Spending

by **Trooper** Tue 27 Feb 2018, 6:34 pm

Federal budget shores up cyber defences but is silent on new jets and warships

Spending plan is Ottawa’s acknowledgement the nature of war is changing

Murray Brewster · CBC News · Posted: Feb 27, 2018

The new federal budget focuses on ones and zeros over tanks and troops by pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into new and improved cyber and national security defences.

Several federal departments will not only see upfront cash but promises of long-term spending to counter both the threat of hackers — state-sponsored and otherwise — and cyber-criminals.

National Defence, by comparison, is seeing virtually nothing in terms of new spending on the nuts and bolts of the military, other than initiatives outlined in the recently tabled national defence policy.

The 2018 budget is, on the surface, a tacit acknowledgement that the nature of threats to national security — the nature of modern warfare itself — is changing.

The budget recycles the government's $3.6 billion pledge last December to provide veterans with the option of a pension for life and better services.

But cyber-security was, by far, the headline national security measure in the budget.

Finance Minister Bill Morneau's fiscal plan sets aside $750 million in different envelopes — much of it to be spent over five years — to improve cyber security and better prepare the federal government to fend off online attacks and track down cyber-criminals.

More for CSE

It also promises an additional $225 million, beginning in 2020-21, to improve the capacity of the country's lead electronic intelligence agency, the Communications Security Establishment, to gather foreign signals intelligence.

The Liberals will soon pass new national security legislation — C-59 — and CSE will receive important new powers and responsibilities to disrupt global cyber threats.

"These are brand new tools. They're going to need lots of resources — technological resources, personnel resources — to engage in those kinds of operations," said Wesley Wark, a University of Ottawa professor and one of the country's leading experts on cybersecurity and intelligence, in an interview prior to the budget.

The sense of urgency about getting the country's cyber-security house in order is being driven in part by the fallout from Russian hacking and meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, said a former assistant parliamentary budget officer.

"With what we've seen south of the border, I think cyber-security and cyber-threat has been elevated in this budget to a high-priority item," said Sahir Khan, now the executive vice president of the Institute of Fiscal Studies and Democracy.

The budget creates two new entities to deal with online threats.

The first, the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, will assemble all of the federal government's cyber expertise under one roof — a plan that will require new legislation.

The second organization will be run by the RCMP and be known as the National Cybercrime Coordination Unit.

It will coordinate all cybercrime investigations and act as a central agency to which the public can report incidents.

The budget also includes cash for Public Safety's National Cyber Strategy, which not only aims to protect federal government networks but is meant to collaborate with the corporate financial and energy sectors to boost their defences.

Military procurement a work in progress

The budget's dearth of new spending on the real-world military — at a time of significant global insecurity — is due to reasons that are partly political and partly organizational, said Khan.

The former Conservative government's inability to deliver on promises of new equipment during its nine-year tenure was a political "albatross around its neck," he said.

The Liberals may have produced a clear defence policy but they have yet to straighten out the procurement system, he added.

The Trudeau government has promised a lot of military capital spending down the road. Khan said it seems determined to keep the issue out of the spotlight in the meantime.

What's missing from the new budget is a clear commitment that National Defence will get the cash it needs as those needs arise.

"I think there was a lot of clarity in the policy direction coming out of the government [defence] white paper," said Khan. "What a lot of us are trying to understand is whether the money … is accompanying that change in direction … so that DND has a stable footing to meet its needs."

He said he still has questions about whether promised future spending on fighter jets and warships has been baked into the federal government's long-term fiscal plans.

A senior federal official, speaking on background prior to the release of the budget, insisted that military capital spending is welded into fiscal plans going forward into the 2030s.

Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan has said repeatedly, since the strategy was released last June, that the defence plan was "fully costed" into the future.

Up until 2016, National Defence produced an annual list of planned defence purchases.

The Liberals promised to produce their own list of planned acquisitions and table it this year. Khan said it "needs to be presented to Parliament and the public."

Training and retaining?

The cyber initiatives in Monday's budget drew a mixed response from the high-tech sector.

On the one hand, the Council of Canadian Innovators praised budget signals that suggest the Liberals are open to dealing with home-grown companies rather than buying off-the-shelf from major U.S. firms.

