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Lieutenant-Colonel Patrick Chartrand: It’s more efficient to teach a skill set when it’s required than if we teach it very early in someone’s career.

Captain Adam Orton: Hey, this is Captain Adam Orton with the Canadian Army Podcast. And this episode is going to be about some upcoming changes to the training system. There are two courses you’re going to take as part of your army career—one being the Basic Military Qualification Land or BMQ-Land, which is where soldiers learn to throw grenades, use machine guns and a couple of other military skills—and the Army Junior Leadership Course, where you learn to take charge of small groups of soldiers to execute tasks. There’s been some major changes in those courses recently, and to talk to us about them is Lieutenant-Colonel Patrick Chartrand from the Combat Training Centre in Gagetown. Welcome to the podcast, sir.

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LCol Chartrand: Thank you very much, Adam.

Capt Orton: So, perhaps you can explain to our listeners, what’s your role in these changes in the training plan?

LCol Chartrand: So, as the G7, I’m responsible for everything that is linked to standard for the training in the Army. So all the courses that we have, we need to make sure that when candidates go through, they achieve a certain standard. So my job is to make sure that we maintain those standards in place throughout.

Capt Orton: Right.

LCol Chartrand: So, as part of the CANFORGEN that was published, I was supporting the Commander of CTC in developing the requirements for how those changes would be affected. And what would be the impact of removing the BMQ-Land and the AJLC from our training streams.

Captain Orton: So, when are these changes coming into effect?

LCol Chartrand: The CANFORGEN is already out. It was published on the 18th of May, and it’s effective on the 21st of May. So it’s already in effect.

Capt Orton: Now, maybe just for the benefit of everybody listening because, you know, it’s the running joke that sometimes a lot of these courses get renamed—and people kind of lose track of which one is which. Can you describe what the BMQ-Land or Basic Military Qualification Land course is about?

LCol Chartrand: That course is divided into two parts. There’s the tactical skill sets—but also the weapon training skill set. So as part of the tactical skill set, a soldier would see offensive operation defensive operation, they would conduct reconnaissance patrols, and they would have to show tactical fieldcraft or tacticall knowledge into a general army environment. They would also see some of the weapons skills. So we’re looking at the support weapons, such as the C9, the C6, the grenades, M72—also some minor awareness training. So these are the big pieces that you would see on BMQ-Land, and on AJLC. You would be put into a leadership position where you would actually conduct those operations. So, again, offensive operation, defensive operation conduct a recce patrol.

Capt Orton: So, I guess this is a really important question—why are these changes being made?

LCol Chartrand: So, there’s a few reasons. So one of the main reasons is training capacity. So some of the important resources that we have in our training system are our instructors—but also time. Considering that a lot of our instructors are coming from the field force in order to instruct, there’s always a balance required between individual training, collective training, and also personnel requirements. And what we’ve seen with time is, because of new technology, for one reason, is a lot of our courses have increased in time. So this also increased the load on our instructors. But, it also increased the time that is required to actually get soldiers qualified and be promoted. So, by removing the BMQ-Land and the AJLC, we can actually reduce the time required to be promoted. But, also, we create some capacity for other critical courses.

One of the examples is that the Army will be running twelve decentralized BMQs over the next years to support the Canadian Forces Leadership and Recruit School. And this is mostly due to the pandemic. They had to reduce their production level due to health measures. So we need to do this because we have already had some of our DP1 courses that have been cancelled during the last year just because we didn't have enough candidates to run those courses. So this is an additional course that we have taken over for this year.

So another reason that we add is there’s currently a discrepancy—especially when we’re looking at the purple trades. So a purple trades is any trades that can be employed with an Army, Navy, or Air Force environment with their respective uniforms. So a purple trade with an Army uniform had to complete AJLC in order to be promoted for a master corporal, while the same trade wearing an Air Force or a Navy uniform didn’t have to do it. So the issue that we had now is that we had the same trade doing the same job, but one of them had to do additional training. And on the reverse side, we could also have also someone that was in the Army or wearing an Army uniform—working their entire career on a naval base, never using the BMQ-Land or AJLC skill set, but still needed to do those courses. So, you know, it was creating some frustration where, you know, you’re doing the same job, but someone still needs to do more work in order to achieve the same level.

