Budget 2008: national defence/sovereignty highlights
While the 2008 Budget has brought very modest goals for the upcoming fiscal year, the Government of Canada under Prime Minister Stephen Harper has made some small investments in national defence/sovereignty initiatives this year, though these investments are multi-year in nature.
The major commitment this year by the Government is the funding of a replacement for the CCGS Louis S. St-Laurent, which is the Coast Guard’s flagship and largest icebreaker. The St-Laurent was originally built in 1969 and is to be decommissioned in 2017 (originally, this was scheduled for 2000, but the date was moved back following a refit of the vessel). Its replacement will be a polar class icebreaker with greater icebreaking capability than the St-Laurent. Budget 2008 makes an initial investment of $721 million for the procurement of the replacement vessel.
As a part of the ongoing desire to cement Canada’s Arctic Sovereignty claims, $20 million has been allocated by the Budget to provide for comprehensive mapping of the Arctic and Atlantic Ocean seabeds as a part of Canada’s submission to the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf. Being in possession of highly detailed seabed maps is a key part in the process of asserting sovereignty over Canada’s Arctic territory, as well as working to extend our country’s exclusive economic zone in the Atlantic Ocean. The submission is due in 2013.
The long-anticipated Canada First Defence Strategy, which has been promised by this government since they entered power in 2006 (not to forget the long-awaited defence policy of the previous Liberal government which never saw fruition), continues to be in development. According to the Budget documents, the Strategy will create a more flexible and modern Canadian Forces, while strengthening Canadian industry to provide an industrial and technological advantage to the military. To allow for the implementation of the strategy, the Budget increases the automatic annual increase in the defence budget from 1.5% to 2%. In terms of a dollar figure, this is expected to result in an additional $12 billion in defence funding over the next twenty (20) years.
Finally, the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), which is the country’s signals intelligence agency, will receive $43 million over the next two years to allow it to keep pace with advancing information and communication technologies.
This Budget has certainly been modest for the military (arguably the biggest benefactor this year is the Coast Guard in terms of national defence and sovereignty spending); as was last year’s budget. This was to be expected considering that the Government has, between this budget and the last, spent or committed to spending billions of dollars on new equipment for the Canadian Forces. Those commitments include medium-lift helicopters; CC-177 Globemaster III strategic airlifters; new Hercules tactical airlifters; new medium-lift vehicles for the Army; and new Arctic Offshore Patrol Vessels (with a Navy base to be built in the Arctic). It will likely be several years before Canada sees another investment in new equipment on level with the previous year.
