Ottawa Citizen - February 5, 2007
By Colin Kenny
So here's the situation. Canada's military, badly undernourished after long years of neglect, drafts a needs list. The list asks Canada's nearly new government for more money. It sets out three possible cost options for funding the Canadian Forces for the next two decades.
The most expensive option it presents calls for an increase of Canada's defence budget from the current level of $14.3 million a year to something between $35 billion and $36.5 billion a year by 2025.
That isn't enough, but the cheaper options are worse. Either would actually worsen Canada's already depleted military capacity.
The government would be better off arming the populace with slingshots than going with one of those two options.
I don't like this document (which I have seen, but which hasn't yet been made public) because it is presented in a way that could trick the public into thinking that the most expensive option it presents would give Canada a satisfactory level of national defence. It wouldn't.
The trick is that the funding option that would accomplish that end is nowhere to be found in this paper. What the paper does is to provide the government with a mechanism to make it look as if it is doing the right thing in meeting Canada's military needs over the next two decades.
Let's say the government dismisses the two cheap options and chooses the $36.5-billion spending level for 2025. In choosing the "expensive" option, it would come off as a government that has seen the perfidy of its neglectful predecessors (mostly Liberal) and has decided to take the high road and give the military the proper amount of money it needs to defend Canadians and their interests abroad.
But that would be sleight-of-hand, and here's why. The "expensive" option looks like big bucks at $36.5 billion a year, but that's because 2025 is so far away. In fact, given normal expansion of the economy over the next two decades, the $36.5-billion option would result in Canadians spending between 0.9 per cent and 1.3 per cent of Canada's GDP on defence. Well, guess what? We spend about 1.1 per cent now. Back in more reasonable times -- take the year 1991 -- we spent 1.6 per cent.
Every knowledgeable observer -- including representatives of this government -- has decried the terrible shape of the Canadian military while we are spending 1.1 per cent. They all agree that we will have to be more generous if we are to transform our military into a credible and sustainable defence force.
Does anybody really think we're going to achieve that goal by setting a target of between 0.9 per cent and 1.3 per cent of GDP by 2025? Not a hope.
Nobody I know wants to see Canada start pumping big bucks into international military adventures. But the more thoughtful among us do want Canada to be able to defend Canadians and to contribute to a more stable world.
Here's a comparison for you. The Netherlands is hardly a warrior nation. But the Netherlands -- a much easier country to defend than Canada -- spent $793 per person on defence in 2004. Canadians spent $420 per person.
Our committee, in setting out Canada's military spending needs in a report titled "Wounded" in late 2005, added up what would have to be spent to create a modern military -- nothing excessive, just what was needed -- and suggested that the most realistic target is $35 billion a year by 2012, with subsequent adjustments for inflation. That would amount to about two per cent of GDP -- much closer to what reasonable countries spend.
Delaying that level of spending until 2025 would mean another two decades of stretching our troops on a rack to perform the difficult tasks that politicians keep assigning them. It simply isn't fair to them to use smoke and mirrors to make Canada look like an effective performer on the world stage when the money isn't there to allow the military to do its job.
If we're going to defend ourselves, and help build a better world, it's going to cost money.
Recent Canadian governments haven't been cheap just when it comes to the military. Take a look at Canada's spending on foreign aid -- another important tool for promoting international stability. The average Norwegian spends $477 in government money a year on overseas development assistance. The average Canadian spends $80.
We think of ourselves as a moral country. The numbers connected to our military and foreign aid spending tell another story.
My take on the still-secret defence paper options -- and this is a personal view -- is that the military staff who prepared these options have either been told to lowball their real needs, or have censored themselves about what their own needs are. The latter is more likely.
For far too long, military brass has let Canadian Forces troops down by not going to bat with a succession of governments for what is really required to do the job. Why is our military so robust in the field and so limp at head office?
One thing is certain. If the options in this paper represent the most that General Rick Hillier, chief of the defence staff, believes he can get from the government in his avowed mission to expand Canada's armed forces and transform their capacity so they can fight modern battles, then he has made a real mistake in agreeing to send Canadian troops into the toughest part of Afghanistan.
If he is going to be short of resources to rebuild his military, Gen. Hillier should not have been so brave about volunteering Canada to take on dangerous Kandahar province, while other NATO troops gleefully made their way to more hospitable locations.
Kandahar is where the Taliban live, when they aren't hiding in the mountains of Pakistan. Kandahar is the toughest nut to crack in rebuilding Afghanistan. The most foreign troops get killed there -- so far it's 36 Canadian troops and one diplomat. Most other NATO countries won't send their troops there.
Some of us on the committee have been to Kandahar, a few of us more than once. All our members have studied the Afghan situation both in terms of what will be needed to succeed there, and in the context of how much operations in Afghanistan are likely to drain dollars and resources away from rebuilding Canada's military.
My own assessment is that the odds of "success" in Afghanistan are probably not good, given all the hurdles there are to overcome there. These include the Taliban's fierceness and resilience, its capacity to hide out in Pakistan, the high level of collateral damage that has been inflicted by Canadian missions (which causes major resentment within the local population), the massive amount of corruption within the government we are trying to rebuild, the feudal traditions that stand in the way of democracy, and the pathetic amount of support that Canadian troops are getting from our NATO allies.
If there is to be any chance of success, it is going to take more lives, a very large commitment of Canadian taxpayers' money, and incredible endurance. Do Canadians have the patience to stick with this for another couple of decades, when the outcome is dicey at best?
Last week the CBC reported on a paper that Gen. Hillier has written for the government, outlining what would constitute success for Canada in Afghanistan. His assessment is much the same as mine.
Success won't come unless the Afghan military and police are motivated by their responsibility to the government in Kabul, rather than by corruption and tribal loyalties. Success won't be possible until development projects start having a major impact on people's lives in places like Kandahar, and that won't bear fruit until the Taliban cease to be a threat to civil society there.
None of this is possible in the short term. Even a shot at success in Afghanistan is going to take decades, and that's if we can get our NATO allies to join us on the ground in fighting the Taliban, and help us train the very undisciplined Afghan military and police.
So, what to do?
Canada can't get out of Afghanistan until February 2009. Our government has committed at least to that date. If this government is not prepared to spend any more on the Canadian military than the $36.5-billion long-range projection for 2025, I believe that Canada should announce that it is going to get out of Afghanistan as soon as our commitment is up.
I want our mission to succeed in Afghanistan, so I would like Canada to hang in and keep chipping away at Afghanistan's problems. But if the Canadian military is not properly funded, the consequences of doing that could be debilitating for the Canadian Forces.
The government can't have it both ways. The priority of the current defence policy is supposed to be home defence -- North America. Yes, it is possible to build a military that can defend Canadians at home and take on major assignments overseas at the same time. But only if there is enough money in the military pot to do both jobs properly.
I can assure you that under any of the options currently being considered by this government, there won't be.
Colin Kenny is chair of the Senate standing committee on national security and defence. He can be reached via email at kennyco@sen.parl.gc.ca