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Though no infantry have yet been deployed to Fort McMurray to help fight the fires, we can assume that will happen quickly if it is needed. In essence, the Prime Minister has said, whatever the Canadian Forces have that can be helpful, whatever you need, we will deploy.

This is right. It’s also what Canadians have come to expect. In June of 2013 the Forces helped in the response to the southern Alberta floods. In July of 2011, they were called to northern Ontario to help evacuate residents threatened by fires. That same month, there was a mission, Operation Lyre, to help reinforce flood walls along the Souris River in Manitoba. A year earlier, there was a relief effort in Newfoundland, in the aftermath of Hurricane Igor.

And on it goes. There have been so many domestic relief missions in recent years, they begin to run together. The track record is, by and large, exemplary. The wonky case of Toronto’s “storm of the century” in 1999, when troopers toting snow shovels were ignominiously sent to clear West Toronto streets blanketed by a slightly heavier-than-normal fall of snow, has long since faded from memory.

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But there’s an irony in the timing of the latest deployment, and it should be an uncomfortable one. Tuesday in Ottawa, Auditor General Michael Ferguson released his spring reports — a series of five new audits of government operations. One of these focused on the state of the Canadian Forces’ Reserves — which, as of 2013, comprised close to half the Army’s 40,143 soldiers.