ANALYSIS | More than a decade ago, the army had a plan to rebuild. It went nowhere | 24CA News
Ottawa is a metropolis of plans. Many plans. Sometimes you discover there are plans to have a plan. But because the outdated Scottish poem says, “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men often go awry.”
More than a decade in the past, as Canada’s battle in Afghanistan was grinding to its conclusion, a plan was drawn as much as rebuild, refresh and re-equip the military for the long run.
It withered and died over a number of years — a sufferer of fixing defence fashions, budgets, inter-service and inter-departmental bureaucratic warfare and political indifference.
Parts of the plan have been resurrected, however in true bureaucratic vogue, these components have languished someplace at the hours of darkness recesses of the Department of National Defence and Public Services and Procurement Canada.
Several of the important thing weapons programs within the 2010 plan — ground-based air defence, trendy anti-tank programs and long-range artillery — are among the many objects the Liberal authorities is now urgently making an attempt to purchase, simply as different allied nations additionally scramble to arm themselves towards a resurgent Russia.
In November, a senior defence planner informed a convention that it might take as much as 18 months to land among the much less complicated objects on Ottawa’s want checklist. In the meantime, Canadian troops in Latvia staring throughout the border at a wounded, unpredictable Russian Army should make do — or depend on allies.
Gen. Wayne Eyre, chief of the defence employees, stated in an interview with 24CA News broadcast this week that the brand new tools “cannot arrive fast enough.”
The army is in search of ground-based air defence programs to protect troopers towards assault helicopters, low-flying jets and missiles. It’s looking for anti-tank weapons just like the U.S.-made Javelin, which the Ukrainians have used to lethal impact towards the Russians. It’s making an attempt to supply higher digital warfare programs and weapons to counter bomb-dropping drones.
The urgency of Eyre’s remarks factors to the apparent query: If there was a plan to purchase a few of this tools, what occurred to it?
Former Conservative defence minister Peter MacKay signed off on the proposal to reconstitute the military post-Afghanistan and set in movement a sequence of plans. He launched procurement initiatives for medium-sized combating automobiles — the type the U.S. is now supplying to Ukraine to beat again the Russian invasion. Also on MacKay’s procuring checklist have been ground-based air defence programs, anti-tank weapons and long-range rocket artillery programs such the U.S. HIMAR — one other donated weapon Ukrainian troops have used to assist stem the onslaught.
“It was quite a robust, detailed plan with short, medium and long term goals,” MacKay informed 24CA News in an interview. “The close combat vehicle (CCV) was a big part of that … There was obviously a need to replace and complement some of the long-range artillery that we use in Afghanistan.”
Former military commander and lieutenant-general Andrew Leslie, who additionally served as a Liberal MP between 2015 and 2019, was one of many authors of the 2010 rebuilding proposal. He stated it was meant to cowl gaps the army had seen develop in the course of the counter-insurgency battle in Afghanistan.
“This was not something that was dreamt up in isolation. They were planned, programmed and sequenced [for delivery] between the year 2010 up to around 2020,” Leslie informed 24CA News. “I kind of wish that people had followed through.”
‘The plan appeared to get picked aside’
Within a 12 months of agreeing on the plan, Leslie moved on from the military commander’s job after which out of the army. MacKay was shuffled to the justice minister’s portfolio. Another champion of the proposal, former chief of the defence employees common Walt Natynczyk, retired across the identical time.
After 2013, MacKay stated, “the plan seemed to get picked apart, and almost put to one side. So it never came to fruition.”
He stated that whereas the present Liberal authorities, in its 2017 defence coverage, resurrected some components of the proposal, the proposal is usually “sitting there on a shelf somewhere, unfortunately.”
The final main component of the proposal — the acquisition of 108 close-combat automobiles — was cancelled by the Conservative authorities of Prime Minister Stephen Harper in late 2013. The chief of the defence employees on the time, the now-retired common Tom Lawson, stated that the “Canadian Armed Forces do not procure capabilities unless they’re absolutely necessary to the attainment of our mandate.”
