Part of the problem is a scarcity of readily available on-line information regarding Canadian Army courses run by any of the combat arms. Popular media hype results in certain roles (snipers, pathfinders, etc.) and types of units (marines, JTF-2, etc) being popularized as career targets for the eager potential recruit.
Even as these discussions go back and forth over what certain choices mean for training and career experiences, we often miss the point of frequency (of courses), probability of attending (both by timings and numerical odds) and the realistic integration of certain skills into a military career.
For example (the following are rough numbers off the top of my head), we have about 60,000 in the CF, at 600 per infantry battalion there are 5400 in the Regular Force infantry battalions, and at about 6 snipers per battalion, there are 54 soldiers in ‘hard‘ sniper positions at any one time. Even if we replace them at a rate of 50% annually and no vacancies are filled by previously trained snipers returning to the sections, it means that the infantry training requirement for snipers is 27 per year, split between 9 battalions. So, 1% of infantry soldiers are in a sniper cell, and, on average one soldier in 200 gets the course each year.
If we want to reorient new discussion topics to the higher-probability courses, the ones many prospective recruits will eventually get one or more of, we first need to share the available information of the courses being conducted.
The Infantry Schooll website can be found at http://www.brunnet.net/infsch/
Follow the left-hand menu links for "The School" and "Joining Instructions", this document identifies the courses run by that school. (I expect the moderators would also like us to move these threads to the applicable Corps forum.)
Questions on these courses should be posed starting a new thread for each relevant course.
I have yet to locate on-line lists of courses run by the Armour or Artillery School, perhaps our black hat and gunner friends can help here.