Should I encourage my 16 year old son to join the Canadian Army reserve?
Well, there are a couple of things you need to get straight before you go any further. Yes, joining a Reserve unit does have the potential to teach him self reliance and discipline, both through his basic training stint as well as his trades training. Army reserves more then Air or Navy reserves. Secondly, reservists are NOT called into action at 18 or any age for that matter. If you are a reservist you must volunteer for deployment and then meet the same selection criteria as anyone else, reg or reserve. By that I mean that he must pass the fitness standards, the medical screening, the psych and social workers screening….. Reservists are not “voluntold” for deployed duty. If he doesn’t want to go, he doesn’t go and as a reservist he can quit at any time with no penalty. There is no service length commitment in the Canadian reserves. More importantly though, if he is not willing to serve overseas then he is pretty useless to the military and I think it’s pretty damn selfish to take u
