National Post - August 18, 2008
By Colin Kenny
The 15th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica defines the Latin phrase argument ad hominem as “speaking against the man, rather than to the issue.” In other words, attacking the person who is saying something, rather than rather than trying poking holes in what the person is saying.
Last week the Senate Committee on National Security and Defence, which I chair, said something. In its report Four Generals and an Admiral it said that the current federal government is being dishonest in asserting that it is strengthening the Canadian Forces by providing the kind of long-term, stable funding they need after years of neglect.
The report did not suggest that previous Liberal governments had done any better job at giving Canadians the kind of military it needs to protect them and their interests at home and abroad. In fact the report pointed out that the Forces were badly neglected under those Liberal governments and that this government has been a disappointment because it has not repaired the damage.
The report did not say that the current Conservative government had not increased spending on the Canadian Forces. In fact this government has increased spending, but the budgetary formula in the Canada First Defence Plan will almost certainly turn into decreases – year after year – when inflation is taken into account.
The nut of the report’s argument is simple:
Prime Minister Harper’s government has committed itself to increasing defence spending by 1.5 percent annually until the fiscal year 2011-2012, at which time it has committed to increase spending by 2 percent annually. Given that most economists predict that Canadian inflation will run close to four percent in coming years, and that you can’t find an economist anywhere who will argue that it will run at two percent or lower – the Forces will actually lose money each year.
That is a disastrous scenario for an institution that came close to burning itself out on behalf of Canadians while the Liberals were draining it of money to fight the deficit, and which has been overwhelmed by the additional duties that it has been assigned in Afghanistan, initiated by the Liberals and extended by the Conservatives.
How did Defence Minister Peter McKay respond to this charge? With a withering counter-attack on the facts presented by the Committee?
Not quite. He e-mailed a press release to reporters that should have been titled Argumentum ad hominem from Peter McKay: "Liberal Sen. Colin Kenny's report is both disingenuous and inflammatory. This report only serves to highlight Sen. Kenny's hypocrisy, His Liberal party destroyed [Canadian Forces] morale and cut defence spending during what military officials deemed the decade of darkness."
So I am allegedly a hypocrite. And previous Liberal governments destroyed the Forces. Nothing so far on the economic argument that the Forces will lose ground under the Conservative budget ceilings.
Mr. McKay later said in an interview that this government has added $50 billion to defence spending. That’s a big figure, but when it is stretched over decades it becomes a much smaller figure. Still nothing on the central economic argument that the Forces will lose ground.
Mr. McKay then told Steven Chase of the Globe and Mail that “Mr. Kenny, in particular, has too much time on his hands and is engaging in a sort of mid-summer, drive-by smear in an attempt at self-aggrandizement.”
So I’m a summertime self-aggrandizer with too much time on my hands. Still nothing about the economic argument that the Forces are going to lose ground rather than gain ground under the government’s formula.
Meanwhile, Mr. McKay’s trusty sidekick, Sen. David Tkachuk, pipes up that the report is “unprofessional,” apparently because it doesn’t use enough dull words and comes to conclusions – this is scary – that don’t agree with the government line that senior military officers are required to spout.
Let me not besmirch Peter McKay or even Sen. Tkachuk as persons. That would just heap more argumentum ad hominem on the pile.
Let me instead point out that both the Committee and the Conference of Defence Associations project that Canada’s defence budget will fall from the current 1.2 percent of Gross Domestic Product to somewhere around .89 per cent in ten years under the current budgetary plan. That is less than half of NATO’s two per cent goal for member countries. The Conference further estimates that it will fall to .77 percent over 15 years.
Is that important? It is if Canadians want to defend themselves. It is if we want to play a responsible role in the world. In NATO, Canada trails only Belgium and tiny Luxembourg in military spending as a percentage of GDP. It’s not that we aren’t keeping up with high spending countries like the United States. It’s that we aren’t coming close to keeping up with responsible allies like Britain and France, both of which spend twice as much as Canada as a percentage of GDP.
This government knows that Canadian public is watching it closely, trying to figure out before the next federal election whether it is a relatively moderate conservative movement, or whether it is just pretending to be moderate in order to get a majority in the House of Commons. If it is trying to show it isn’t just pretending, it should abandon a military funding formula that pretends to bring increases but doesn’t.
If Mr. McKay wishes to debate this issue publicly on its merits, I am available. I don’t mind being called self-aggrandizing. But I would like to give Canadians a chance to weigh the facts on this very important issue.
Colin Kenny is Chair of the Senate Committee on National Security and Defence. He can be reached via email at kennco@sen.parl.gc.ca