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There are new standards for individual readiness in the Canadian Army Reserve.
This podcast is for and about soldiers of the Canadian Army.
Its primary goal is to provide them with useful information through thoughtful and open discussions that reflect their mutual interests and concerns.
Though soldiers are our primary audience, the topics covered on this podcast should be relevant to anyone who supports our soldiers or who has an interest in Canadian military matters.
[Music starts]
Brigadier-General Nick Stanton: The Army’s stepping up to the plate big time here as a requirement to define what an Army Reservist must do at a minimal basis.
Captain Adam Orton: Hi, this is Captain Adam Orton, and welcome to the Canadian Army Podcast. If you're in the Reserves, and you haven't been clear on what training you're supposed to be doing every year that's about to change. The Soldier Readiness Policy is something that's going to apply to all Primary Reserve soldiers. And who better to talk about it than the person in charge, Brigadier-General Nick Stanton, who's Director General of the Canadian Army Reserves. Welcome to the podcast, sir.
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BGen Stanton: Hey, good day, Adam, thank you so much for having us here today.
Capt Adam Orton: I'm glad you're here. There's going to be some interesting stuff, especially if you're in the Reserves.
BGen Stanton: Very much so. It's quite exciting, because we've had our first big policy change in probably two decades. So it's quite exciting to come here and talk to you about it.
Capt Orton: So maybe straight out of the gate, in, you know, a couple of sentences, and we'll dig into the meat of it, what does this mean for soldiers that are listening right now?
BGen Stanton: Well, what it means for soldiers and the leaders out there is for the first time, we're actually establishing what the minimum training and administrative requirements are annually of our Army Reserve soldiers. So we're actually starting to manage expectations of what is expected there. And the big picture for the Army is we have a known level of readiness of the Army Reserves as part of the one army team.
Capt Orton: So sir, maybe if you can set this up for us, in terms of those who don't fully understand how the reserves work, but, for example, you have your class A, which is part time, Class B, which is full time. And then Class C service usually used on deployments or operations. How does the Reserve operate? And what does this all mean?
BGen Stanton: So the different levels of service for the Army Reservists or Reservists in the Canadian Forces as a whole, so class A service is the part time service. And typically, that's one evening a week, one or two weekends a month. Class B service is putting the part time people on a full time service, providing support directly to units in our CBG headquarters, or somewhere in the army there where they are a full time income, but still are considered Reservists. And then Class C service is when you actually go into deployment. So whether it's a domestic operation in Canada, or you're deployed overseas in expedition operations, you go on Class C service, which is equivalent to being a Regular Force soldier for that time period.
Capt Orton: In terms of Class A soldiers, why do we need to define a policy for them?
BGen Stanton: Well, right now, and it came to a bit of a surprise to us a couple of years ago, we actually don't have a policy that states what the minimum requirements are for being a reservist. At the moment, the only thing that exists out there is what's called the non effective strength policy, or any assets as referred to quite often, where if you haven't shown up within a month with three opportunities to parade are considered non effective strength, and a process starts by which you could eventually be released.
We also don't know what was being contributed out there, what the level of readiness is for individual soldiers, particularly for domestic operations. What a Soldier Readiness Policy does is it establishes that minimum administrative and training requirements for reserves each year to include an attendance requirement throughout the year. So we know at the unit level and all the way to the Army, what our readiness level is, specifically, in this case here, where we started this for domestic operations. We know that you will be medically fit, administratively fit, have your force test out there, have your IBTS completed and your mandated training completed every year, and requirement to parade at least 10 days. And people say, well, that's kind of a low requirement while most units are actually achieving more than this. But we're starting with a baseline level of attendance and training requirements to enable us to develop. So as we go through the Ukrainian Army modernization strategy, and what's called Force 2025, those requirements may actually increase as we move along, dealing with things like mission tasks and requirements there. But we're starting here with our baseline requirements for our Soldier Readiness Policy.
Capt Orton: So when we're talking about part time work, a lot of people might be thinking in their minds of, you know, various jobs, where you know, you work a set number of shifts a week, and then you have to show up for those shifts and do whatever it is you do. Why isn't class A service like that right now?
