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Renewal, reinvestment in Cadet, Junior Canadian Rangers (JCR) programs

I was an air cadet. It led me to consider a (now) 29 year career in time CF.

My observation of the current cadet movement?  It has been hijacked by a profession cadre of COATS officers who now get paid millions to do (poorly) what used to be done for free by the cadets themselves.

Either get the focus back on the kids, or put the program out of its misery and kill it.
 
E.R. Campbell said:
Reports are surfacing, today, in the media, about an internal DND audit that has found costs for the cadet program have jumped by 40 per cent over the last 20 years while numbers of participants have dropped by 15 per cent. The JCR programme, on the other hand, was given high marks, by the auditor, who noted that JCR provided a structured youth program in communities that often have few such programs and a growing number of young people.

“There is evidence of need for the JCR Program and less evidence of continued need for the Cadet Program,” the report said.

There are 50,000+ young people in cadets and 3,500 in JCR.

One cannot help but wonder if there are not many thousands of young people in urban centres who lack structured programmes and who might benefit from something like JCR, something which might be offered using resources taken away from the 50,000 middle class, suburban kids in cadet uniforms today.

Note: I know nothing about cadets; nothing about who they are, where they are or what they do; but I can read audit reports and draw conclusions ~ so can government ministers who know as little as I and care even less.
One of the major points the study doesn't mention is that the way of accounting for costs incurred by the CCO changed during that period.  Many goods and services that were rendered by the CF buckshee to the cadet program but were accounted as part of overall defence spending were suddenly split off and charged against the CCO specifically.  One example of this is logistical support for field training exercises.  We might get the local militia unit volunteering to provide vehicles and drivers, we'd draw hayboxes of rations from a mess that knew we were coming but did not account for specific numbers, etc with costs either not charged to the cadet account or, at least, done at a flat rate.  Now, as with the rest of DND, every single line item is charged for against the CCO budget.  As someone who was in the system on both sides of that accounting change, the funds reported as being spent jumped DRASTICALLY. 

One of the things I do take a bit of an exception to is some comments I've seen about the "professional COATS cadre".  On reason that exists is the continual budget cutting since the 80s caused the CF to withdraw a lot of their direct Reg and PRes support (administrative, logistical and, especially, affiliated unit), caused a vacuum that had to be filled.  The people at DCadets aren't taking the military out of the cadet program, the military did that, by necessity caused by the budget cuts, themselves.

Why don't air cadets get to fire the C7s now when I used to spend weekends firing the FN as a cadet?  Cadet regs allow us to but CIC members can't get trained to train them or run a range, so we rely on Reg or PRes units to volunteer to train them, run a range AND provide the ammo out of their own allotment.  Who's going to do that?  So, now they do almost all marksmanship training using air rifles.

It's the same right down the line.  It's not that we're avoiding military training, we can't get the access anymore so the alternative is, much to my disgust, going with the readily available civilian version. 

During the time I was an air cadet, I got famil flights in a Chinook (before BM the PM sold them), learned to taxi a Tutor, fired several kinds of CF small arms, took many cool tours of CF facilities and got to handle a lot of equipment, and on and on.  Though I try my hardest to give my cadets as many of those kinds of opportunities as I can, most of those opportunities will never be available to them again.

 
I guess we have to ask ourselves what do we get of of Cadets? I would say many Cadets go on to the Reserves and even the Regular Forces, not to mention it keeps the many thousands kids off the street. I say there needs to be a major overhaul and reorganization to cut waste. There are many full time positions that people have been in for years. I know of one CPO1 res who took his rank down and is employed as a PO1 with the sea cadet headquarters in St.John's for at least 20 years.
 
Jp-

Fair comment- the CF has cut support to the Cadet program- support that is now bring filled by COATs personnel, many on Class B service.

On the other hand, I have watched the Cadet Bureaucracy explode over the past 20 years- none of it to the seeming benefit of Cadet programming.  Where Cadets themselves used to be trusted and expected to run things and instruct I often see a cloud of COATS officers doing those things instead.

Maybe my sample size of cadet units is too small; maybe we just live in a new era where no one wants to take the risk of Cadet making a mistake. Maybe the cadet movement has jumped the shark and cannot be fixed.  I don't know.
 
SeaKingTacco said:
Jp-

Fair comment- the CF has cut support to the Cadet program- support that is now bring filled by COATs personnel, many on Class B service.

On the other hand, I have watched the Cadet Bureaucracy explode over the past 20 years- none of it to the seeming benefit of Cadet programming.  Where Cadets themselves used to be trusted and expected to run things and instruct I often see a cloud of COATS officers doing those things instead.

Maybe my sample size of cadet units is too small; maybe we just live in a new era where no one wants to take the risk of Cadet making a mistake. Maybe the cadet movement has jumped the shark and cannot be fixed.  I don't know.
The cadet programme is now designed to have the senior cadets do pretty much all the instruction at the local corps/sqn level and the phase 5 cadets receive specific training on activity planning and execution.  If that's not what you've seen, someone isn't implementing the training program correctly. 
 