"The imperative to build domestic cyber capacity is not just economic. It's existential," said Benjamin Bergen, the council's executive director.

"Without a domestic capacity in cyber we risk becoming a client state. Innovators welcome the announcement of a new Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, which will allow for information sharing between the public and private sector."

What the budget didn't offer was a clear commitment to training and retaining highly-skilled software engineers and IT professionals.

"We would have liked to have seen a retention strategy. There wasn't one," said Bergen. "We know Canada produces amazing graduates but we're struggling to keep that talent here."

The council estimates there will be up to 200,000 job openings in high-tech by 2020, which will put pressure on the industry and on the federal government as it bulks up its cyber capability.

Adam Froman, CEO of the Toronto-based data collection firm Delvinia, was blunt when asked if the federal government will be able to fill all of the cyber-security job openings created by this budget.

"They're not going to be able to. Plain and simple," he said. "Or they're going to have to outsource those jobs to foreign companies."

CBC News

by **Trooper** Tue 06 Mar 2018, 8:11 pm

What’s happening to
Canada’s defence spending?

Opinion: Despite a policy overhaul, the 2018 budget has set out virtually no new spending for the fundamentals of Canada’s military. That’s a problem.

By Ken Hansen

Mar 6, 2018

Military personnel prepare for the departure of CF-18 Hornets in support of Operation IMPACT, in Cold Lake, Alberta on Tuesday October 21, 2014.

Ken Hansen is an independent defence and security analyst and owner of Hansen Maritime Horizons. Retired from the navy in 2009 in the rank of commander, he is a member of the Science Advisory Committee for Atlantic Oceans Research Enterprise and a contributor to the Security Affairs Committee for the Royal United Services Institute.

You really have to dig into Equality+Growth, the Liberal government’s 2018 budget document, to find any mention of defence spending at all. Only after more than 300 pages, in the Supplementary Information section, can you find a table that shows National Defence is the largest spender amongst government departments. At $25.5 billion, forecasted direct-program expenditures by National Defence will clock in at more than the next two departments—Indigenous Services Canada and the Canada Revenue Agency, which were both forecasted to spend $11.0 billion—combined.

The same table shows that the total for all direct programs spending from the government in 2018 will be $338.5 billion, so the defence part only comprises 7.53 per cent of that total. That seems minuscule until it’s compared with the $26.3 billion the government will pay covering the interest on the federal debt. Or—seen another way—given that the budget shortfall for 2018-19 is projected to be $18.1 billion, knowing what a significant portion of spending defence represents helps explain why it’s always a target for reduction.

Practically all Liberal governments of the past—and many Conservative ones too—have carved large amounts out of the defence budget to cut down on deficits. Recently, though, things have seemed different. Last year, the budget announced an eye-popping 70-per-cent increase to defence spending over the next decade, reaching $32.7 billion by the 2026/27 fiscal year, as part of the Liberals’ new defence policy, Strong, Secure, Engaged, released last year. This year, in addition to that significant top-line figure, there were some minor funding increases for the Defence Department; military family crisis centres will get $4 million over five years, plus $800,000 ongoing afterward. Operation IMPACT against ISIS will get $48 million over two years, but it will be refocused on security and stabilization efforts in Jordan and Lebanon. Work is ongoing to improve the military pension system and provide better care for disabled veterans.

So the likely course of action for the military leadership will be to hold their tongues and keep their heads down. But of course, there are problems—lots of them.

What was supposed to be a low-risk, two-year deployment to Afghanistan turned into the longest conflict in Canadian history. The army is broken and worn out. Beyond that, almost all major equipment systems are decades-old and the supporting infrastructure is in a deplorable state of disrepair. There are very great needs for increased defence spending just to rectify the material side of the house.

The human costs of Afghanistan have also been high. Suicide, depression and domestic violence are commonplace in the forces. Shortages of trained and effective members, most recently identified in the 2016 report of the Auditor General, have worsened. Recruitment targets are not being met and voluntary releases have continued to climb. Some military trades are now 20 per cent short of target manning levels. When five per cent short is considered a critical manpower shortage, 20 per cent is a catastrophe.

And most of the spending in this year’s budget is devoted to cybersecurity and cyberdefence; virtually no new spending has been set out for the fundamentals of Canada’s armed forces, including capital procurement.