Capt Orton: And, actually, it’s worth mentioning for context, especially for people who don’t necessarily understand this system that, in the military, in order to progress in your career, you have to execute gateway training. It’s not just being around and being a good person or anything like that. It’s actually you have to get a certain number of courses under your belt at each stage. And sometimes specific courses in order to even be eligible for promotion. And one of the things that we’re talking about here is a shortage of certain people at certain rank levels to run these courses. And so, without that, you can’t run the courses. And that becomes a big issue.

LCol Chartrand: No, exactly. And, you know, this is what we refer to as the missing medal. So the rank of master corporal all the way to warrant officers, you know, AJLC was creating an issue where you’re trying to qualify these people to actually achieve those rank—but at the same time, you need those rank to actually teach this course, because most of our training cadre are master corporal to warrants. So we’re trying to make sure that, you know, the instructor resources—which, like I mentioned, he’s one of the most important ones—can actually support all the training that we’re trying to achieve.

Capt Orton: I’m sure that you’ve kind of seen some buzz on the Internet, you know, like, people give feedback. And they have opinions. And one of the big topics of conversation kind of floating around is the concept of “soldier first,” and how that, you know, maybe altering the training system maybe has an impact on non-combat trades that are maybe getting a little bit less field time than they otherwise would. What would you say to people who express those concerns?

LCol Chartrand: So, when we made the decision to remove those two courses, we knew there would be some impact. And, you know, the exposure to some of the trades to fieldcraft would be reduced. But, as part of the CANFORGEN, we made sure to leave some space in there for all the different corps to conduct their own analysis, and to see if any of the training, that was being viewed or being conducted on those two courses, if there was any recordings for their own corps, they have the opportunity to actually amend their training and include some of the skill sets that were seen on these courses into their own training model.

Capt Orton: Were the different corps consulted as part of this development initially?

LCol Chartrand: So, yes. So the Commander of CTC made sure to contact every corps prior to making the decision to make sure that there was a proper understanding of the impact for every corps—and there was some understanding on our side or from their part or where we’re coming from, and to make sure that it was not just a unilateral decision.

Capt Orton: I guess my next question is, if you look at kind of—in the past, we’ve made some changes to the training system. And a good example is some organizations have done the Delta packages for the infantry DP1, as an example, where some of the weapons training that would normally take place on the infantry course got shifted to kind of a unit level responsibility. And I know some soldiers have kind of struggled to get those qualifications. Maybe there’s some unit leadership that’s kind of facing those challenges. What would be your advice to them with these upcoming changes?

LCol Chartrand: Well, I would say the first thing is to look at what is the required skill that a soldier needs on day one on the job when that person arrives to a unit? Does that person need that skill? So, if we take the grenade, as an example, does a cook need to know how to throw grenades when he arrives at his or her unit? So if the answer is “no,” then maybe we can postpone that training to a later time in their career. If the answer is “yes,” then, you know, there’s nothing that prevents the chain of command or the unit from actually providing that training to that soldier. It’s more efficient to teach a skill set when it’s required than if we teach it very early in someone’s career. And that person never gets a chance to actually practice that skill set over a year. And then, when required, we expect that person is just going to have the skills again to accomplish that. So, chances are someone who has grenade training but has never conducted that training several years, would still have to go through the same motion—conduct the whole training from scratch, just to get them up to par to make sure that they’re safe on the range.

Capt Orton: Yeah, that’s interesting you mentioned that too. Because I was actually having a conversation about this yesterday with a sergeant. And we were kind of discussing experiences where we’ve seen people perhaps struggle with skill sets that they’re not familiar with. But in a lot of cases, you know, those skill sets get worked on in perhaps a pre-deployment environment or something like that. And as long as you know, there’s sufficient pre-deployment training time, you can hone those pretty well, assuming that you have the resources in place to make sure that that's all good to go, as an example, convoy escort or base defence for Afghanistan.

