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by kennywinker 2250 days ago
I think the supposition is that Canada also has a volunteer army, but does not spend as much on recruitment. I am not sure if that is true or not, but anecdotally it feels like there is at least 10x the amount of military recruitment ads in the US as there are in Canada.
2 comments
bryanrasmussen 2250 days ago
Well I would think the Army as the road out of poverty thing is not as big in Canada as in the U.S
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blaser-waffle 2249 days ago
Bingo. There was a awful lot of screening at MEPS -- where you go to process for the US Military, regardless of Marines/Army/Navy/Airforce -- for medical stuff. Lots of implied "do you secretly have a medical issue?" questions, as the military is responsible for paying for your healthcare.

I served with a dude who entered to be a diesel mechanic (even though he had no background/interest in it) because he got his GF pregnant and didn't have a way to take care of a kid at 19.

These are less of an issue in Canada, the UK, etc. where they have universal healthcare and better safety nets.

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Fjolsvith 2249 days ago
> Lots of implied "do you secretly have a medical issue?" questions, as the military is responsible for paying for your healthcare.

Basic training was the hardest exercise that I'd had in my life up until then. They don't want you dying from an asthma attack on the obstacle course or something similar.

Or, if you have a heart condition, they don't want you dying on the operating table from it when they go to remove a piece of shrapnel.

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ericmay 2248 days ago
Yup. And if you have a knee problem, back problem, etc. you will get chaptered out for medical reasons, so why waste time and money if that's the eventual outcome? Does the military want to pay for the healthcare of someone who went to basic training with a bad knee and made it worse due to being in the military? No! That isn't their purpose and we should never expect otherwise.

Sometimes I think people are just looking for a boogeyman.

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ericmay 2249 days ago
Right, but does Canada have the same global police mission that the United States does? I’m not sure why it would be the default expectation that the U.S. and Canada or other NATO countries would have the same amount of recruitment advertisements.

So I guess I’m unsure about what was being clarified given the OP’s statement and then the following response.

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kennywinker 2248 days ago
original post said:

> since becoming an all volunteer army recruitment has been an expensive challenge.

Implying the issue is a volunteer army. If that's the case, Canada would have the same problem as it's also a volunteer army.

If your argument is that it's not about being a volunteer army, it's about the scale of the military, you might be right... we'd have to compare the personnel number to recruitment budget ratio between NATO countries to get a sense of that.

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