When it comes to defence, absent a major threat, new capital program spending is always viewed as discretionary, meaning that Cabinet retains approval of all major programs and could reduce or eliminate them, even if recommended by Treasury Board. That was supposed to change with the Liberal defence policy, Strong, Secure, Engaged, released last year. The claim, made repeatedly by Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan, is that full lifecycle costs for all material needs were built into the new policy. However, the lack of capacity from within the department to administer major programs due to the lack of experienced military and public works program managers has already translated into reduced spending, despite the money carved out for them. “DND is on track to deliver barely better than half of the intended spending on new equipment and infrastructure,” wrote Dave Perry, vice president and senior analyst with Canadian Global Affairs, in a report in January. While some believe deferred spending will eventually be used as planned, I remain skeptical.

In the short term, the lack of new spending in the new budget means DND will have to make economical choices for interim replacements for worn-out ships, aircraft and vehicles. The air force’s interest in acquiring used fighters from Australia may fit this purpose. But the navy’s leasing of a converted container ship from Federal Fleet Systems for $700 million over five years for operational sustainment is a less convincing effort at economy; it cannot be used for combat missions, so it will also have limited effectiveness.

The lack of new spending is only exacerbated by the fact that the future of many of the military’s legacy systems is murky. The design for the navy’s future warship has not yet been chosen and the future of the submarine fleet is being put off for further review. The need for more modern fighters, helicopters and other aircraft is also being weighed against the use of unmanned drones. This project will have significant cost regardless of which is chosen; moving to new platforms and methods will require extensive testing and development, plus a host of retraining and reorganization measures, while failing to recognize a new transformational age of drone technology and remaining with expensive legacy systems will mean huge expenditures for capabilities that risk becoming immediately obsolete.

Procurement decisions will also inevitably be complex and come slowly. This means, in the mid-term, the air force will likely have to look for an economical solution to replace their aged fighters. The navy will need to be content so long as the money in the Shipbuilding Strategy is left untouched. The army will also have to buy time until benefits of a decade-long funding increase produce useful tools. All of the services will have a long list of immediate and critical needs if a major new operation is announced.

That’s not to say that the investment into cybersecurity isn’t welcome. For some, cyber threats and unconventional warfare methodologies and the state of our intelligence capabilities are more worrying than the state of our military, and with major conflict with Russia or China possible, investment into the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) is an overdue priority that’s finally being addressed. As Benjamin Bergen, the executive director of the Council of Canadian Innovators, said in a CBC report: “Without a domestic capacity in cyber, we risk becoming a client state.”

But if this strategic principle is valid, and it is taken to its logical conclusion, the need for nationally planned and generated capabilities to address security risks should apply equally to the defence, security and safety sectors, or we risk becoming a client state in other avenues, too. Buying off-the-shelf foreign products that do not reflect our own estimates of need will not prove economical, as DND’s instinct to “Canadianize” a foreign-designed system to suit our situation will make that choice expensive all the same.

To assure that Canada has an independent and self-sustaining military, a common-sense appreciation of what the future holds is urgently needed—and that starts with the planning exercise of the defence budget. While money has been set aside in the previous budget, the proven difficulties with doling that out and the lack of explicitly budgeted new spending risks hamstringing the military at a critical juncture.

http://www.macleans.ca/opinion/whats-happening-to-canadas-defence-spending/

by Cool~Way Tue 04 Apr 2023, 11:39 am

Battle looms between Canadian defence officials, decision-makers after federal budget

Published April 4, 2023

OTTAWA - A battle is brewing between Canadian defence officials and federal decision-makers as the Trudeau government looks for ways to save billions of dollars over the next few years.

Experts say last week's budget and the delays in a planned update to the defence policy are signs of this pending conflict, with ramifications for Canada's military and its international reputation.

The budget contains virtually no new defence funding, but does include several cost-cutting measures, notably an order for departments and agencies to identify ways to cut spending by three per cent over the next few years.

And while the government says the Canadian Armed Forces will be excluded from such cuts, it remains unclear the degree to which the exemption will extend to the Department of National Defence, which controls the military's budget.

