Hitting NATO’s 2% target a pipe dream without addressing Ottawa’s faux procurement machine
More money won’t cure an unaccountable process.
There’s a dirty secret behind Canada’s 2% NATO budget commitment, and it wasn’t touched upon in this morning’s G&M piece on the reportedly-delayed Defence Policy Update.
Even if the Liberal government wanted to increase our modest Defence budget by another $20 billion per annum, I doubt the Federal bureaucracy has the talent to spend that money. Like an aged Olympic Silver medalist who hasn’t dazzled in the high jump since 1976, Canada has lost the skills its needs to effectively procure the equipment required to get out of NATO’s doghouse.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 is a stark reminder that Europe is far more dangerous than it was when the Mulroney government closed our two military bases in Germany in the early 1990s. With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and a deep recession at home, Canada’s Generals could no longer justify the expense of forward-deployed troops. Continental Europe seemed like a safe place, and it would have been politically impossible to maintain fighter jets at CFB Lahr or tanks at CFB Baden when we were closing Canadian military bases in cities such as London, Ontario or Summerside, PEI.
It may not be a coincidence that 1987 was the last year that Canada met NATO’s spending target. Shortly after winning office, the Mulroney government undertook a major recapitalization of the Royal Canadian Navy. The Conservatives ordered twenty-four Frigates and Maritime Costal Defence Vessels from shipyards in Halifax, Saint John and Lauzon, Quebec.
It wasn’t until 2010, as those same warships were nearing the end of their initial lifecycle, that the Harper government announced a new $56 billion National Shipbuilding Strategy. Despite promising the Navy that it would build 15 new Canadian Surface Combatants to replace the twelve Mulroney-era Frigates and four now-retired Destroyers that dated back to Pierre Trudeau’s early years, those new combat ships remain images on a drawing board.
Fourteen years later. Countless meetings, site visits and press releases. Still no warships.
At the very moment that our allies need us to help defend merchant shipping in the Middle East, our maritime capabilities are overstretched. We simply don’t have enough serviceable 30-year old warships to fulfill both the Liberal’s Indo-Pacific strategy, our NATO commitments, and also answer the world’s all-too-frequent calls for police action. With Western Navies busy fending off Houthi militants in the Red Sea, Somali Pirates took the opportunity to hijack their first ship in six years.
Say goodbye to the “Peace Dividend” that followed Glasnost.
Canada and its allies are now paying for fact that Ottawa (regardless of who is in government) is better at announcing new ships than it is at getting them built. 90 per cent of the world’s economy moves across the oceans, and Powerpoint slides won’t keep those cargo ships safe.
Just last week, our senior military leader told a Toronto business audience that the thing that keeps him up at night is “bureaucracy.” I don’t think he was joking.
Should he win the election next year, Pierre Poilievre’s challenge won’t just be finding the extra $20 billion needed to meet our commitments. His Defence Department may have a hard time finding useful, fast, turnkey projects to spend that money on.
Even if Mr. Poilievre could wave a magic wand and launch the immediate construction of the long-delayed Frigate replacement, that project would consume “just” $4 billion of the $20 billion annual bogey. Once the Air Force starts to take delivery of the F-35 in 2026, the Parliamentary Budget Officer projects that program to run about $20 billion over seven years, plus the cost to operate the fleet. Meaning the CF-35s will chew up another $4 billion in the early years.
Pay raises for the members of the Canadian Forces might help stem the current recruiting and retention nightmare. Even if we filled the 16,000 current openings in the Canadian Armed Forces, gave everyone a 10 per cent pay raise, and launched a smart new $1 billion military housing strategy (more on that another time), we might still have $5-7 billion remaining in our kitty.
Additional Army Light Armoured Vehicles, new pistols and some extra transport aircraft might run another $1 billion. DND would still have funds available to dramatically improve our northern infrastructure, while replacing Canada’s 40-year old submarine force with an existing design from either Japan or South Korea. No military asset is as flexible as a submarine, and as Russia and China challenge Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic, we can no longer rely on our Indigenous Canadian Rangers and their .308 rifles to carry the freight.
As the first “new” Frigate was nearing completion in 1990, VAdm Charlie Thomas, then Vice-Chief of the Defence Staff, said to me: “Next time, tell them to ask the Americans to knock off an extra dozen of whatever ships they’re building.” In the hopes of rebuilding Canada’s shipbuilding capabilities and the jobs that go with it, that advice was ignored – leading to years of procurement delays and billions in cost inflation.
It's not that everyone’s intentions weren’t pure; it’s just that Treasury Board seems skilled at outlining a “governance risk matrix,” whatever that is, but there’s no accountability for the sausage factory being unable to churn out any actual sausages.
Announcing new military gear is a far cry from actually spending a penny, and until Finance and Treasury Board loosen their grip on the purse strings, Canada’s military will continue to starve. As the PBO has already pointed out, the Defence Dept. spent $12 billion less on equipment between 2018-2023 than had already been approved. Was that an accident? Incompetence? A federal deficit management tactic?
Hitting NATO’s 2% target will be a pipe dream without first addressing Ottawa’s faux procurement machine. More money won’t cure an unaccountable process.
MRM
(this post, like all blogs, is a personal Opinion Piece and has not been reviewed or approved by any other party)
(photo: Pompier, Paris, 1950, by Irving Penn)