The military base in Meaford has changed its name.
The 4th Canadian Division Training Centre is now called the Army Training Centre – Central. It’s a transfer of command authority from the 4th Division, to the Canadian Army Training Centre.
Commanding Officer of the Meaford base, Lt. Col. Joe Tobin says, “They’re responsible for all of the Army’s training and we’re going to be grouped under them now.”
It’s the first base in Canada to make the change, as part of the Army’s modernization plan, and others are expected to change over soon.
Major-General John Errington is the commander of all of the Army’s training institutions. He spoke at the ceremony to make the change official in Meaford Friday saying, it “Marks the first of several that will occur over this year as the Canadian Army modernizes from the Army we have to the Army we need. The Army’s modernization is a generational change, setting the conditions for the defence and security of Canadians for years to come.”
The Army says it aligns the unit with the its development priorities to ensure training and modernization are synchronized. It reorganizes Army divisions by their function rather than geography.
Lt. Col. Tobin says, “All of the division training centres that exist in Alberta, Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick are being grouped centrally under a new brigade level command called the Army Training Centre,” he explains, the training centres in 2 Division in Quebec, 3 Division in Edmonton, 4 Division in Meaford and 5 Division in New Brunswick will be called Army Training Centre West, Central, East and Atlantic.
Tobin says before last Friday, in the 4th Division, there were, “A variety of different things that weren’t similar to each other, so we had a training centre, we had a mechanized brigade group in Petawawa, we had reserve Canadian Brigade Groups spread across the province. We’ve got bases, we’ve got Rangers.” He says, “The big change that Army modernization does, is it breaks those regional structures down and it groups them under a functional command and control.”
Across the country, there will be a Defence of Canada Division (mainly of part-time soldiers, domestic operations and surge capacity), Manoeuvre Division (primary combat force), Support Division (infrastructure, technical, personnel, engineers etc) and Training Formation (schools like the Meaford base).
Tobin says a visible difference in the soldiers on the Meaford base can be found on their arm, where they used to wear a green rectangle representing the 4th Canadian Division, they now have a red diamond patch to represent the Canadian Army Training Centre. Soldiers switched their patches over Friday as part of the ceremony. The flag was also changed Friday to reflect that.
He says, “We focus on training new soldiers for Canada’s Army. We are bringing soldiers right in from the basic military qualification that they do in either Borden or St. Jean, and we are their first touch point with the Army. So we bring them in, we train them on Army weapons, we train them on Army tactics and really get them ready for their next phase of training where they will be specialized in their own specific branches, whether that’s infantry, armoured, artillery, or some of the technical trades as well.”
Tobin says the change doesn’t drastically alter what they do at the Meaford base but it focuses their attention a bit more.
“Previously we’ve been really focused on infantry soldiers and on junior leaders. Starting in May, we’re going to expand fairly aggressively to increase our throughput by about 30 per cent to start training more Army soldiers. There’s a new Army qualification course that all soldiers in the Army are going to have to do– it’s called the Canadian Army Soldier First Course. We’re going to be really focused on delivering that training and so there will be an increase in the number of soldiers that are coming through the base here.”
Tobin says right now they run three lines of courses concurrently in Meaford and starting April 4th it will increase to four.
Currently, there are about 600 people on the base and that will increase to over 1,000 in the summer. Tobin says the students coming to the base will live on the base. He notes, “As the training centre continues to grow to increase the Army’s capacity to train all of these new folks that are coming in, we’re continuing to expand our infrastructure here to support families.”
He says there aren’t currently houses for families on the base like there are in Petawawa for example because the footprint hasn’t historically demanded it, but going forward, they are on the verge of creating family accommodations on the Meaford site. He estimates they could build roughly 60 dwellings between single homes, townhouses and apartments. “It’s really going to be a game changer here,” says Tobin who says there is plenty of room for students but they’re almost at capacity for staff accommodations.
The federal government recently announced it surpassed its 2 per cent of gross domestic product defence spending target in the 2025-26 fiscal year, investing more than $63 billion in defence across the Department of National Defence, the Canadian Armed Forces, and other government partners.
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The new red diamond patch and the old patch. Photo by Claire McCormack