"Regarding the reduction in eligible spending by departments and agencies, as indicated in Budget 2023, the reduction will not impact the Canadian Armed Forces," Finance Department spokeswoman Marie-France Faucher said in an email.

"This includes DND spending that is related to the Canadian Armed Forces."

That has left experts confused, given how intertwined the two organizations are, with much of the work of the Defence Department directly impacting military management, operations and procurement.

"I'm trying to think of what DND spending would be unrelated to the CAF," said David Perry, president of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute think tank and one of Canada's foremost authorities on military spending.

That confusion has been magnified by uncertainty around the Liberal government's plan to upgrade its defence policy, which was first released in 2017 and promised tens of billions in new funding for the military.

The Liberals announced the update in last year's budget and observers expected it by the fall, but it remains in limbo. Defence Minister Anita Anand recently announcing the launch of public consultations through April 30 to inform the update.

Officials across Ottawa have also been ordered to spend less on contractors, which Perry said will hit the Defence Department hard since it is one of the largest users of outside firms for the provision of engineering, logistical and management services.

That includes helping with the procurement of new military equipment.

All of this comes at a time when the government is facing pressure to put more money into other priorities, including health and dental care, clean energy and social programs for Canadians who are struggling -- while trying to keep spending under control.

Defence and military officials might be crossing their fingers that they will be saved from having to cut, said Canadian Forces College professor emeritus Craig Stone, another national authority on defence spending.

"But I cannot see the town agreeing to everyone else having to come up with three per cent and DND not," he said. "Just when you think about it, it's the largest discretionary spending bit for government."

The Defence Department's roughly $27-billion budget is not the largest in the federal government, but most of the others are required to spend the money on services and benefits to Canadians and other levels of government.

That doesn't mean defence spending is set to fall overall, as the government has promised to spend billions of additional dollars over the next few years on new fighter jets, warships, radar systems and other high-priced equipment.

Experts say it simply won't increase as much as previously expected, even though Canada's allies are pushing for the opposite.

The budget document says spending by the Defence Department will reach nearly $40 billion by 2026-27 as a result of those additional investments, but the government is not saying what that means as a share of Canada's gross domestic product.

Officials last year said the provisions in the 2022 federal budget would leave spending at 1.5 per cent of GDP by 2027.

That represents an increase over the 1.29 per cent last year, but will leave Canada far short of the two per cent target established by NATO allies -- and potentially heading the other way, depending on the cuts to the Defence Department.

Retired lieutenant-general Guy Thibault, head of the Conference of Defence Associations Institute think tank, said it suggests the Liberal government has different priorities -- and a willingness to accept the risks of not doing more for the military.

"It is obvious in the aftermath of (U.S. President Joe Biden's) visit and the messaging in this budget that the prime minister, deputy prime minister or cabinet are not convinced that more investments in defence will result in greater influence with the U.S. or allies," he said.

"And obviously they do not truly believe in the threats we are facing. This is simply a continuation of historical government practice of accepting the risk and spending the least amount on defence as they can possibly get away with."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 4, 2023

The Canadian Press

by **Replica** Tue 11 Jul 2023, 7:36 am

With Canadians struggling financially, Trudeau can safely ignore calls for more military spending

Canada still has one of the largest defence budgets of NATO nations and is ranked 14th in the world for military spending.

David Pugliese • Ottawa Citizen

Published Jul 11, 2023

Over the last several months, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has faced a public relations barrage over military spending.

Analysts and retired senior officers, many with links to National Defence or military equipment firms, have warned about a coming apocalypse facing the Canadian Forces.

Without an increase of some $20 billion a year extra for the military, the public has been told that Canada will become irrelevant. It could become a pariah among NATO nations. Canada is a laggard, a truant, an outlier, when it comes to defence spending.

Not included in the discussion is that Canada still has one of the largest defence budgets of NATO nations and is ranked 14th in the world for military spending. In addition, it is one of the top contributors to supporting Ukraine with some $8 billion so far, some of it for weapons.

In an effort to blunt more criticism expected at the NATO summit in Lithuania, which starts Tuesday, Trudeau announced a major commitment to the alliance. Canada will spend another $2.6 billion to double the number of troops it has stationed in Latvia, the prime minister announced Monday.

