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CHAPTER 123 The Directorate of Professional Education and Development and the Rationalization of the Canadian Military Colleges Ln 1973 Defence Headquarters was still in the throes of a structural reorganization recommended in a report by J.B. Pennefather, a Montreal business executive. The Canadian Defence Educational Establishment office had already been quietly disbanded during the preceding year. A Directorate of Professional Education and Development (DPED) would take CDEE'S place in supervising the administration of the Canadian Military Colleges. The newdirectorate would be headed bya colonel - an officer lower in rank than the RMC commandant, who normally was a brigadier-general or equivalent. The colonel who headed DPED was answerable through a director-general of recruiting, education and training (DGRET) to the chief of personnel development (CPD) who, in effect, had replaced the chief of personnel; and the Educational Council wasinformed inJune that its future meetings would always be chaired by an assistant deputy minister for personnel, ADM(Per), a lieutenantgeneral , or by a major-general deputizing for him.1 Queen's Regulations and Orders empowered ADM(Per) to "command and control" the military colleges.2 He reported directly to the chief of the Defence Staff and to the minister. ADM(Per) would thus make policy and the director of professional education and development would have responsibility for day-to-day administration. On policy matters the college commandants usually dealt with the chief of personnel development.3 Clearly NDHQ was now in a stronger position to direct and impose policy on the colleges, and much depended on who became ADM(Per). A member of the Advisory Board, Dr J. Hodgins,* a former RMCchemical engineering professor, commented that often in the past many senior NDHQ personnel who had influenced RMC policy "had little idea what the CMCs were all about." He held that this had been a check on RMC'S development.4 Both the Advisory Board and RMCwere therefore favourably reassured when they heard inJune that the first holder of the appointment was likely to be MajorGeneral W.A. Milroy,5 Major-General Rowley's successor as head of the Officer Development Board. He was known to be interested in, and knowledgeable about, military professional education. Milroy, who had recently been promoted lieutenant-general to command Mobile Command, was brought back as ADM(Per) on 3 August 1973.6 He had already told Brigadier-General Lye that he proposed an organizationin whichthe colleges"would be directly under me," with the chief of personnel development acting as his deputy.7 *Dr John Willard ("Jack") Hodgins worked in the Chemical Warfare Laboratories in Ottawa 1940—5 and was a captain in the Canadian army. He was at DRB 1947-50 and then became professor of chemical engineering RMCuntil 1956, Dean of engineering at McMaster University 1958—69, he became director of research and a vice-president in the Domtar Corporation, forming the John W. Hodgins Corporation in 1980. He died in 1982. 124 TO SERVE CANADA NDHQ had not informed the CMC'S Advisory Board why it had not followed up the suggestion that there should be a Board of Governors. When the board expressed its disappointment at this omission, it was told that the colleges had not supported NDHQ'S proposal that the governing body should be a Board of Trustees rather than of Governors, and so it had been withdrawn.8 The real reason was probably that the establishment of DPED as the "single agency" to administer officer education (a system suggested by the Officer Development Board that the Defence Council had approved on 4 September 1969), and of a command structure under ADM(Per) with his general and educationalcouncils,now made a Board of Governors or Trustees redundant, especiallysince the Advisory Board itself had expanded its functions and had branched out with regional committees. The new system for controlling the Canadian Military Colleges presented the ADM(Per), the chief of personnel development, the director of professional education and development, and RMC with a set of formidable tasks. During the rest of the decade there was one study after another to tackle chronic problems in the college's traditional role of officer production. Prominent among these was the need to foster military professionalism. This chapter will focus on the rationalization of the CMCs for that purpose, and will carry the story through to the early 1980s. The most serious problem relating to the CMC system concerned the size and quality of its output of graduates. In 1971 Donald S. Macdonald...

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