BGen Stanton: Well, in actual fact, all units operate off a unit training plan. So established annually, the commanding officer and team in the units will establish the unit training plan for things they need to accomplish this year as assigned by the army. So this includes battle task standards, both of the individual and at the sub unit level or platoon level, as we call it, through there. So every year, you have your annual training plan. You're funded for that training plan for specific activities and things you must achieve through that year. Through the policies now, we're looking at the individual; what that individual has to contribute this year, or must achieve in order to be ready and provide the readiness to our Canadian Army.
Capt Orton: And how is this different from let's say training courses? Because again, I think that some people have in their mind that you have, you know, when you join the Army, you go through basic training and maybe you learn to do whatever job it is that you're going to be doing. If you're an infantry soldier or a gunner, or something like that, you have that training. Why is annual training different than those things?
BGen Stanton: So those things are specific individual training courses. So those are what you must do in order to be fully qualified in your trade, for your specific training. So whether you're infantry, armoured, artillery, service support, signals, those individual training courses qualify you to be in that trade. What we're talking about here is what you have to do overall annually to be ready yourself, so you're qualified in your trade. And this policy only applies to those that are what we call developmental period 1 qualified, so a qualified infanteer. So each year in order to be considered to be ready and deployable for domestic operations, you need to be completed through your Soldier Readiness Policy for that year.
Capt Orton: Okay, when we look at that expectation that's been set, how does that compare to what's expected of the Regular Force?
BGen Stanton: So right now, once you join the Regular Force, your terms of service actually state what you must accomplish on what's expected of you through there. In the part time world, this is what we discovered. We actually didn't have a policy that oversees what is expected of you each year. And it's really important. I believe that when you join the Army Reserve, we can now tell a recruit, here's the expectation of what you have to do, as a minimum that year. And key thing to this is it provides flexibility, because as you go through your reserve career, when you start, you may have all kinds of time, if you've taken part and full time, summer employment or something like that, probably your first four years or so you've done a lot of Class A and Class B time. But as you leave university, finish school, whatever it may be, you now have real life obligations. You may have got a new civilian job, you may be in a new relationship, or have a family or things like that. This allows some flexibility that you now know. Hey, maybe I need to take a knee this year just to address my own life. But I know I must accomplish those 10 days of training and this list of training to still be effective within my unit and contributing.
Capt Orton: Can you get into the specifics of what has been changed?
BGen Stanton: So with regards to the policy, specifically, you need to be filling your personal verification form each year, your basic administration of your next of kin forms and things like that have to be filled in. Your medical’s up to date, your dental is up to date, and you completed your Force test. In addition to that, a baseline individual battle test standards IBTS must be completed. And in addition to any mandated training out there, ethics, training, things like that, that we do on an annual or a biannual basis.
So that listing is up there. And what's kind of key, we're using the Soldier Readiness Policy as a bit of a forcing function, because it's also caused us the Canadian Army to review individual battle task standards. So those are being updated. It's also had us look at mandated training, because there's a lot of mandated training each year that we're looking at. So what's that happening. And I'm using this as a forcing function outside of the CAF reserve to look at Terms of Service, how we do annual medicals or every five year medicals, depending on your age, and dental care for Reservists. The Army stepping up to the plate, big time here is a requirement to define what an Army Reservist must do under minimal basis. Well, that has a greater effect across the entire CAF, because the known state of readiness of Army Reserve is a major contributing factor to supporting domestic operations and CAF operations out there.
Capt Orton: So what's the intended impact of these changes?
BGen Stanton: The intended impact is, from a soldier level, is the expectation management is there. You know, what's expected of you at a minimal level through there. And as I said, most reserve soldiers are doing more than this already. You know folks are out there anywhere from 20 to 40 days a year, contributing to platoon exercises and all types of good things like that. While this is done, we say okay, we now know across the board, what is expected of soldiers, but the units can now plan to know this is what we have to deliver every year to give the opportunities for our soldiers to accomplish all of these laid out requirements within the readiness policy.
Capt Orton: So we talked a lot about what's happening now. But what are the timelines for the implementation of this?
BGen Stanton: So the timelines for this is actually we as of one September 2021, we've entered a trial period for one year through to one September 2022, where we're going to be learning about and communicating the Soldier Readiness Policy for a year, so people can actually learn about it, learn about any issues we may have, opportunities to fix the policy, to change the policy to adapt it, whatever it may be. It’s a learning year. It's a trial period, a pilot period, that we're able to actually go and talk about the policy, learn about the implications for actually there, because when you sit at army headquarters, and you put a policy out, it may mean one thing here, but it may mean something very different on the armoury floor, whether you're in Calgary, Alberta, or if you're in St. John's, Newfoundland. The implementation of the policy may be a bit different each place and have different implications. So we have a year right now to work with it, understand it, change it as necessary before we go to full implementation in the fall of 2022.
