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Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
I'm going under the assumption that only a fraction of conscripts would be put into combat training, and even most of those would never be deployed overseas. How many reservists in Canada served in combat in Afghanistan?
It would be more of a public service model. Conscripts in Israel can choose to work as orderlies in hospitals, for example. In Canada, people could work building infrastructure in national parks, or in the the North. Fight fires in the summer. Work in nursing homes.
It's probably not practical owing to the infrastructure requirements. But I think it would be a social good.
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I don't know if I would agree to a entire public service conscription, unless your talking about putting people into menial labor jobs that can't be filled doing standard recruiting. So if we need conscripts to scrub camp toilets in banff, or paint rocks on road construction in the arctic then it works.
I also think that the old axiom about the military is true even in conscription that the military is going to put you where your needed and not necessarily where you want to go.
I would think that a selective conscription would be ok, in that you can be called up, but you can be given the option if the trade that you want is full of not being conscripted, being able to be called up to conscription if the need emerges. Or every years conscription class is put into the combat arms whether is army or navy or airforce. Then for the next 3 or 4 years that's your trade. You get trained to be the best infantry soldier or sailor possible. Then at the end you get three options
1) You can muster out, you get some financial aid for college or trade school
2) you can re-enlist and select a trade
3) you can stay in, keep being a combat trade and get a combat trade bonus whether its a bigger pay increase then the guy who chooses to change trades or a lump sum bonus.
This would allow you to continually be more selective as conscription went on and maybe shrink the size of your conscription class if your retention is good.
I also don't agree with the whole conscription with the agreement of not serving outside of the nations border. We saw that promise with Quebec in WW2 and it almost tore this country and the military apart. One your in you go where your told to go and do what your told to do.