Canada’s New Government and the Military in 2006
January 2007 – Op-Ed by Scott Noseworthy
The past year – 2006 – saw a revitalization of the Canadian Forces just months after the Conservative Party of Canada took office as the “New” Government of Canada. In the January election, the Conservatives promised an extensive military policy focusing on “Canada First”. This “Canada First” policy was meant to make the Canadian Forces stronger at home and throughout the Arctic, rather than focusing its resources on the wider international scene as previous governments had done. Moreover, with the advent of the first conservative government in thirteen years, militarists across the country were confident that much needed substantial new funding would soon become a reality.
And that it did – well, not really. In their first budget, the Conservatives came through with an extra $5.3 billion for the military over the next five years and a promise to transform military operations and defence administration. Further promises in the budget included speeding-up the recruitment of an additional 13,000 regular force and 10,000 reserve force personnel, increasing the Canadian Forces’ capacity to operate in the Arctic, restoring regular army presence in British Columbia, and initiating the establishment of territorial battalions (a key part of their electoral policy). The budget also promised increased investment in base infrastructure and housing. These objectives all sound admirable, yet under the budget, they weren’t actually funded. The budget provided funding to “Canada First”, not specific projects. In the end, the Canadian Forces got its extra $5.3 billion over five years, but little direction as to how it would eventually be spent by the Conservative government. The Conservative’s rejuvenation of the Canadian military had effective started out as a poof, instead of the bang that had been expected by those who watch military issues in this country.
And what a poof it had been considering that just a year prior, in 2005 under the Martin Liberal Government, the military had a better time of it with $12 billion in new funding over the next five years; $2.5 billion for new medium-lift helicopters, utility aircraft, and new military trucks; $1 billion for key national security initiatives; and $3.8 billion earmarked for capital and other projects in the “upcoming” defence policy review (essentially, this money was handed to the military without any strings attached by the budget). Clearly, the Conservatives had big shoes to fill to compare to the money-filled year the military enjoyed in 2005. Needless to say, they began to fill those shoes in a substantial way.
Moving forward to the last week of June 2006, militarists in Canada woke up to media speculation that the Canadian Forces would have a large amount of new kit announced by the Conservative government by the end of the week. We weren’t disappointed either as Prime Minister Harper and Defence Minister O’Connor made our mouths water with news that the Canadian Forces would be purchasing new support ships, helicopters, tactical and strategic lift aircraft, and medium lift trucks for the army. The Conservatives, as with any good government, pounded their chests and touted their amazing and first-of-a-kind investment in the military by any Canadian government since the 1980s. Of course, it was all hog-wash as the only new procurement commitment announced was the purchase of the tactical- and strategic-lift aircraft. It was the government of Paul Martin that authorized the funding for the joint support ships, medium army trucks, and Chinook medium-lift helicopters. The Martin government even got the ball rolling on the artillery side of things, authorizing the purchase of state-of-the-art M777 howitzers. To be fair, of course, the Conservatives were a vital player in compelling the Martin government to produce such a generous 2005 budget contribution to the military, given the minority parliament of the day – but Martin could have easily have said ‘no’ (one factor, among many, as to why Martin said ‘yes’ instead is likely his cabinet having two of the strongest and dedicated defence ministers in the post-WW2 era sitting in it at the time – McCallum and Graham).
Yet, despite its poor performance in the area of supporting the military this year, the Conservative government did one key thing which virtually makes up for most of its lack-lustre performance. With the “Canada First” procurements announced at the end of June, Defence Minister O’Connor – a former Brigadier General and defence lobbyist – made one key policy decision: for the equipment that was desperately needed now – i.e. the tactical- and strategic-lift platforms, as well as the Chinook helicopters – the Government would accelerate the normally decades-long Canadian defence procurement process. This streamlining would allow Canada to get these new platforms into service by the end of the decade. While the previous Martin government had promised to conduct a review and overhaul of the Canadian defence procurement system – something advocated by then-Defence Minister Graham – the Liberal government failed to utilize the system as it is now to bypass the faulty machine’s winded process.
It was the Conservative government that used arguable unpopular clauses in the current procurement policy (i.e. unpopular with industry) to limit each of the competitions to a preferred bidder without going through the process. As a result, the Department of National Defence named the C-130J Hercules tactical airlifters, Chinook medium lift helicopter and C-17 Globemaster III strategic airlifter as its preferred platforms. Immediately, the A-400M, an Airbus military medium-capacity airlifter intended to be in direct competition with the Hercules in a few year’s time, was eliminated as the government invoked the “if it isn’t in operation today, it isn’t an option” clause.
For the first time in a generation, the Canadian military does not need to go through a process that can take more than a decade to get a new piece of equipment into service. Unfortunately, as when the previous Martin government rushed military procurement, the Conservative government did not bypass the process specifically because it did not find it an efficient or effective system. Like the Martin government before, the Harper government would not have used those unpopular clauses to bypass the fair-use of the public tendering system to benefit the military, even if it publicly acknowledged the hindrances caused by the system.
As with Martin’s government, and even dating back to the Chrétien government, the prime motivator for the Harper government to ignore the traditional procurement system was the war in Afghanistan. With Canadian casualties becoming a painfully regular appearance on the nightly news, and with Canadian military experts regularly on television denouncing the poor state of the Canadian Forces’ equipment inventory, the last three governments of Canada had been forced to bypass the regular procurement system to get badly-needed equipment to our troops on the front lines as quickly as possible. The Harper government is no different in this motivation, except that it is the first government to bypass the system for such large purchases – all in the billions of dollars in value – which is unheard of in Canada in the post-WW2 era. It is somewhat heart-warming to any person interested in the Canadian military, regardless of political stripe, that there is finally a government that is willing to anger industry by preventing open competition on such large projects when the equipment is critically needed by our troops … in Afghanistan (it’s a start). The Conservatives even topped off the year with some icing through authorizing the purchase of additional M777 howitzers.
In 2006, the Conservative Government performed well-enough to warrant a pass in terms of its military agenda. Yet, a lack-lustre budget with a range of issues not specifically funded – including substantial election policies – indicates that the much-anticipated Conservative reinvestment in Canadian security at home may not occur unless the Canadian public grants Harper a majority in 2007. The lack of movement on the Conservative’s most critical and widely-supported military promise – to beef up Arctic sovereignty capabilities – does by no means sit well either. Its only saviour is that the government had the courage to bypass the normal public tendering process to get our troops major capital equipment virtually today.