The angle of ‘we’re not going to purchase it until it is completely crucial’ has been shared by each Liberal and Conservative governments because the finish of the Cold War, stated MacKay.
While he stated the federal government’s pursuit of a balanced finances on the time was a worthy one, rebuilding army capability is seldom a authorities precedence in peacetime — even when it is sensible.
It’s one of many causes the Canadian Army went right into a desert battle in Afghanistan sporting inexperienced camouflage fatigues and in unarmoured automobiles.
A cycle of failure
Leslie has turn into decidedly jaded about politicians’ guarantees to revive the armed forces to combating energy.
“Liberals and Conservatives both have found a neat trick of telling Canadians that they are increasing defence spending, that the capabilities are on the horizon, but then somehow never getting around to fine-tuning the various procurement systems so that the money gets out the door,” he stated.
When these procurement programs fail to ship the products, Leslie stated, the politicians say, “‘Hey, we told them they could have their money. They just couldn’t spend it in time.'”
“And of course,” he added, “at the end of the year, the cycle [of handing back unspent money to the federal treasury] starts.
“You know, after 20 to 25 years of this, you start to suspect that it is deliberate.”
Politics aside, MacKay said the system itself is to blame.
“There is a competing and virtually intractable angle between departments like public works that need to by some means design an ideal, impenetrable contract that can rise up towards any problem,” MacKay said.
“The Department of Industry Canada needs each nut and bolt and washer made in Canada. And after all, not surprisingly, the Canadian Armed Forces need the perfect potential tools that typically is not there on the shelf, and positively takes time to construct and procure.”
And not everyone agrees on what the military really needs — even within the defence establishment itself.
Eyre’s recent warnings about the precarious geopolitical climate are “in all probability slightly overstated,” said Lawson, who suggested his successor was simply doing his job and advocating for the military.
“There is one thing else at play right here that’s actually grave and necessary to Gen. Eyre,” Lawson told CBC’s Power & Politics this week.
“The predominant duty of each chief of defence is … to be sure that the Canadian army has sufficient folks, the suitable numbers of individuals, that they’re geared up to an applicable stage and that they’re educated and offering the readiness that the federal government may have.”
Jan. 3, 2023 – Retired general Tom Lawson, a former chief of the defence staff, discusses comments current Chief of Defence Staff General Wayne Eyre made in a year-end interview. Plus, the Power Panel debates the possible political implications of holiday travel headaches.
Lawson’s remarks drew a sharp response from Leslie, who said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is unprecedented and has upended the global order.
“The world is now rather more harmful than it has been at every other time throughout my lifetime,” he said. “Far extra harmful than the Cold War. So I imagine Gen. Eyre’s feedback are balanced and affordable, and I believe common Lawson is totally and completely incorrect.”
What defence expert Dave Perry is struggling to understand is why the equipment the Liberals are scrambling to buy now — the air defence and anti-tank weapons they identified as important in their defence policy five years ago — haven’t been purchased already.
“There was a sequence of initiatives that have been funded and coverage authorized in [the defence policy document] which was revealed in the summertime of 2017,” Perry said.
“So I do discover it actually curious that variations of these are actually being pursued on an pressing operational foundation for Latvia, when there’s been authorized initiatives, with cash hooked up to them, on the books for 5 and a half years.”
‘A lack of urgency’
Senior defence and procurement officials, testifying before Parliament last year, said they were proud of their record of delivering equipment under the current defence policy.
Perry begs to differ and points to the rising pile of unspent capital in the defence budget.
“There’s urgency now,” Perry said. “But I believe, partly, Canada ended up within the scenario on account of an absence of urgency within the previous five-plus years.”
Leslie takes a more tough-minded view.
“I used to be the military commander for 4 years on the peak of the Afghan battle. So I had a entrance row seat to the assorted influencers, and their shenanigans regarding defence procurement,” he said.
“Tragically, it wasn’t till Canadians began dying in Afghanistan that an excessive amount of focus and vitality was positioned on defence procurement. And the paperwork was informed in no unsure phrases — woe betide any of you who slowed down applications that induced extra troopers to die as a result of they did not have the tools they wanted.”
