There is one more thing - there needs to be an understanding that the purpose of a weapon system is to be a weapon, not to be a mechanism for "economic development" - that is, creating jobs in some particular riding or part of the country. Note that the handgun procurement exercise alluded to (and with the link to the excellent article) has taken well over a decade because it started with a desire to have the jobs in one place. Just go buy the damn guns - even Cabellas would be a better option than what we have now.
I am fine with understanding the job creation side of things and it is important that our government departments, especially one which spends as much and is as large as DND, spend money within Canada whenever possible. But if we are going to talk about failing capabilities and failed procurement projects we have to talk about the made in Canada policy that all federal governments have been committed to without any evidence it has actually benefited the military. If we picked a lane and decided to develop X-weapon for ourselves and also to sell to other NATO countries than bam I'd be all for sharing the economic wealth and like any other country which their own weapon systems, we'd be silly not to use the best of it for ourselves. But we have no expertise in Canada in any relevant military system. We once had decent frigates with good sub hunting capability that were crewed and commanded so well we did make an impression among our peers. That is gone though even though no one seems willing to openly admit it. Buy in Canada all you want, but buy in Canada and undermine the very people you are making the purchase for in the first place...that's just so Canadian now.
You might want to check out who built the engines and electro-optical suite for the TB-2 Bayraktar UAS, the ones being used in Ukraine, before you say Canada has no expertise in weapon systems. Unfortunately the GofC blocked those sales to Turkey because of 'concerns' thus preventing Bombardier and WesCam from profiting from the very good press the TB-2 has been getting lately. Same can be said for the LAV III / Stryker armored vehicle. Canada has a very good industrial military manufacturing capability that unfortunately is not reflected in the federal government procurement process.
After 20 yrs in uniform within military procurement, I believe the issues are with the process not the govt, ministers or parliament at all. The paradigm that is procurement is laced with absolute risk aversion, Industrial benefits and the delusion that repetitive competitions trump multi-decade relationships. It’s the unjustified need to “canadianize” everything, instead of Military Off The Shelf MOTS. So, no, it’s largely not the politicians, but the enshrined Treasury Board enabled requirements. Fix the process and a puppet minister could get procurement done rapidly.
Terry, we can be cheerleaders for the current Minister of Defense, but she is only one of three Ministers involved in this process. There is also Public Services and Procurement Canada and Innovation, which falls under its own Minister, and actually runs this process, not the DoD or the Minister of Defense. Also, Science and Economic Development, which ensures "industrial and technology benefits" are front and centre in the process falls under the Minister of Small Business, Export Promotion and International Trade of Canada. There is lots of room here for economic glad handing to those considered important by the gov't of the day and for Defense criteria to be one dimension of the "whole package". Jeff makes good points that I take seriously.
I wish her well and do hope she is able to push through the entrenched process. I will be happy thank you in six months but Jeff's points about repeated competitions instead of relationships and Canadianizing everything remain important. Cheers.
The fact that you think this is a 'case' that can be resolved in six months is my first clue that you really don't understand the underlying systemic roadblocks and interests involved. I have little doubt that over the course of the year we will see much activity from the Minister with announcements, action plans, and funding (most of it will be several years out).
The question is whether these plans (and funds) can be sustained though cabinet shuffles, shifting political priorities, new problems of the day, and changes to leadership and governments. Regardless, any meaningful evaluation will be years, not months, down the road. I wish I could say that 5 years from now, I think things will be different but I don't. And if you can say 'I told you so' at that point, no one will be happier than I to be proved wrong.
"Canadian popular sentiment to spend more on defense has never been higher."
That is a pretty bold statement to make actually. We saw a tremendous uptick in support and interest from Canadians immediately following 9/11 and during our operations in Afghanistan. But where did it lead us in the end? We got some transport aircraft and a slew of failed plans. I remember a big shiny posted from Public Works Canada that showed their "plans" for shipbuilding at the federal level, for example back in 2005, and it had ice breakers and supply ships and coastal patrol vessels for the RCN, RCMP and CCG. Where is all of this? That was a Liberal government then too. Emboldened by the highest support and attention on our military in decades. It all went nowhere.
Political affiliations aside, the current paradigm restricts the influence of a minister, so irrespective of her tenacity and skill, the bureaucracy will limit any effectiveness. I don’t doubt her desire, but my experience tells me that no minister of the crown will expedite. It’s the process that’s broken, not the elected officials, they waffle yes, but even when they are firm, it is a disastrously slow and absurdly expensive. Look at the choice for fighters, two left. Make a call. Cannot, it’s the process driving the bus.
