Well I feel like adding my 2 cents also on a few points that were brought up on this topic.
To start with, I'm not going to go into what regiments and units should, or are supposed to be doing. My situation, I've been a pretty active element with my regiment for 5 years now, infantry reserve regiment, in Mtl., so 34bde. This here is how it happens in this brigade, so I don't know about others. Furthermore, this brigade is in major restructuration, so each regiment has to fork platoons over to other regiments to achieve "proper" training and be able to provide a sufficient turn out on each exercise (coy level).
Anyways more on topic, when it comes to live fire, we're expected to go through NIAC quals every year, which means live ranges testing with the famous run down. However since a few years now, there has been NO range practice at all beforehand. Again I don't know how it is with other brigades, but its been like that here for a while. The only other range to be expected is for support weapons, again, once in the course of that NIAC training. -However- one of our platoons this year did get a "live fire" ex, but it was no way near some kind of section attack. They called it the "jungle range" or something. I don't want to elaborate on this because I wasn't there with that platoon, so someone else might be able to be more informative on this subject. So, I'm an infantryman, a reserve rifleman and i get no range practice, at all. Being in restructuration and all, I am hoping that this situation will soon be corrected.
About live fire in Milcons, I'm intrigued. What level were they? Milcons here are for the whole brigade, so there's tons of people involved, many regiments, so the chaos in organizing live fire runs is far too dangerous. Unless it is like a stand thing where you see a section go through at a time. Never live fire in Milcons here.
On the topic of other types of ammo, in the reserves we have started using simmunition since last year. they're basically 9mm rounds with reduced charges. Yes they hurt, maybe a bit more than paintball, but its not that bad. Though we had a guy that had a round go through his combat shirt clean! Nice round hole. Practically, I must say I do not like using simrounds. Loading the small things in the special plastic magazines, which jam all the time, having to switch barrels everytime to fit a specially bored C7 barrel, upper part and buffer makes it annoying, and especially the protective equipment. That headgear is just horrible and gets fogged up within a minute, I won't even mention when you're running around FIBUA sites... and also, it is pretty inaccurate, forget about snipers, and I don't even want to imagine the nightmare of using that in a C9. However these might just be because its recent equipment, so we might see improvement soon.
We do get MILES gear once in a while, however it is very hard to have this on exercise. I personnally like the MILES gear a lot, and I wish we could get it more often. Again, once in a while. Just make sure you don't miss -that- exercise!
As for blank rounds well, we get those every single exercise, so its not so bad for that.
Our regiment is also equipped with a small SATs system, which can accomodate 4 shooters on all types of weapons at a time. It does provide good practice on operating such weapons, and with intense calibration, I assume it could provide adequate accuracy practice, but it is just not the case for now, and I don't think anyone has even used the room this year. I've been pushing to get qualified to run the thing, since there's only about 2 persons in the whole regiment qualified, but so far it's a no go. But what it basically is, you get your 4 guys in front of a wall screen, with weapons (which are gas operated and loaded with sensors btw, so no rounds involved) and theres a scenario happening on it, so you can simulate 4 people attacks or other scenarios. It has potential, but it needs to be used more, and better.
So see, this is what I've been actually seeing in my time in the reserves, and I figure there's nothing better than actual info from someone who's there, or in it. Yet again, this is just what I've seen here, so it might be different in other brigades.