This is a new vision???

Defence Chief General Rick Hillier said yesterday that the military forces will launch a "vigorous" campaign to recruit more visible minorities.

Opening a Pandora's Box that haunted military leaders in the 1990s, Gen. Hillier said he wants to leverage the government's commitment to expand the Forces by 5,000 full-time and 3,000 part-time reserve personnel to bolster the ranks of visible minorities.

"Our population has to look at us and see themselves in us," Gen. Hillier said.

"We're going to start tilling the ground in the immediate weeks and months ahead here to go into those ethnic communities across Canada," he said, adding the military will seek the "percentages required" to find ethnic groups that are under-represented in the military.

Gen. Hillier did not offer precise figures of the current ethnic makeup of the Forces.

The Forces were ordered by a Federal Court ruling in 1989 to increase the percentage of women, visible minorities and aboriginals, but continued to receive failing grades a decade later for not meeting "quotas" -- a concept that also elicited controversy as being too politically correct.

This is all part of his 'vision' for the Canadian military. What a vision! Focused on skin colour, rather than on the real issues our military faces.