LCol Chartrand: No, and that’s exactly the point of one of the reasons why we removed these courses. Is that by focusing the training on when a soldier actually needs it, it’s actually more relevant to the job that they expected to do. So, like, you mentioned during the road to high readiness or theatre specific mission training, you know, if we expect that person to require weapon knowledge, then, you know, it would be the best time to actually teach that training during that time frame. So the training can actually be adjusted to the actual tasks. So the example that you mentioned is convoy ops, then instead of doing an offensive operation, similar to an infanteer on BMQ-Land or to lead an AC attack on AJLC, then that person may be put in charge of leading a convoy escort, which is closer to what is expected of that person in the theatre.

Capt Orton: Training requires a lot of resources. Anybody who’s been on a course—or something like that—knows that it requires an incredible amount of resources. Usually tons of vehicles, personnel equipment, and we’ve made adjustments to the system. As a result of, you know, the challenge, especially with COVID slowing training down. Are we expecting similar changes to take place within the officer corps?

LCol Chartrand: Not at this time, for sure. We’re always looking at how we can evolve our training system. But I think the most important right now is to focus on the impact of BMQ-Land and AJLC, and their removal, and to make sure that all the pieces are in place to account for all the second and third order effects that this will create. And once we see the final impact and how it looks like, maybe we can start looking at other training options. But at this time, I don't think we’re ready to look at this on the officer’s side.

Capt Orton: So, you’re talking about sitting back and looking at what the impacts are—and then testing and adjusting as we often do. That’s kind of a thing that we do within the organization. What’s the rough timeline to kind of keep an eye on this and see what’s going before we move forward?

LCol Chartrand: Well, one of the first key timeline is this Fall. So we’re looking at September. This is when some of the corps that have been directed to actually continue the BMQ-Land and the AJLC training—at least, to merge it to actually have a transition plan. So we’re looking at the gunners, the armoured and the combat engineers. So, their corps has been directed that AJLC and BMQ-Land skill sets are still required. So however, they’ve been told to merge BMQ-Land into their own respective DP1 training, and to look at options on merging AJLC on their DP2 stream. So this is ongoing right now, the actual analysis. And there’s already some pilots being run to see how some of the savings could look like. We should expect some BMQ-Land and AJLC to keep running over the summer, at least, and maybe during the fall until the transition plan is actually ready. And we can actually start implementing. So that’s the first key timeline. After that we did set another timeline to see where or how much time we would take to actually assess. I think as we’re moving forward, we may see some adjustments that will be required, some of our prerequisites, or some of our courses add AJLC and BMQ-Land as prerequisites. So we need to make sure that all our publications and our training standards are adjusted to make sure that we no longer see these requirements prior to being loaded on courses. So once all those steps are done, then we can start looking at how we can continue adjusting our training system.

Capt Orton: You mentioned something that I thought was actually quite interesting—which is, and for people who don’t necessarily know, generally within the training system, you have kind of the leadership combat training side. And then for some trades, it’s a combat arms trade, specifically. You have that focus. But for other trades—like, for example, a cook will learn to cook things, and then they’ll have other training that will teach them baseline combat skills. And, so, just to make sure I understand correctly, what you’re saying is that some of those courses may incorporate sections of the training that’s being adjusted to kind of reinforce those skills. Is that correct?

LCol Chartrand: Yes. So, like I mentioned—so the armoured corps, the engineer, or combat engineer corps, and the gunners corps or artillery corps. So this is already ongoing. Once this is done, they need to brief the Commander of CTC on this. All the other corps that are in the Army—they’re still authorized to conduct their own analysis. And if they deem that they need to add training or add field time to some of their existing courses, they need to discuss this with the Commander of CTC. For the non-Army corps—so medical or logistic, for example—if they deem that they need to add some more training that was part of BMQ-Land or AJLC, there’s nothing that prevents them from actually doing that. They need to conduct their own analysis. And based on that, they need to determine what elements of those courses could be incorporated if they need it into their own courses and also, more importantly, when it would be incorporated into their progression stream.