That may dampen the criticism, but it won’t go away. As Eric Van Rythoven, an instructor in the Department of Political Science at Carleton University, recently pointed out, “Complaints about the country’s lacklustre spending has become something of a time-honoured tradition.

“For the last two decades, Canadians have seen a variety of defence and security figures dramatically inflate threats well beyond a reasonable point,” he added in a May 1 article in The Conversation.

Van Rythoven is right. In the last several years, generals and defence analysts have pushed fantastical scenarios designed to generate fear among the public. In 2021 and 2022, those included the possibility Russian troops could land in Iqaluit or the Russians might launch a sneak missile attack on Toronto’s electrical grid. Retired general Rick Hillier falsely claimed the Canadian navy was so broke that every single one of its ships was confined to port because of a lack of fuel.

One of the highlights of the latest effort to push Trudeau on more military spending was an April 16 letter from the Conference of Defence Associations Institute, an organization that receives some funding from National Defence and military equipment firms. The letter prompted much media coverage. “Dozens of political and military luminaries call on Ottawa to stop backsliding on national defence,” the CBC headlined its article on the letter.

Among those signing the document were former defence ministers Peter MacKay and Jason Kenney, members of the Conservative government that actually cut defence dollars.

The Prime Minister’s Office examined the letter and noted some of those who signed were also part of the country’s defence lobby; a number of the retired generals are consultants to or involved with military equipment firms.

“I think it is really important for people in various industries to advocate for their sectors and industries,” Trudeau said in response to the letter. “As everyone knows, governments are challenged with a whole bunch of different priorities.”

Retired Vice-Admiral Mark Norman, also a signatory to the letter, defended the initiative, claiming most of those who signed had nothing to do with the defence industry. (Norman is listed as a senior defence strategist for Samuel Associates, a government consultancy firm that boasts it can help firms sell defence equipment and services to the Canadian government.)

Norman told CBC Radio the letter is from “an association of primarily veterans’ organizations that’s advocating for security and defence issues — they’re not advocating for the defence industry.”

“I believe that defence and security, if not at the top of the list of priorities, needs to be near the top of priorities and it shouldn’t be subject to the ebb and flow of popular opinion,” Norman added in the CBC interview aired April 22.

But despite Norman’s suggestion, Canadians do get a say in how their tax dollars are spent.

If anything, it could be argued by critics that the letter from the so-called defence luminaries revealed just how out of touch they are with their fellow Canadians.

The average Canadian is struggling to meet their rent or buy groceries. A report released in October 2022 found a record number of Canadians are now relying on food banks. There are a growing number of homeless on our streets. Medical services are faltering, with emergency departments temporarily closing. Six million Canadians are without a family doctor.

A report from Statistics Canada released July 4 revealed a rapidly widening wealth gap between the rich and the poor.

In addition, climate change is ravaging parts of the country. The recent forest fires forced 155,000 Canadians to flee their homes. The 2022 heat dome in British Columbia killed more than 500 people.

It’s these types of concerns that are the priority for Canadians, not defence spending, argues Van Rythoven.“If politicians can’t speak to how Canadians actually feel and experience insecurity, citizens won’t listen to them on defence and security issues,” he wrote.

Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper ignored the NATO spending guideline despite signing on to the initiative in 2014. Instead, he cut defence spending.

Trudeau, like Harper, will probably be able to ignore the NATO spending guidance with few actual consequences.

Of course, there will be admonishments from allies and opinion articles and hand-wringing from media outlets, defence analysts and retired generals.

But NATO won’t reject the extra troops Canada is offering. The U.S. won’t reject the tens of billions of dollars in military equipment orders coming from Canada to U.S. firms, ensuring Americans in that country’s defence industry continue to have decent jobs.

