By Colin Kenny
When Canadian politicians go abroad, they often speak eloquently. Canada’s top spokesmen are often spot on at identifying international problems. Just as often they are marvelously astute about suggesting what needs to be done to solve those problems.
When they are at home, however, Canadian politicians forget one key thing: there is more to solving international problems than throwing words at them. As the existentialists say, a person is the sum of that person’s acts, not his or her thoughts. The same thing goes for countries.
Here are just a few of the extremely thoughtful things that Prime Minister Paul Martin and Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew have had to say on international issues in recent weeks, with my abbreviated observations in brackets, without swear words or exclamation marks.
Mr. Martin:
“The ultimate human right is the right to personal security, and so the first duty of government must be to protect its citizens. That responsibility is being tested by an array of threats that is unprecedented in our times: rogue states, failing and failed states, international criminal syndicates, weapons proliferation, and terrorists prepared to act with no concern for the cost in human lives, including their own.”
[Exactly. But if the threat to our security is growing, and the state’s duty is to protect, why is the Canadian government listed with the dregs of NATO members in per-capita expenditure on its armed forces, and why has Canada’s foreign aid budget dropped so dramatically over the past two decades?]
Mr. Martin:
“Once protected by oceans, today’s front line stretches from the streets of Kabul, to cities in the United States, from the rail lines in Madrid, to cities across Canada.”
[Precisely. But if that be the case, why is Canada taking to painfully long to
significantly upgrade surveillance and domain awareness on our coasts and on the Great Lakes, to dovetail the defence of North America with Washington, to increase our emergency preparedness response capacity . . . the list goes on.]
Mr. Martin:
“We have almost 2,000 troops in Afghanistan . . . and we still have major deployments in the Balkans, the Persian Gulf and Haiti. The fact is, Canada currently ranks second among NATO nations when it comes to the percentage of troops deployed abroad in multi-national operations.”
[Those words were spoken nine months ago, in Washington. Our troop level has since been cut in half in Afghanistan, and our commitments in the Balkans are no longer major. There is a good reason we ranked second in NATO nine months ago in terms of percentage of troops deployed abroad: our politicians had committed far too high a percentage of our under-sized military in the field. That meant that weren’t enough at home recuperating and training. That led to burnout. Our deployment percentage has since become somewhat more reasonable as the military attempts to regroup.]
Mr. Martin:
“ . . . in North America, we must protect our borders. I can assure you that Canada will do more than its share.”
[We could start by revamping the Canadian Coast Guard, so that it actually guards coasts – like its U.S. counterpart. Ours is unarmed, and preoccupied with other duties. We could start putting adequate personnel on U.S.-Canadian border crossings, so guards aren’t falling asleep and crossings aren’t getting rammed in record numbers. We just need to start doing our share, not more than our share.]
Then, we have Mr. Pettigrew, speaking recently on the subject of genocide, and the need for responsible countries to ensure that governments are not allowed destroy large elements of their own populations: “We failed [in Rwanda] . . . our international community made mistakes . . . but what is important is that we learn from them and that we move on. And that's why I'm so proud that Canada has been promoting the “Responsibility to Protect,” that will make it easier for the United Nations to intervene in countries, rather than just saying: "Well, it's their sovereignty, whatever they do." You know, we were not equipped to react all the time, in the past.”
Yes, but wouldn’t the world be better equipped to move in and protect if Canada were pulling its weight in terms of putting a reasonable percentage of our very healthy GDP into military preparedness? Genocides cannot be prevented with words and international agreements alone. Outsiders with guns in their hands will often need to intervene.
As chair of the Senate Committee on National Security and Defence, I offer the following advise to Canadians: Watch the upcoming federal budget. Our military should be being funded at between $17-18 billion a year, which would still put us well below the NATO median. There has been a shortfall of at least $4 billion for some years now. See if that changes dramatically, But don’t hold your breath,
Douglas Bland, Chair of Defence Management Studies at Queen’s University, attributes the disconnect between Canadian politicians’ words and actions to a “never-never” mentality:
“There is no real benchmark or statute that propels [Canadian] politicians in any particular direction, nor have they been wed to commitments as military officers might define them. Their judgment . . . rests on two historic assumptions: there are no threats, and if there are any, no strategy invested by Canadians could redress them. [Our] political leaders direct and manage defence policy sporadically from crisis to crisis and issue to issue, free from the fetters of any national strategy.”
That doesn’t sound like what Mr. Martin and Mr. Pettigrew have been telling the world about our commitment to an intelligent military strategy. But it does sound like what has been happening for well over a decade now.
Will the final version of the government’s international policy review – and this spring’s federal budget – change Douglas Bland’s depressing assessment of the federal government’s approach to national security?
Don’t just listen to the words. Like the ones above, they always sound good. Count the money, carefully, and take note of how quickly it is to be spent.
Senator Kenny is chair of the Senate Committee on National Security and Defence. He can be reached via email at kennyco@sen.parl.gc.ca