Triple standards?

I wonder if this plan is speculative, or if it has been decided upon?

Researchers are assessing thousands of troops across the country to come up with different fitness standards for the army, navy and air force. They’ve already tested some sailors on the West Coast and plan to do the same in Halifax-based warships this fall.

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The study will involve physiological testing among all military occupations.

"We’ll actually strap a heart rate monitor onto somebody and say, ‘Go do your job for eight hours.’ And then we’ll come back and we’ll follow the trace of their heart rate and we can say, ‘You know what, this job requires exactly this level of fitness and this job requires exactly this oxygen consumption to be able to do it.’ But we know how to prepare them for it and how to measure that they’re actually there."

The military is hoping to use the information to develop exercise regimes that cut down on injuries, Mr. Spivock said.

Whatever happens, he doubts fitness standards will be lowered for anyone in uniform.

"Even the guys who do have sort of sedentary, day-to-day jobs, we don’t evaluate only what they do in their daily job, but what they could be called to do in (an) emergency," Mr. Spivock said. "Even your sailor who is sitting looking at a periscope all day or doing something like that, if there’s a fire on the ship, he’s a firefighter; if there’s a man overboard, he has to rescue him as well."

As the military fights to stave off attrition, he is aware of the need not to make new standards so onerous that people leave the Forces in droves.

"If this is not handled properly, of course there could be an issue around retention," Mr. Spivock said. "And that’s why our goal is to develop this culture in which it just makes sense for people to want to stay, to want to be fit and to want to improve themselves."

The only real advantage I can see to a single standard is that it's simple to administer. But different jobs do require different fitness levels, and different types of fitness: artillery vs. fighter pilot vs. clearance diver vs. pay clerk vs. SAR tech - just think about the huge variance of tasks involved. As long as the CF doesn't end up with a confusing tangle of standards that requires a lot more time, energy, and money to administer, this should be a move in the right direction.