Published in the National Post on January 19, 2010
By Blake Goldring
There are nearly 500 reservists among the ranks of the 2,800 Canadian soldiers now deployed to southern Afghanistan, putting their lives on hold for a year to serve our country on a dangerous assignment. Not enough is being done to help these soldiers either before or after their deployments.
Reservists serving in Afghanistan take on all the same risks as their regular military comrades. Yet many rely on a shaky support framework to maintain good relations with their employers when deciding to volunteer for overseas missions. The C.D. Howe Institute has released a report dealing with Canada’s policy regarding our military reservists, challenging some old ideas and addressing some rather shocking shortfalls.
At present, the only protection for Canada’s reservists working in the private sector is a hodgepodge of federal programs and provincial legislation, such as Ontario’s recent amendments to its Employment Standards Act allowing reserve soldiers to take unpaid leaves of absence for overseas deployment.
Job protection laws vary by province, but most jurisdictions follow the model of the United States to one degree or another, where employers are required by law to keep their reservist employees’ jobs open for them when they are sent overseas. Under these conditions, employers must make other employees work more or hire a new, temporary employee. In the U.S., job protection laws have even made some employers reluctant to hire reservists. Those that are hired face the risk of lower wages.
The United Kingdom and Australia have taken a different approach, combining job protection laws with a government compensation program that pays employers of reservists who go overseas for months at a time. The employers can apply for government grants to cover everything from hiring temporary replacements to any necessary retraining for their reservist upon his or her return.
The C.D. Howe study proposes a typically Canadian compromise: combining the legislative “stick” of a federal law protecting the jobs of deployed reservists with a “carrot” — a series of compensation payments administered by the Department of National Defence. Employers of reservists who deploy overseas would be eligible for grants of up to 80% of their employees’ salaries (to a maximum of $47,200 per employee) for as long as 16 months, long enough to cover the six- to nine-month overseas missions and the reservists’ pre-deployment training and a recovery period after their return.
Smaller businesses would be eligible for the most compensation and provisions would be made for companies which would be particularly affected by an employee shipping out.
Such a program would be a badly needed morale boost for our reservists, demonstrating that all Canadians are behind them when they go overseas. Reservists would also need to worry less about whether or not their civilian lives will suffer from their service. It would also help the Armed Forces by ensuring a stable, focused pool of reservists.
And it would cost only a very small share of the federal budget. Because many reservists are full- or part-time students, the C.D. Howe study estimates that compensating employers of reservists who deploy overseas could cost as little as $8-million a year. Even today, with more Canadian soldiers deployed overseas than at any time since the Korean War, this proposal would cost only $26-million a year. A small price, indeed, given what reservists give back through their service.
It is high time we stand up for our part-time soldiers, and there’s no better place to start than by making sure the true costs of their deployments are properly borne not by a few individual businesses or the soldiers themselves, but by all of us — we who benefit from the sacrifices of our brave Canadian reservists.
National Post
Blake Goldring is chairman and chief executive officer of AGF Management Limited, founder and chairman of Canada Company: Many Ways to Serve, and Honorary Colonel of The Royal Regiment of Canada.
