Stand At Ease, Private Sector!

When it comes to contracting things to the private sector, which do you suppose makes sense? Health insurance, or training soldiers?

Guess what the DND people think:

The army is looking for outside help to teach soldiers, drivers and maintenance crews at its Combat Training Centre (CTC) in Gagetown, N.B., as it begins to boost its numbers by 5,000 regular troops and 3,000 reservists.

The successful applicants will have experience in heavy equipment and weapons. Among other things, they will train recruits how to fire the cannon on the army's LAV-III armoured vehicle.

Until now, the army has handled such combat training in-house.

"This will be fairly new ground for us," said Lt.-Col. Steve Strachan, chief of staff at the Gagetown CTC.

New ground? You know what they call private contractors who train soldiers in combat? Mercenaries, is what they call them.

You'd think the Forces would've learned something from that disastrous decision to contract out the Forces' airlift capability. Hell, this doesn't even make sense to the NDP:

Nova Scotia MP Peter Stoffer of the New Democratic Party blames a trend that has seen the military privatize areas such as pilot training and medical services.

"They should have the people on board and in-step in order to do it in-house," he said.

"The minute you start giving it over to companies, when does it stop? What's next?"

Mercenaries, I tell ya. Mercenaries ...