I’m going to leave this here, because it’s clear you believe the vaccines were procured in an efficient fashion. I’m not interested in a political debate on our current federal government. Enjoy your day
My bias is on the system underpinning any attempt by a Minister of Crown to affect paradigmatic change. It has zero to do with political affiliation or talent. The procurement process is imbedded in tens of thousands of pages of regulatory framework that is governed by administrative law, not politics. This government and all before it, other than Trudeau senior who tackled a generational change in the PS and TB, are aghast at the thought of tackling this, hence the foundation for my position that irrespective of talent, this Minister will track along with the previous. I have no doubt in her ability or tenacity, dedication
Your use of vaccines is actually a very good example of why we will not be able to fix defense procurement.
Canada was forced to go outside it's borders to procure vaccines because we had no "built in Canada" solution. This allowed tremendous latitude in contracting to get what was needed in a timely fashion. And Canada was/is leading in getting the population vaccinated, that is fact and not a discussion point.
However with defence procurement there are a number of Canadian companies available build armored vehicle, ships, planes, trucks, etc. With the rules as they are those companies get first dibs on all contracts before it can be outsourced outside our borders.
It would be nice if we could move on from this notion that big ticket military expenditures need to be made in Canada. We could replace our entire RCN fleet with US warships that have already proven capability as well as interoperability *and* can be purchased and maintained at far lower costs that anything new we could design (even if we had a world class ship building industry, which we don't). The same is true for many vehicles and expensive pieces of important kit in the army. I do not think we should be having any discussion on procurement without a frank and honest discussion about where we source our material and how little our so-called Defence Community has done for our men and women in uniform these past six decades.
That won't get us anywhere at all actually, they'd just shrug and walk away from the table. Playing politics with our military equipment is a HUGE part of the problem. I know why we have a build and design in Canada policy and it has absolutely nothing to do about national defence or economics. It is 100 per cent about funding industry and large Canadian families that support certain politicians in power. There are not many facilities capable of building ships or manufacturing equipment as complex as what is required through military procurement and every time we've put together lines for ship building, for example, we've spent the equivalent or more of our equipment costs to building capacity at private firms. I am talking about Irving and SNC and Seaspan-- particularly regarding our RCN fleet.
I speculate that Harjit Sajjan's failure as a minister may well be related to his being TOO close to the CF, with the "leadership" too familiar with his performance as a middling officer in the forces serving in Afghanistan, and who may have had too much ON him to permit him to do his job without embarrassing blowback/payback. Just speculation.
With respect to procurement, nothing ever seems to happen without industrial spin-offs being a major part of the process, thereby complicating everything, and preventing the "selection and maintenance of the aim" operating, which I was taught was important as a principal of war when I was a young Officer Cadet MANY decades ago when the Browning pistols still had their vintage-1944 tri-lingual decals saying "Canada" on the grips.
It took Canada 25 years after the Yanks adopted the M-16 rifle for us to adopt it and replace the FN C1/C2s, which, by that time, were twice the age of most of the soldiers.
If we have such difficulty replacing relatively cheap and simple, but very basic and very necessary, small arms in Canada, we obviously have an immense problem procuring anything costly, like, for example, a system to defeat enemy tanks and aircraft.
The current crisis in eastern Europe requires major and painful re-investment in our professional, but ludicrously SMALL armed forces. I'm not looking forward to the increase in my Taxes to pay for it, but we will be foolish not to pay up to stay in the game.
Even now Trudy won't commit to any extra $ for defense. Plus even if you're able to catch his ear, it goes in one ear and blows straight out the other. There's nothing in there to stop the message so it can look around for the 3 or 4 cells that compose his brain.
I've already vented my 'brilliant' strategy to take advantage of the US Army hating that the USAF is ditching their close-air-support jet (A10) - by buying a bunch off the USAF and promising that our NATO role will be close-air-support specialization. (If harshly pressed, we could buy, say, four of their stupid F35s, enough to keep one in the air every other day during a fight.)
Other than that, it should just be LAVs and snipers, LAVs and snipers. We're good at both, and they're a huge, highly affordable, contribution: delivering boots on the ground, the thing that most western militaries fear, wanting to win the whole war with strategic bombing that only kills as many civilians as soldiers.
Also, we should build more small, cheap ships that do mine-sweeping. We're good at that, too, and America's busted procurement system produced only the LCS ("Littoral Combat Ships") called "Little Crappy Ships" by those who have to sail them, which work very poorly, leaving America deficient at mine-sweeping.
Nobody should even comment on this issue without reading three books first:
The Pentagon Wars, Col James F. Burton, 1993, reprint 2014
The Spoils of War, Andrew Cockburn, 2019.
