As revealed a few days ago by Ottawa Citizen defence correspondent David Pugliese, the Department of National Defence (DND) has come up with a plan. He reports that at the end of May, Chief of the Defence Staff General Jennie Carignan and Deputy Minister of National Defence Stefanie Beck issued a directive calling for a personnel increase of over 1000 percent in the armed forces reserves.

At present, the armed forces reserve consists of the primary reserve of about 25,000 troops, who turn out once a week and on occasional weekends for military training, and the supplementary reserve of about 4,500 people, which is little more than a list of retired service personnel who are willing to be called up to serve again in times of crisis. DND’s plan is to increase the ordinary reserve to about 100,000 and the supplementary reserve to a whopping 300,000.

This runs into the immediate problem of finding the requisite number of people. The military has problems enough filling its ranks as it is. Quadrupling the ordinary reserve is going to be extremely difficult. Increasing the supplementary reserve from 4,000 to 300,000 is going to be even harder. Where are these people going to come from? Carignan and Beck have an answer: they will find them from among Canada’s public servants. Once enlisted in the supplementary reserve, these bureaucrats will do one week’s training a year (without being issued a uniform!), learning how to do things like shoot weapons, drive a truck, or fly a drone.

The scheme is frankly incredible. It seems improbable that that many public servants would voluntarily agree to join the military reserves. Beyond that, someone who has spent one week learning how to drive a truck is hardly going to be of much use fighting the Chinese or the Russians. It’s hard to see what value such poorly trained personnel would bring to the defence of Canada.