Officer's Mess Dinner

[Jon Skagfeld]

Originally posted by JD Baillie
Jon,
I can't help but make an observation here.

As Canada has more officer ranks per enlisted soldier of any country in the world, and more generals per soldier than any country, it would seem that the answer is obvious: too many people for too few positions. This is not a result of govrnment policy left or right.


JD

I don't see how you can make the statement that ..."is not a result of government policy left or right"

It was the Federal government which made National Defence Headquarters (NDHQ) from the Department of National Defence. In so doing, the establishment came to be that military appointments had to have the same rank at the pecking order table that the civilian bureaucrat had. Thus a serviceman working in a particular department had to be of equal rank. If an Assistant Associate Deputy Minister was the incumbent, the serviceman had to be classed as a ( for example) GS 3 which equates to a (for example) Major General. That is why we have more generals than soldiers.

Why we have more officers than soldiers can partly be explained by, apart from the above, the fact that all officers are not at the pointy end. A common mistake is to include the 2500 or so Cadet Instructor Cadre (CIC) officers who have nothing to do with the current order of battle. I suspect that even Honourary Colonels and Colonels of the Regiment are included in the total officer count. Just because one is an officer does not mean that he is factored into the roughly 4000 combat ready troops.



all