Troops can be employed despite being medically unfit, hints Canada's top general

The Canadian military is eyeing on a change to accomodate all those troops who become unable to be deployed due to wounds but tries to cling on to the service.

The comment by Gen. Jonathan Vance, the chief of the defence staff, came after widespread public and political criticism of the existence system.

Following the Liberal government's new defence policy, Vance, took a stand to make the system flexible to allow the wounded troops to continue their services in any way.

Vance was quoted by CBC News: "We are in the process of redesigning the force structure of the Armed Forces," he said, noting that post-traumatic stress should not be barrier to serving your country."

"Give someone purpose. And more importantly, remove the automatic-ness, if that's a word, of leaving the Armed Forces simply because you come forward and manifest with a mental health challenge. We have lots of people inside the Armed Forces who are — have — are suffering mental illness, and they carry on," he added.

Under the present condition, troops are given three years to recover from injuries and re-join and if they can't, they are forced to quit.

Vance added in saying that what must be recognised that "that there are parts of the Armed Forces that we could consider employable but not part of that deployability chain."

Retired corporal Glen Kirkland, who had suffered injury in the Taliban attack, said he will wait to see how the changes in the system take place.

(Reporting by Suman Das)