David Pugliese is an award-winning journalist covering Canadian Forces and military issues in Canada. To support his work, subscribe: ottawacitizen.com/subscribe

Defence Watch

by Enforcer Thu 27 Jul 2023, 11:33 am

'I hope the Canadians are watching': U.S. senator tees off on Canada's military spending

Alexander Panetta · CBC News · Posted: Jul 27, 2023

CBC News

by **Braven** Fri 29 Sep 2023, 7:27 am

Federal government looking to cut $1 billion from National Defence budget

Just weeks ago, government endorsed NATO pledge to hit 2 per cent spending benchmark

Murray Brewster · CBC News · Posted: Sep 29, 2023

Spending Canada-military-army-armed-forces-cfb-kingston-generic-stock

CBC News

by Garrison Tue 21 Nov 2023, 11:30 am

The Liberals' defence policy hits a fiscal wall

The department is facing spending cuts at a time of growing global volatility

Murray Brewster · CBC News · Posted: Nov 21, 2023

CBC News

by Cypher Tue 19 Mar 2024, 5:04 pm

Canadians are finally waking up to the funding crisis that’s sent the Canadian Armed Forces into a “death spiral”: J.L. Granatstein for Inside Policy

Must we wait for Trump to attack free trade between Canada and the US before our politicians get the message that defence matters to Washington?

By J.L. Granatstein, March 18, 2024

Nations have interests – national interests – that lay out their ultimate priorities. The first one for every country is to protect its population and territory. It is sometimes hard to tell, but this also applies to Canada. Ottawa’s primary job is to make sure that Canada and Canadians are safe. And Canada also has a second priority: to work with our allies to protect their and our freedom. As we share this continent with the United States, this means that we must pay close attention to our neighbouring superpower.

Regrettably for the last six decades or so we have not done this very well. During the 1950s, the Liberal government of Louis St. Laurent in some years spent more than 7 percent of GDP on defence, making Canada the most militarily credible of the middle powers. His successors whittled down defence spending and cut the numbers of troops, ships, and aircraft. By the end of the Cold War, in the early 1990s, our forces had shrunk, and their equipment was increasingly obsolescent.

Another Liberal prime minister, Jean Chrétien, balanced the budget in 1998 by slashing the military even more, and by getting rid of most of the procurement experts at the Department of National Defence, he gave us many of the problems the Canadian Armed Forces face today. Canadians and their governments wanted social security measures, not troops with tanks, and they got their wish.

There was another factor of significant importance, though it is one usually forgotten. Lester Pearson’s Nobel Peace Prize for helping to freeze the Suez Crisis of 1956 convinced Canadians that they were natural-born peacekeepers. Give a soldier a blue beret and an unloaded rifle and he could be the representative of Canada as the moral superpower we wanted to be. The Yanks fought wars, but Canada kept the peace, or so we believed, and Canada for decades had servicemen and women in every peacekeeping operation.

There were problems with this. First, peacekeeping didn’t really work that well. It might contain a conflict, but it rarely resolved one – unless the parties to the dispute wanted peace. In Cyprus, for example, where Canadians served for three decades, neither the Greek- or Turkish-Cypriots wanted peace; nor did their backers in Athens and Ankara. The Cold War’s end also unleashed ethnic nationalisms, and Yugoslavia, for one, fractured into conflicts between Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, Christians, and Muslims, leading to all-out war. Peacekeepers tried to hold the lid on, but it took NATO to bash heads to bring a truce if not peace.

And there was a particular Canadian problem with peacekeeping. If all that was needed was a stock of blue berets and small arms, our governments asked, why spend vast sums on the military? Peacekeeping was cheap, and this belief sped up the budget cuts.

Even worse, the public believed the hype and began to resist the idea that the Canadian Armed Forces should do anything else. For instance, the Chrétien government took Canada into Afghanistan in 2001 to participate in what became a war to dislodge the Taliban, but huge numbers of Canadians believed that this was really only peacekeeping with a few hiccups.

Stephen Harper’s Conservative government nonetheless gave the CAF the equipment it needed to fight in Afghanistan, and the troops did well. But the casualties increased as the fighting went on, and Harper pulled Canada out of the conflict well before the Taliban seized power again in 2021.

Harper’s successor, Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, clearly has no interest in the military except as a somewhat rogue element that needs to be tamed, made comfortable for its members, and to act as a social laboratory with quotas for visible minorities and women.

Is this an exaggeration? This was Trudeau’s mandate letter to his defence minister in December 2021: “Your immediate priority is to take concrete steps to build an inclusive and diverse Defence Team, characterized by a healthy workplace free from harassment, discrimination, sexual misconduct, and violence.” DND quickly permitted facial piercings, coloured nail polish, beards, long hair, and, literally, male soldiers in skirts, so long as the hem fell below the knees. This was followed by almost an entire issue of the CAF’s official publication, Canadian Military Journal, devoted to culture change in the most extreme terms. You can’t make this stuff up.

