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Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch
Fair enough, and I get that. However Canada has been on the retreat from UN Peacekeeping for a while.
I have no problem with it, I think that Peacekeeping missions are obsolete and useless.
I also think that the UN is fairly useless and corrupt.
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The UN is an industry - peacekeeping especially. The UN pays USD 1428/month/soldier. This is why the three big troop contributors are Ethiopia, Bangladesh and Rwanda. They certainly aren't paying their soldiers that kind of cash; thus, these poor countries actually make money deploying their troops on peacekeeping missions. Canada and other first world countries lose money, which is why you see low troop numbers from first world nations.
All that aside, there are many, many Canadian soldiers frustrated with the lack of something "to do". Unfortunately, the "to do" emphasis has increasingly morphed into domestic operations (up about 1000% over the past five years) which has most certainly gone from a last resort option to quick, get the CAF in here for the free labour option. I personally didn't join the Army to be the easy button for a government's failure to prep/plan for disasters in between rotations of Maple Resolve. You sign up and join a trade to accomplish goals and perform tasks that you think have meaning and you hope to deploy on a semi regular basis.
So, we can debate the worthiness of the UN, but the paradox is that it can provide meaningful (perhaps) employment to soldiers and give them deployments to look forward to.
Otherwise, we continue with the status quo which is an issue of retention. And, really, what is the point of a standing army that just sits around most of the year, conducting the same old training in the same old locations? Perhaps the answer is to revert back to the glory days of 4 CMBG in Germany, although I see Latvia or Poland replacing Germany.