there are some indians in the east whose reserves who can join whichever army they fancy which also covers the dual citizens.

 

the biggest draw though is that the us army is more likely to fight and for some that's a really powerful draw.  during the vietnam war americans like to slag canada for letting draft dodgers stay but do not realize that canadians walked across the border and signed up for vietnam at almost a one for one rate. 

 

i don't know if it's still true but for a long time a serving canadian soldier could leave the forces here and sign up in the us army for a combat assignment and then return after a tour to the canadian army at his rank.  i've met a couple guys who did that during the vietnam war.  they got to take home some combat experience and the us army got a skilled motivated trooper for cheap so it worked well for everyone.  i was told guys doing this almost always got bumped at least a rank on joining the us army which didn't hurt anyone's feelings or paycheck.

i imagine this has largely stopped since we went active in 'stan.

 

Interesting. While there probably aren't nearly as many Canadians joining the US military as there used to be, I still met quite a few when I was in the service. Great, motivated, and stranglely patriotic guys. I have a buddy who has dual citezenship and wants to join up in Canada. I wander how it is for Americans with dual citizenship.

 

I can imagine right now, that the appeal of a higher paycheck, less bullshit, and no 15 month deployments to the hell hole that is Iraq would be pretty damn appealing. Though I can understand how a soldier in Canada would want to actually do what he was trained to do, but it would seem to me that many people with dual citizenship in both countries would chose to serve in the Canadian Forces.

actually if you want to see the worst places on earth the canadian army is the place to sign up.  remember we have a LOT of peacekeeping details scattered around the world in some of the most godawful holes you can find.  with a relatively small army to choose from everyone gets plenty of time in those vacation spots.  i don't know anyone in the forces who hasn't spent literally years peacekeeping.  in the infantry the rule is 1/3 of your career is spent on peacekeeping assignments and i've met a guy who spent over 2/3 of his 20 years abroad.

I could see how the combat arms guys in the Canadian armed forces would be stressed by deployments. I believe there are only 9 infantry batallions in the CF (correct me if I'm wrong). However, unless those batallions are understrength, 9 battallions of infantry is a fairly large percentage of the 60,000 man CF.  A pretty nice tooth to tail ratio.

the canadian army model is built on being ready as possible for rapid expansion in case we have to fight ww2 over again.  so we have more officers than we "need" and more senior enlisted than we "need".  these guys are the hardest to train up in case a real war breaks out while riflemen are relatively easy.  i've read the canadian army could expand 800 percent in a year before you started running low on experienced section and platoon leaders.  given the paucity of real war candidates though i understand they are moving away from that model but towards what i'm not sure.

 

i'd think pumping more money into the reserves would be wise but frankly we have a whole lot of ground to make up for with the regulars that the reserves are largely going to keep on sucking wind i think.

i believe the way it works is 3 regt with 3 active duty btns each.  we follow the british pattern though where regt are admin/training and can have more than 3 btns active in wartime.  back in ww1 some of the british regt had 10 even 12 btns active.

 

 

i believe it was 48000 canadians went off to battle communism.  it was pretty close to the number of guys who spent the duration in canada.