more than we have done in the past and leverage joint opportunities. With regard to big exercises, we will have to reduce it one level, but I'm a proponent right now of smaller unit exchange, which is what we used to do before Afghanistan. But I think that's okay as long as we protect that road to high readiness and leverage joint exercises that are happening Canadian Forces-wide. Q You have met recently with your counterparts in Latin America. Given some of their similar budget issues, are you discussing sharing training opportunities? The American armies have a bit of a different view, but I think there are opportunities for a lot more exchanges than we have done in the past. Is there an opportunity to share the load? I think that is still very nascent at this point. On exchanges, though, we have done that with Brazil and Belize. Could we do a jungle type exchange with Columbia? Possibly. More with Chile in terms of small unit exchange as I know we share some of the same equipment? Likely. We are still working on this with like-minded countries. It is more sharing experience than sharing the load at this point. They are very interested in disaster relief operations. There are working groups in the Conference of American Armies looking at those types of initiatives. For instance, we have offered to lead a working group on post traumatic stress disorder. We all have the same issues and it's an area that many leaders are starting to think about. We have all agreed that this is something that can be done in the future. Soldiers from 5th Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group (5CMBG) in an attack scenario during Exercise Maple Resolve. www.vanguardcanada.com DECEMBER 2013/JANUARY 2014 29