The company can claim that there aren't enough 'command-ready' FO's to fill up their courses. They can convince Balpa of this too and to some extent it's true.
The reality is that there are a large amount of FO's who have the hours, meet the requirements, are perfectly capable but have not been scheduled their 'Assessment flights' for quite a while.
I'm one of them, and know personally many more.
If the company had been better organised, they could have rostered the 'assessment flights' over the last year and we'd be looking at a command this upcoming season instead of it being given to guys from Monarch.
However it's true, technically we're not 'command-ready' - we're stuck treading water until they schedule these flights and we can progress through the process.