My recent career change and geographical move has seen me dragged up to the far corner of the country, with a RegF CF presence of 3, some rangers, and an army and air cadet corps. I'm now looking at a transfer to COATS- I get to keep trade, rank, and regiment, and stay in green for five years in which I would otherwise likely have been forced to release to SuppRes. I've already been surprised by how eagerly the corps here has latched on to having an NCO working with them. I'm wondering (perhaps somewhat arrogantly) if the uniformed leadership that is COATS would be served by cutting down on the 19 year old 2Lts and trying to bring more NCOs on board and offering the chance to teach the cadet NCOs how to grow into their role? I'm not slagging CIC officers here- I'm honestly not. But the approach the cadets take to leadership is essentially more derived from the NCO corps. I've found that being an NCO myself lets me deal with the cadet NCOs in a subtly different way than the officers-scrap the heels together stuff that governs their relationship with the officers, and act more as a mentor than anything else. They seem to like it. I can't help but think that an increased emphasis on getting the *right* NCOs to work with the kids might pay disproportionate dividends... Perhaps that's hubristic on my part, but I still distinctly recall the Sgt and PO2 who worked with my corps when I was a kid.
 
Brihard-

As usual, I think you are on to something. My most vivid memories at summer camp were of the Reg Force MCpls and Sgts that sometimes taught us. Those memories are uniformly positive, as they approached their roles with humour, confidence and competence

Of the CIC officers, I have very few memories.  At later camps ( like glider), I was impressed by their flying instructional abilities, but that was about it.
 
I agree with both of you - who is likely to be more useful in instructing cadets on military things - NCOs with a decade of military experience or managers (COATS) with very little actual military training.

I understand that COATS expansion is to fill the void left behind by reduced CAF support, so you make due with what you have.  And you can't expect/hope for a COATS officer with previous Reg Force or PRes experience.
 
Isn't COAT's just a little more official way of doing what was done before, on a bigger scale. Retired CWO & MWO's living there retirement, nobly I might add; on Dieppe & Sicily parade square at Vernon Army Cadet Camp & sometimes as CO's of Cadet Corp's as well.

Edit: Retired or close to retirement.
 
I am currently the CO of a small rural corps in Alberta.  I am fortunate to hav. A COATS Sgt on my slate.  Not only does he bring his 20+ years of experience with the CF (RCR) to our corps the Region's RCIS has been smart enough to utilize his skills as well.

For the first 4 years of my tenure as CO the three uniformed members on the slate were all former service.  It makes a difference in how the cadets perceive their adult staff.  I think it makes a difference in how the cadets are treated as well, and they respond positively to their treatment as well.  To cut to the chase the interactions and dynamics of how the cadets and the Sgt interact is way different (in a good way) from how they interact with the officers.  They pay closer attention to what he says, and he is a superb instructor and leader.

In short I agree for the most part with the above statements.  I would love to see more COATS NCMs at all levels of the CCO.  We should be running cadets like the rest of the CF.  COATS is a great idea, if implemented properly. 
 
I think though that you shouldn't remove the ability to recruit Junior CIC Officers, yes some think it's a continuation of when they were in Cadets/High School to still be chums with but how would they learn from the experienced COATS NCM's (Senior NCO's to experienced Cpl's especially) how to do things properly, not everyone is able to join the Military (Reg or Reserve) from medical reasons to personal ones.
 
E.R. Campbell said:
Reports are surfacing, today, in the media, about an internal DND audit that has found costs for the cadet program have jumped by 40 per cent over the last 20 years while numbers of participants have dropped by 15 per cent. The JCR programme, on the other hand, was given high marks, by the auditor, who noted that JCR provided a structured youth program in communities that often have few such programs and a growing number of young people.

“There is evidence of need for the JCR Program and less evidence of continued need for the Cadet Program,” the report said.

There are 50,000+ young people in cadets and 3,500 in JCR.

One cannot help but wonder if there are not many thousands of young people in urban centres who lack structured programmes and who might benefit from something like JCR, something which might be offered using resources taken away from the 50,000 middle class, suburban kids in cadet uniforms today.

Note: I know nothing about cadets; nothing about who they are, where they are or what they do; but I can read audit reports and draw conclusions ~ so can government ministers who know as little as I and care even less.


And now there is a report, in today's Ottawa Citizen, that Chief of Reserves and Cadets (RAdm Bennett) plans to cut the 806 full-time cadets and junior rangers staff by about 400 over a five-year period.
 
E.R. Campbell said:
And now there is a report, in today's Ottawa Citizen, that Chief of Reserves and Cadets (RAdm Bennett) plans to cut the 806 full-time cadets and junior rangers staff by about 400 over a five-year period.
Indeed ....
Canada's military cadet program hopes to cut its fulltime administrative staff by half and redirect the savings into more programs for youth, says the organization's top officer.

Rear Admiral Jennifer Bennett said she hopes to cut the 806 full-time staff by about 400 over a five-year period. The move is part of a larger overhaul of the program that involves youths aged 12 to 18 who participate in various activities while learning about the Canadian Forces. There are almost 53,000 cadets in units across the country.

"I need to renew," said Bennett, chief of reserves and cadets. "I need to update. I need to refresh." The proposed reductions in administration also come after a recent National Defence audit raised concerns the cadet program had grown bloated with managers whose salaries eat up much of the budget that is supposed to be used to support youth ....
 
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