I've recently been coming accross articles in various papers and media releases online that the current strength of the CF has gone down from the 60,000 that was the strength from last year down to 59,000. Any comments or concerns regarding these figures?! Looks like we're loosing troops faster than they can be recruited. Something must be seriously wrong from the top all the way down, if this is the current state of affairs withing the CF.

Every year, my reserve unit starts out with about 100+ guys on parade. By year end, we're lucky to get a platoon out on exercise. Then things pick up again in September.

There tend to be a lot of people who join the reserves just for the summer right out of high school, come out in September go on their first exercise, then quit. So if they surveyed the forces in, say, September of 1999 and got 60,000 and then again in April of 2000 and got 59,000, it's probably not that big a deal.

But I don't know how or where they got their numbers, either.

The CF has great spin doctors too - and if they want to lobby the government for more troops, etc., they are going to go with their lowest numbers. Either way - 59,000 or 60,000 - the numbers are dismal, but it's hard to draw solid conclusions on what the migration rate is like from two numbers that could have come from anywhere.