At end of tour, every outfit for various countries were designing pins to show you saw combat and what not and Canada wasnt allowed to do what Americans, etc were doing because it would instantly show the officers for the cowards they were. Just Canadian military things.

I was overseas when the decision was made to shit-can the combat action badge. An NDHQ General came over to visit, and in the Q&A someone asked why they shit-canned it. His answer was "Because it would create a divide between the haves and the have-nots".

That is of course a stupid answer, because the same logic applies to medals, parachute wings, even rank insignia. The whole point of medals and specialist badges like parachute wings and marksman badges is to recognize soldiers for what they've done, and to provide an incentive to the have-nots to get off their asses and go earn some bling for their uniforms.

The real reason they shit-canned it was, as you said, because the vast majority of officers wouldn't get them (having never deployed on combat tours), and they're the ones who get to make the decision. And it simply wouldn't do to have an army of grunts with combat decorations, where none of the officers have them. In the army, combat experience is the biggest watershed. Having combat experience trumps pretty much everything else. And the officers know that, and therefore don't want to be trumped by their subordinates.

It's one thing to avoid combat duty, it's another thing altogether to avoid combat duty and then deny combat decorations to the people who did have the balls to go out and face the enemy on the battlefield. Fucking scum.