Capt Orton: Now, as we all know, the training system is a living, breathing creature. And people are at various stages going through it, and you know, particularly in some of the courses that are broken down into modules, sometimes people are, you know, fifty percent through a course or whatever. And in the case of these changes, some people may now be in a position that they meet some of the prerequisites for promotion or advancement, that previously before these changes, they wouldn’t. Surely some people are listening and like: “do I get promoted now, or—?” So, what’s the plan there?

LCol Chartrand: So, obviously, AJLC was a prerequisite for promotion to master corporal in the Army. So with the removal of AJLC, obviously, this prerequisite is no longer there. So, however, before we say that everyone is promotable, each corps has their own promotion boards. And they all have their own prerequisites for promotion. So these requirements still need to be met. All the corps are different. So they still need to finish this. However, for the actual training in terms of AJLC, now soldiers who have completed their PLQ Mod 3 should be eligible for promotion—like I mentioned, according to their corps.

Capt Orton: So that’s pretty good news for some of the people that are listening. As we all know, when it comes to change, people have a lot of comments and a lot of feedback and a lot of things to say. Have you noticed any things specific floating around that kind of people are bringing up?

LCol Chartrand: I know there has been some concern that was raised on the impact—especially for the armoured, the gunners, and the combat engineers on where they would get the field exposure, or the basic skill sets that were being taught into BMQ-Land and AJLC. So, and I know some of the concerns were “are they just going to take BMQ-Land and put it into the engineer course, and now the DP1 engineers is going to be longer?” So the analysis is ongoing right now. But the intent is not to just take the course as is and put them together into another course. Some of the analysis that they’re looking at is actually looking at how they can save some training days while maintaining some of that fieldcraft. So if we’re looking at the engineer corps—so on BMQ-Land, there was some mine and explosive awareness training, and I know on their DP1 and very early in their career they do and go over some of this material and even in more extensive details than what you were seeing on BMQ-Land. So this is obviously some type of training that would not need to be transferred later on in their career. So there would be some saving in training for this.

Another example, or concern is that where are the soldiers going to get other basic fieldcraft in terms of offensive and defensive operation. So on BMQ-Land right now they’re being taught defensive operation, but the way an infanteer would do it. So, you know, the basic defensive position that we’ve all seen. You know, some of the analysis could lead us to see that, instead of going over a defensive position, a gunner would actually go over the defensive position of a gun line. So the basic skill sets on how to dig a trench would still be there. But how the gun line is being managed, and how they’re defending it, would be different—and would be more relatable to their actual trade.

Capt Orton: Yeah, and surely that’s a big challenge, too, because you want to—on the one hand, everybody wants to know what everybody else is doing so you can work together in like that teamwork environment that we all love so much in the Army—but, on the other hand, you kind of want to know what your job is, You know, that’s really important too.

LCol Chartrand: No. Exactly. So one thing that we may see from this change is soldiers will get earlier exposure to their actual trade.

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Capt Orton: Sir, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us about it. And I know that people have strong opinions on change sometimes. So thank you for addressing a lot of that stuff.

LCol Chartrand: Thank you very much. It was my pleasure to be here.

Capt Orton: So, that was Lieutenant-Colonel Patrick Chartrand of the Combat Training Centre in Gagetown. If you want to know more about the changes that are coming up, take a look at CANFORGEN 72/21. It’s got all the details. If you don’t know how to find it, talk to your chain of command and they’ll help you out.

Once again, a public safety announcement. I love riding motorcycles. You guys love riding motorcycles. We need to be safe out there. So, wear all the gear, all the time, so we can come back to our loved ones and do the stuff that we love doing. If you don’t ride, watch out for those that do. I’m Captain Adam Orton for the Canadian Army Podcast. Orton out.

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