Toronto Star - January 17, 2005
Waterloo Region Record - January 19, 2005
The Hill Times - January 24, 2005
Times-Colonist - January 24, 2005
The Gazette - January 30, 2005
By Colin Kenny
There is a perception that the Martin government is attempting to restore Canada’s military capacity to a level that would allow us to both defend ourselves and play a useful role in world affairs.
This perception could well be an illusion.
That would be disastrous for all Canadians, hawks and doves alike. Even traditionally dovish aid agencies, which once operated with a degree of impunity in danger zones abroad, are now recognizing that no target is off limits to modern bandits, corrupt governments and terrorist zealots. Good works will simply not get done in tumultuous places unless those who do them have protection.
Canada will never be a warrior nation. But we must be able to defend when defence is needed, and we must be able to help when help is required. In recent years we have been too militarily diminished to sustain these dual capacities.
The Martin government seemed to recognize from its inception that the hollowing out of Canada’s military during the Chrétien years was a mistake, and that rehabilitation should begin.
The new government got off to an encouraging start with two gestures. For a start, the prime minister promised to recruit 5,000 new troops. As well, the military is to some degree being allowed to do what our Senate Committee on National Security and Defence recommended two years ago: drastically reduce overseas military deployments in order to retrain and refurbish for an effective 21st century armed forces.
But commitments do not become realities without adequate funding. Our committee also recommended in 2002 that there be an immediate infusion of $4 billion to the annual budget of the defence department budget, with adjustments for inflation in each subsequent year. Other analysts came up with figures that, over time, were very similar to ours.
The government responded by treading water. Mr. Martin’s regime did increase the defence budget by $1.45 billion, but a good part of that was siphoned off for new operations in Afghanistan and Haiti, then $144 million went down the drain as part of a government-wide reallocation process.
If the Committee’s recommendation had been adopted, Canada’s defence budget would be approximately $17.3 billion, which would have put us 21st out of 26 NATO nations in per-capita defence spending. Instead the sum is $13.28 billion, meaning the $4 billion gap remains in place, and our per-capita NATO ranking remains third-last out of 26, ahead of Luxembourg and Iceland.
The issue of financing brings us to the recruitment of new troops. Our committee originally saw the commitment for 5,000 new troops (and 3,000 new reserves) as the beginning of what would have to be a longer-term initiative, which would make the size of the armed forces correspond to the kinds of duties that they have been called upon to perform in recent years.
Our committee – supported by a wide array of defence analysts – is certain that Canada needs at least 75,000 effective troops to meet its domestic and international obligations. The word effective is important here. Canada currently has 62,000 authorized troops, but because of various factors – people on sick leave, people on courses, failure to recruit for some essential positions – we really only have 53,000 effective troops at any give time.
Bringing in 5,000 more would help, but still leave us well short of full muster. About 30 per cent short. And that’s only if the government quietly dropped the idea of restricting all the new recruits to the role of “peacekeepers”, which hasn’t proven to be a workable concept since Cyprus.
Still, it would at least have been a start if these 5,000 new troops had arrived on the scene within a year or two of the promise. But committee members got a shock in December when Vice-Admiral Ron Buck, Vice Chief of the Defence Staff at the Department of National Defence, appeared before us.
First, he said the department has not begun to recruit the 5,000 promised troops. Second, he said that the armed forces do not currently have the resources to recruit 5,000 troops, let alone house and train them. Third, he said he would not begin recruitment until the government put the funding in place to support these things.
Even if the financing were put in place in this spring’s budget, he said, the best he could hope to do was absorb 5,000 new troops in a “five-year-or-so phase-in.” That would mean that in 2010, Canada would still be at least 30 per cent short if the money is in the upcoming budget to get started.
[Senator Tommy Banks: “Do you think we can expect to see those amounts in the budget which is forthcoming.” Vice-Admiral Buck: “I do not know.”]
What Vice-Admiral Buck does know is what the defence component of the
Government’s yet-unpublished International Policy Review says. The review was supposed to be published last November, but has been held up over the foreign policy component, not the defence component.
It is inconceivable that a military officer of Vice-Admiral Buck’s very senior rank has not read that part of the review. Knowing what the government’s plans are, he essentially told the committee that it is going to take at least until 2010 to climb one fifth of the way up a hill we need to climb.
What would happen, we asked, if the government did the right thing and brought in 5,000 troops right away, and then 5,000 more a few years down the road, and then, maybe, 5,000 more?
Then the military would “ramp up” to absorb these troops, he said, but emphasized that knowing ahead of time is all-important so the training and housing and equipment can be put in place to absorb everyone recruited.
Vice-Admiral Buck has seen the future, and the future obviously does not include anything more than 5,000 new troops, recruited in dribs and drabs.
When our committee recommended a “pause” in deploying troops for important international missions, we meant that Canada should be willing to absorb the international embarrassment of pulling back, in order to regroup. We did not mean that Canada should begin the process of shrinking into international insignificance.
If Mr. Martin’s commitment to military rejuvenation turns out to have been all talk, that what’s Canada’s reputation is going to be on the world stage: All talk. No walk.
Senator Kenny is Chair of the Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence he can be reached via email at: kennyco@sen.parl.gc.ca