I think the placement of the controls actually makes sense with basic military doctrine kept in mind. Even though the STANAG magazine well/mag release was an afterthought - if you try to apply Canadian military tests of elementary training (TOET's) and Canadian military immediate actions and stoppage drills - it's not unreasonable having the controls where they are even though it's a completely different rifle.
It's a bit fuzzy, but when I was in, Canadian soldiers were taught upon a stoppage to immediately cant the weapon to the right and inspect the ejection port. If the bolt is fully to the rear (mag empty) conduct a magazine change. If the bolt was partially to the rear (failure to extract, failure to feed/double feed), to attempt to clear it (attempt to engage the slide stop, remove the magazine, cycle the action, load the magazine, cycle the action, shoot). If the bolt was fully forward (failure to feed, misfire), to cycle the action and attempt to fire again.
I don't recall the training for rundowns (I only ever did 2), but I believe the key component was to engage the safety before advancing (maybe an infantryman can correct me). While this is awkward with the T97, there was a video in the black rifle forum showing the Chinese Army shooting team doing run downs and chambering a round AFTER they had run down and were at their firing position - even though it appeared they were shooting the newer QBZ-95-1 with the improved fire selector switch above the pistol grip.
It's different - but realistically, nothing is safer than running with a loaded mag in the magwell with no round in the chamber. That does add the complication that an infantryman would have to do a full unload/reload (minus chambering a round) if advancing from one position to the other (or engage the safety which, with the older model QBZ's is as awkard as it is with our T97's). I do think the older QBZ-95's fire selector was inverted from the one's North Sylvia delivered - maybe that's the mod that had to be made to get these things approved as non-restricted. (I don't know). Either way, while not optimal, I don't think the positioning of the safety is as big of a deal as everyone is making it out to be.
Furthermore, to the magazine release, if you adopt the doctrine to always inspect the chamber through the ejection port by canting the rifle to the left, the positioning of the right sided magazine release button actually isn't too awkward to reload from. Try it if you have one - shoulder the rifle with an empty mag, cycle and lock the action to the rear, cant the rifle to the left and look down the ejection port. Try doing a reload from that position using your STRONG (or weak hand) - it's not nearly as awkward as trying to do a reload with the rifle shouldered in a ready position, fumbling around to try to press the mag release, and from there, trying to do a reload with your weak hand. Both are doable, but it feels more natural to do the cant the rifle, strong hand reload.
Furthermore, without inspecting the chamber, there's no way to immediately identify what issue may have caused the stoppage - and if you go through the sequence of "firing, firing, firing, firing STOPS!" the time involved to attempt a magazine change without inspecting the chamber, realize the issue is a misfeed, remove the magazine, clear the misfeed, and reload the magazine is much more than upon stoppage, cant to the left, inspect the chamber, observe a misfeed, attempt to rack the action to attempt to clear the stoppage (as opposed to lock the action back - as this is not possible on a T97 with a loaded mag), if the stoppage doesn't clear, remove the magazine, cycle the action to clear, replace the magazine, cycle shoot.
I know this is also quite a bit different than the US army IA drill with the M16/M4 - which is some variant of Tap/Rack/Bang/Oh noes my rifle doesn't work, call a tech! (just kidding - it's here:
http://www.armystudyguide.com/content/army_board_study_guide_topics/m16a2/m16a2-study-guide.shtml) - but honestly, I do think Canadian soldiers are held to a higher standard than American's (and I'm sure most Canadians will corroborate that claim).