Capt Orton: How are you planning on analyzing the results of that trial?
BGen Stanton: So right now we're working through different means. And actually, through the Army Reserve Advisor Group - which is the senior Reservists for each of the divisions, the division deputy commanders and sergeant majors - we meet on a regular basis to provide feedback. We also have a supporting working group that we're working through the staff level with our division staffs to get the feedback, understand what's happening out there. It's also about getting out on the ground. So Sergeant-Major Boucher, the Army Reserves Sergeant-Major and I, will be out visiting and finding out what's happening and how things are going and getting some direct feedback on that.
But always, for everybody out there be talking about this talk to chain of command about it, provide some feedback out there, because that feedback will actually shape the eventual policy that is implemented. And we'll continue to evolve the policy over the years as the Modernization Strategy goes into effect, and we're able to, to up our game or adjust our game, depending on where we're going as an overall army.
Capt Orton: Now, this may not be immediately clear to everybody, and we do have plans to discuss this in another podcast. But can you define what readiness is and why it's important?
BGen Stanton: So readiness is a very good question, actually. And a lot of people will: “Look okay, what do we mean by readiness?” For readiness, and this term here is a known state. When we look across the board, and in particular, in the Army Reserve world, we know that people will be medically fit, administratively fit, and have a baseline annual state of their individual battle task standards, which means they are ready to be deployed on domestic operations. In the past, we've had to do a lot of waivers in place to get people out there. And there's no doubt when we do the domestic operations Army Reservists are there every time. And last year during our Op LENTUS / Op LASER efforts over 8000 Army Reservists and Canadian Rangers stood up for full time service to support our country and Canadians in their time at need.
Capt Orton: Will this also affect the Canadian Rangers? Or is that something separate?
BGen Stanton: This is for our Primary Reservists, Primary Army Reservists. So Canadian Rangers is probably a good topic for another podcast, as we work on the Canadian Ranger enhancement plan.
Capt Orton: So big picture, we're starting in a trial period. Where do we go from here?
BGen Stanton: In this year, it's all about learning. And it's about lessons learned as we start to implement this policy for Army Reservists. We've been communicating out the policy through various venues within the formations of the Canadian Army. And with podcasts like this, getting the word out there, getting the units used to here's the policy, how do we work through it? How do we report it? So the reporting of this has been a very interesting thing. How do you report readiness? Well, right now we're looking to use Monitor MASS. It actually has the capability to report this readiness state for Army Reservists through there. So very much this year is about learning about it, communicating about the policy, with no repercussions through this next year, as people learn and understand about the policy. When we're looking to go live, then we'll start to do the proper implementation of it as we go through.
Capt Orton: What impact do you think this might have on attrition within the Reserve Force?
BGen Stanton: It's been very interesting, as we briefed out with the units, we weren't sure what the reaction would be, it's been a very positive reaction. Because we were like: “Okay, I finally understand what a soldier has to contribute annually through here”. And it may be a forcing function for some people going well, maybe I don't have time for this. So I think there's going to be some interesting conversations with the leadership about what's happening out there. We do have a certain number of people that are not at effective strength right now. But if they understand the flexibility that's available here, as this is what I must do. Okay. But if you're not able to contribute at this level, well, maybe the Army Reserves isn't what you want in the part time job right now.
Capt Orton: You know, as you mentioned that, like I kind of think back at some time within my own reserve unit, and some of the conversations that go around, and the challenges that circulate around participation. Basically, under the model that we have right now, there are certain expectations that are set, and people operate within them, but it's not. It's not necessarily 100% expected that everybody's going to attend at all times. What are your thoughts about striking a healthy balance between perfect attendance and accessibility within the context of the Reserve Force?
BGen Stanton: Well, this actually addresses that right up front. Because we have to remember, we're a voluntary force, right? And for the most part across the board, our Army Reservists are completely voluntary. There is no requirement of long term service or service requirements for Army Reservists. But here as you join, and as you are serving right now, here is the expectation that is set by policy. In many units, unit command teams have set this is what we require of you here. But that's a local thing. This is an Army Policy that says: “Here's an attendance requirement. Here's a training requirement. Here's an administrative requirement that you'd have to have each year in order to be effective as a Canadian Army reservist, and supportive operations or training or whatever it may be”. And this may increase over time depending on what's expected as we go through the Modernization Strategy and Force 2025 leading to 2030 and requirements for mission tasks. This standard may actually lift up. But right now we have something that both leaders and soldiers can look and go: “Okay, I know what's expected of me now, I know what's expected for attendance and the opportunities to go and do that”.