Thus, our present crisis: a military short some 15,000 men and women, with none of the quotas near being met. A defence minister who tells a conference the CAF is in a “death spiral” because of its inability to recruit soldiers. (Somehow no one in Ottawa connects the culture change foolishness to a lack of recruits.) Fighter pilots, specialized sailors, and senior NCOs, their morale broken, taking early retirement. Obsolete equipment because of procurement failures and decade-long delays. Escalating costs for ships, aircraft, and trucks because every order requires that domestic firms get their cut, no matter if that hikes prices even higher. The failure to meet a NATO accord, agreed to by Canada, that defence spending be at least 2 percent of GDP, and no prospect that Canada will ever meet this threshold.

But something has changed.

Three opinion polls at the beginning of March all reported similar results: the Canadian public – worried about Russia and Putin’s war against Ukraine, and anxious about China, North Korea, and Iran (all countries with undemocratic regimes and, Iran temporarily excepted, nuclear weapons) – has noticed at last that Canada is unarmed and undefended. Canadians are watching with concern as Ottawa is scorned by its allies in NATO, Washington, and the Five Eyes intelligence sharing alliance.

At the same time, official Department of National Defence documents laid out the alarming deficiencies in the CAF’s readiness: too few soldiers ready to respond to crises and not enough equipment that is in working order for those that are ready.

The bottom line? Canadians finally seem willing to accept more spending on defence.

The media have been hammering at the government’s shortcomings. So have retired generals. General Rick Hillier, the former chief of the defence staff, was especially blunt: “[The CAF’s] equipment has been relegated to sort-of-broken equipment parked by the fence. Our fighting ships are on limitations to the speed that they can sail or the waves that they can sail in. Our aircraft, until they’re replaced, they’re old and sort of not in that kind of fight anymore. And so, I feel sorry for the men and women who are serving there right now.”

The Trudeau government has repeatedly demonstrated that it simply does not care. It offers more money for the CBC and for seniors’ dental care, pharmaceuticals, and other vote-winning objectives, but nothing for defence (where DND’s allocations astonishingly have been cut by some $1 billion this year and at least the next two years). There is no hope for change from the Liberals, their pacifistic NDP partners, or from the Bloc Québécois.

The Conservative Party, well ahead in the polls, looks to be in position to form the next government. What will they do for the military? So far, we don’t know – Pierre Poilievre has been remarkably coy. The Conservative leader has said he wants to cut wasteful spending and eliminate foreign aid to dictatorial regimes and corrupted UN agencies like UNRWA. He says he will slash the bureaucracy and reform the procurement shambles in Ottawa, and he will “work towards” spending on the CAF to bring us to the equivalent of 2 percent of GDP. His staff say that Poilievre is not skeptical about the idea of collective security and NATO; rather, he is committed to balancing the books.

What this all means is clear enough. No one should expect that a Conservative government will move quickly to spend much more on defence than the Grits. A promise to “work towards” 2 percent is not enough, and certainly not if former US President Donald Trump ends up in the White House again. Must we wait for Trump to attack free trade between Canada and the US before our politicians get the message that defence matters to Washington? Unfortunately, it seems so, and Canadians will not be able to say that they weren’t warned. After all, it should be obvious that it is in our national interest to protect ourselves.

J.L. Granatstein taught Canadian history, was Director and CEO of the Canadian War Museum, and writes on military and political history. His most recent book is Canada’s Army: Waging War and Keeping the Peace. (3rd edition).

Macdonald Laurier

by Ironman Mon 08 Apr 2024, 4:42 pm

Canada pledges billions in new defence spending, but doesn't reach NATO's 2% commitment

New defence policy focuses on threats to Arctic, boosting military 'striking power'

Murray Brewster · CBC News · Posted: Apr 08, 2024

CBC News

by Geoman Tue 16 Apr 2024, 10:59 am

Critics attack long timelines in defence plan as military awaits a budget boost

Most of the spending outlined in the new defence policy is spread over decades

Murray Brewster · CBC News · Posted: Apr 16, 2024

Spending Canadian-troops-latvia-exercise

CBC News

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