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One of the greatest
challenges we face as we become commissioned officers
will be to exert true leadership. We will have to lead
professional soldiers, seamen, and airmen who have
been there, done that, and not come out looking like a
yearling. We will have to formulate plans in foreign
contexts where understanding local sensitivities will
make the ultimate difference. This is a challenging
mandate to fulfill, and one which we believe, our
institutionalized training is failing to provide.
First, let us begin by
highlighting that Canadians have historically imagined
themselves as living in a fireproof house; Canadians
have historically been woefully unprepared for the
unexpected and violent outside world which, from time
to time, comes knocking on the door. Rather than
debate the current fallacy of Canadian Foreign policy,
we would suggest, rather, that what is most important
to take away here is that Canadians are isolated and
largely ignorant of the rest of the world. The
relative isolation of Canada means that many Canadians
can afford to remain ignorant, as they likely will;
but in the end, the burden of dealing with reality
must fall somewhere, and who else but the military—who
else but RMC?
RMC’s institutional culture has shown itself
unprepared to take the risks associated with producing
the products it needs, which are leaders who have
chatted with tea-cup in hand with the academics, but
who have also offered a smoke to the cab-driver in
Ramallah: RMC needs to encourage its cadets to mature,
liberally. What better way to expand the mind than to
openly embrace and persuade its Officer Cadets to gain
personal experience on the ground in places such as
Israel and the Occupied Territories, Sub Saharan
Africa, Central America, South-East Asia… We would
like to suggest here that travel and leadership are
inextricably bound together. When traveling and
studying abroad, you are leading yourself, and often
your country, in new, |
uncharted, and often dangerous places. The talents and
qualities of your personality are sharpened when
traveling – the simple things that RMC or virtual
learning cannot impart – like being able
to talk with anyone,
the art of smoking, encountering checkpoints, and the
ability to play hard-ball. We must not be scared to do
what is needed, which implies risk of one’s life and
career, but which is the crux of our profession.
 We
could write a dozen articles of praise about RMC and
the benefits of its training, but these are already
well known, and offer no room to improve this
institution. As we have highlighted above, RMC
suffers from a lack of creativity, of risk, and of
international exposure. We are a College of 17-22 year
olds who are drilled and re-drilled, and then heated
at 300 degrees, but lack proper basting. We suggest
the solution to the real problem of naïve, idealistic,
risk-averse, and insecure leadership is travel and
study abroad. Without eclectic exposure to the
outside, such cadets turn out to be like a dry turkey,
lacking real substance, opinion, and spice: trained
not to ask questions, let alone have an opinion or
course of action. Such cadets are woefully inward
looking, often pompous, and essentially unfit to lead.
Far too often at RMC, an un-shiny boot is the daily
dose of reality.
RMC faces the risk of
knowingly producing dry-turkeys, sent out to be
dry-officers, in a world and Canadian Forces that
needs spicy, flavorful, and worldly leaders. We
understand that what we are proposing has its inherent
risks, but we believe the risks can be minimized, and
the outcome achieved. In the end, if we, the
military, don’t take the risks, who will?
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