Capt Orton: Speaking of leaders, especially within the context of the Regular Force, but also outside of that, unit commanding officers generally have significant flexibility in the running of their units. And there are reasons for that, especially when you consider the context of command and control on the battlefield and things like that. How do you feel about the level of flexibility that this policy provides to unit commanding officers?
BGen Stanton: Well, it provides incredible flexibility. I believe, and from the people I've talked to, is that if you have somebody that's for a life change, or something that has happened through there, and they need to take some time off that year, well, here's the minimum they need to achieve in order to maintain effectiveness. If they're not able to achieve that well the options are still there for Excused Drill and Training ED and T. If somebody needs to take a break, then mechanisms are still there to support them in multiple ways through there.
Capt Orton: Are there any other interesting changes coming down the pipe outside of this specific policy that you care to give us a hint to?
BGen Stanton: Most definitely. So within our Canadian Army Modernization Strategy and Line of Effort 3, One Army Integration, which I'm responsible for as part of CAMS, we've gone through and done things we've defined what army integration means, the vision for what integration means. So as we move forward as a Force, we understand a more holistic view of what One Army Team actually looks like. But within that, and if people have a chance to actually read through the Canadian Army Modernization Strategy, we're looking at a series of Army Reserve initiatives. Number one was our Soldier Readiness Policy. We're also looking at enabling and optimizing Army Reserve administration. Because at the moment, unit command teams and unit leaders are burdened with administration, things like getting a pay app out there. So we can do Class A pay off our phones, enabling reserve administration through digitalization and opening up the systems of record so that on a Sunday, when a Master Corporal comes back from the Rangers, they can enter their section’s shoot for that weekend, through their phone into the system. Things like that, we can make things a bit better.
We're also looking at how we enhance employer support for our Reservists out there. So there's a series of initiatives happening, that we're trying to roll out here to make life more manageable, because it's all about life/work balance for our volunteer force out there, and being able to enable people to do more, while reducing the leadership and administrative burdens of our Army Reserves currently serving.
Capt Orton: You know, I'm sure that any Reservists listening to this right now, would be more than happy to do less paperwork and make it easier. So that sounds like some pretty interesting stuff.
BGen Stanton: And it's all about moving these initiatives forward to support our folks out there. It's about enabling people. The Soldier Readiness Policy enables people to know what their expectations are and what has to be achieved, and overall provides a level of readiness that we haven't seen before, for our Reservists as part of the One Army Team.
Capt Orton: Is there anything else you'd like to add?
BGen Stanton: I just appreciate the opportunity to come in here and talk today and address people. Unfortunately, through the entire COVID inside the house, I've been working from home in Calgary, Alberta, and I have an opportunity now to get into the headquarters. But any method we can to reach out there, and I highly encourage all Reservists and anybody in the Canadian Army right now, if you got questions about what's happening, engage a chain of command and talk: “Hey, I heard about the Soldier Readiness Policy, what's that about?” Ask questions, be talking about it, be part of the conversation, as we make these great changes to support our One Army Team.
Capt Orton: And as always, they can reach out to us through the podcast.
BGen Stanton: Most definitely. I think if there's any opportunity out there to talk about what's happening, to talk about the change that we're going through in the Canadian Army here with modernization and Army Reserve initiatives and policies and what's happening out there, please be talking about it. Ask questions. And if you see, Sergeant Major Boucher, the Army Reserves Sergeant Major or myself out there, come over and say hello, and talk to us about it. Happy to talk to anybody about what's happening out there.
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Capt Orton: Well, thanks so much for your time, sir. I really appreciate it.
BGen Stanton: Thank you, Adam. This has been great. And I appreciate all that is happening with the podcast. I am a listener of the Canadian Army Podcast.
Capt Orton: Thank you, sir. That was Brigadier-General Nick Stanton. He's the Director General of the Army Reserves. If you want to know more about these changes. Talk to your chain of command.
I'm Captain Adam Orton with the Canadian Army Podcast, Orton out.
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