Regular Force regiment of The Fort Garry Horse and the 4th Regiment Royal Canadian Horse Artillery were reduced to nil strength and placed on the Supplementary Order of battle on 16 June 1970. In October 1970, during the October Crisis, the army was called out as an aid to civil power with the Royal 22e Régiment being deployed to guard government buildings in Montreal on 15 October 1970. The deployment was not popular with the senior leaders of the Canadian Forces, who feared correctly that Trudeau would use the October Crisis as a reason for his "Priority One" of internal security. In keeping with Trudeau's "Priority One" of internal security as the prime mission of the Canadian Forces, throughout the 1970s the Canadian Forces were described as having "stagnated", with budget cuts reducing both the size of the Canadian Forces and the amount of equipment available for operations. In 1976, as a favour to his close personal friend, West German chancellor Helmut Schmidt, and to improve trade talks with the European Economic Community, the Trudeau government purchased 128 German Leopard tanks for Mobile Command. The Leopard tanks were already outclassed by Red Army T-72s and would have served little purpose in the event of World War Three, but were felt to be useful for "Priority One". Likewise, 400 Swiss-built armoired vehicles were purchased and stationed at various bases and armouries across the country that were meant for the "Priority One" of putting down riots, not war, through their purpose was described only as "peacekeeping". Reflecting the "Priority One" of internal security, by the end of the 1970s the Mobile Command had become an internal security force that was not capable of fighting a major conventional war. Morton wrote the "drastic 1969 force reduction" caused the combat efficiency of the Canadian Forces to "dwindle" in the 1970s. The frequent rotation of defence ministers with 7 men holding the portfolio between 1971 and 79 meant there were no defence ministers who ever really understood their portfolio, which led to much confusion and a lack of direction from the top. Moreover, the Department of National Defence was considered to be unglamorous portfolio that the more abler ministers in the Trudeau cabinet wanted to avoid, and Morton wrote all of the defence ministers of the 1970s were mediocrities. Trudeau had little time for his generals, and starting in 1972 began a programme of "civilization",