June 10, 2008 - Globe & Mail
By Colin Kenny
Don’t get me wrong, General Rick Hillier is for real: a man among men, an inspirational leader and a Newfoundlander to boot. He’s as close as you’re going to get to a Canadian folk hero these days.
But if you think Gen. Walt Natynczyk, who is taking over as Canada’s Chief of Defence Staff from Gen. Hillier, is going to have big boots to fill, you’re only half right. He is also going to have big boots to repair.
The Hillier brand sells well: here is a rugged, no-nonsense straight-talker who has a built a reputation for staring down politicians and led Canada out of what he describes as a “decade of darkness” for the Canadian Forces.
I credit Hillier for instilling new pride among Forces personnel, and for restoring respect for the Forces among Canadians generally.
He has rightly prodded the Harper government to provide at least some of the equipment those troops so desperately need to survive the conflict in Kandahar – conflict that Gen. Hillier concedes is proving to be much more dangerous than he expected.
Under Hillier, the Canadian Forces have also added warrior credentials to peacekeeper credentials. That has come at a real financial and human cost, but toughness matters in the realpolitik of international affairs.
So, with all those positives, why is Canada’s military in bad need of repair? Two reasons: Steven Harper and Rick Hillier.
First, the General. When Gen. Hillier took over he promised to grow and transform the Canadian Forces even as Canada played a significant role overseas in one or more places like Afghanistan
To accomplish his vision, he was going to need two things: a transformation plan and money. Unfortunately, Gen. Hillier’s tranformation plan was flawed. Worse, he couldn’t convince Mr. Harper to give him the money he need to run the military, let alone tranform it.
Gen. Hillier’s transformation plan superimposed an American-style blueprint to the Canadian military. Until a few years ago the Canadian Forces had a Chief of Defence Staff, a Deputy Chief of Defence staff in charge of all operations, domestic and foreign, and a Vice-Chief of Defence Staff who took care of internal issues and long-term planning. They pretty well did their jobs and stayed out of each other’s way.
The new system featured a Chief of Defence Staff, Gen. Hillier, and four commands reporting to him – in layman’s terms, Canada Command, Overseas Command, Supply Command and Special Operations Command. Each built up its own sizable bureaucracy, draining the Forces of senior personnel needed for training and commanding troops. On top of that, Gen. Hillier’s staff grew to more than 100 and too often micromanaged what should have been the work of the four commands.
Unfortunately, Canada’s military is too small to carry an American-style command structure. Turf wars and duplication have abounded. A report brought down by three former senior officers recommended the new setup be blown up – but not until after the Olympics and Afghanistan were out of the way, to avoid further disruption for the time being.
Anyone who thinks such organizational details are not newsworthy should understand that this muddle has created major problems for the Canadian Forces, and Gen. Hillier’s successor is going to have to untangle them or face unsustainable financial and personnel problems.
Meanwhile, Canada’s commitment in Afghanistan has been sucking the marrow out of Force’s bones. Skilled trades have been leaving for domestic jobs, recruitment has barely kept up with attrition, and the Government cut its commitment to increase the Forces’ regulars by 15,000 to 10,000, and cut its commitment to increase the Reserves to 10,000 all the way down to 1,000.
The Harper Government has announced that it will increase military spending by 1.5 percent per year until 2011, at which point increases will rise to 2 per cent annually.
Even if military costs rose at the same level as the Consumer Price Index, military spending would probably shrink every year under this plan, in terms of spending real dollars adjusted for inflation.
But military costs increase more quickly than the Consumer Price Index, primarily because of ever-advancing technology, so spending after adjustments are made for inflation will shrink even more. We need to hold defence spending at a reasonable percentage of GDP like other countries do, but we just keep losing ground.
There aren’t a lot of votes in defence spending, and this government, which likes to parade around in fatigues, is the latest in a string of governments to starve Canada’s military. Consider this: Pierre Elliott Trudeau was considered an enemy of the military, but some of his military budgets hit 2 percent of GDP. Canada’s current spending is 1.2 per cent of GDP – well below most middle-sized countries with similar interests and second-lowest in NATO.
I estimate that this Government’s stated budget plan for defence will drop that percentage to .87 percent in 10 years. The Conference of Defence Associations estimates that the percentage could fall as low as .77 percent in 15 years.
In this year’s strategic needs reports, all three branches of the Forces projected dire deficiencies in their capacities to operate into the future under current funding projections. Whether you are a pacifist or a war-monger or somewhere in between, you should know that you can’t defend your country’s sovereignty and advance its interests in this world for pennies on the dollar.
This government will point to all kinds of expenditures it has made on expensive equipment without pointing to expenditures that it hasn’t made that are desperately needed. It will tell you that 1.5 percent and 2 percent annual expenditure increases are reasonable. But they are not reasonable when they won’t even keep up with inflation, let alone get us out of the defensive hole that Canada is quickly falling into.
The Government instead should be committing to spending 2 percent of GDP on defence, which would create a military budget of $35 billion in 2012. The Government’s current blueprint won’t get us to that figure until 2028. That means 16 years of serious underfunding.
Anyone who thinks that Gen. Hillier succeeded in pushing this government into revitalizing the Canadian military had better do the math.
Colin Kenny is Chair of the Senate Committee on National Security and Defence. He can be reached via email at kennyco@sen.parl.gc.ca