....both books detail how military procurement is almost indifferent to battlefield effectiveness and the fighter's survival; the top priority is funneling money to the suppliers, regardless of need for the weapon, or whether it works.
Canada in the Great Power Game 1914-2014, Gwynne Dyer, 2014.
...goes over Canada's entire military history from 1812. Save for that defense, our military has only defended other countries. Since WW2, we have really only acted to legitimize and support American military initiatives, to please our essential trading partner. Our military procurement has been distorted to buy what they most want to sell, resulting in the current pressure to buy the F35.
And all three books remind the reader that every single security crisis is used to sell the currently-pumped product, whether it has the slightest thing to do with that conflict or not. Selling fighter jets for the "War on Terror", against enemies with no air force, hit comedic levels.
A depressing albeit realistic assessment of just how poorly placed Canada is when it comes to national defence and, more particularly, the rejuvenation of the Canadian Armed Forces.
I’m especially pleased that the culprits behind this mess were properly identified (successive Liberal and Conservative governments, as well as a hidebound and often self-serving public service, and political culture itself).
Mind you, there was one culprit that you didn’t name.
Canadian voters, who simply do not pay sufficient attention to defence, foreign policy(and the corollary to both: intelligence collection and analysis).
If no party runs on a stronger defense ticket how do taxpayers get through to the politicians? Who wants to buy guns when we need hundreds of thousands of windmills? Why pay for defense when the planet will be gone in ten years? Who cares if we live the last decade on earth as subjects of Russia or China? The only thing that matters is stopping fossil fuels. Did nobody get the memo?
Perhaps your assumption (that we lost the plot on defence, foreign policy and intelligence because we were all too busy with worrying about climate change mitigation—and the pandemic) has merit.
Nonetheless, surely the rot (I respect of Canada’s foreign, defence and intelligence needs began loooong before the public, industry and politicians were seized of climate change (and had not even imagined a pandemic like COVID-19)?
I was being tongue-in-cheek. We've been more interested in many other issues that provide better sound bites: Truth and reconciliation, multiculturalism, multilingualism, #metoo, genocide, apologizes for our colonialism etc. etc. etc. to the exclusion of our armed forces.
We were ignoring our armed forces long before those issues came to the front burner....as they should have. A government should be able to do more than 2 things at once. Alas, we've already spent our 2050 defence budget on happy little shiny objects that have allowed two parties to stay in power...failing us all.
As we all know military procurement has been virtually criminal incompetence here for decades. Everybody knows its broken but the feds don't want to fix it. Anybody in power who cares would search around for a system that does work. I've read that Australia does a much better job; so go there and find out what they do right. Or whatever country that does a good efficient job. But fix the system, and if that requires sacking a bunch of high level bureaucrats, so be it. If our vets from WW2 and Korean wars could see what we've become they would weep.
Australia lives in a potentially dangerous neighbourhood somewhat by themselves. That means they have to take their defense more seriously. Our living under the American umbrella allows for the ridiculous procurement shenanigans. I don't look forward to the higher taxes either but it may be money well spent.
I sincerely appreciated this article but think there could have been some editing around the casual reference to "recent personnel scandals" here. Doesn't need to be "pervasive and ongoing history of sexual misdeeds directed to women" but maybe there's some middle ground in language that's more true to the scope and severity of the issues?
A truly excellent evaluation of a government failure that goes back to WW1. Canadians have to get on board as well, because the cost of this one is going to hurt. The military doesn't make money, but it sure goes through it.
Largely outside my experience and knowledge. But clearly a conversation that needs to be pushed towards the front burner of public discussion. Can the Canuck political class make logistics and procurement sexy enough to pry folks away from Netflix? The standard opposition has been about spending too much taxpayer money on nasty toys in a corrupt market place.
Might the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the shift in political assumptions about global economic and military issues (the pandemic actually brought supply lines out of the financial papers and into public focus), put foreign affairs on the front burner of the next federal election? Canucks love to pretend that that's someone else's problem or at least it won't touch us. Are the flower children, or at least fantasizing consumers, waking up to reality?
I guarantee China is loving the Russian blowing through tons of material and personnel in the current war. They are also watching the west deplete their stocks of arms. All of this and all they have to do it encourage Putin. They win either way. If Russia takes a shit-kicking they have a weaker opponent on their border and since Russian supplies India, India is weakened since Russian cannot keep supplying it with arms. Again China wins on another front. China is busy learning all about the cyberwar that is going on as well as tactics and intelligence from both the West and Russia. What you say about E and W is true but it will be China with their vassals in Russian and India and the west with the US and its vassals in Europe.
There is one more thing - there needs to be an understanding that the purpose of a weapon system is to be a weapon, not to be a mechanism for "economic development" - that is, creating jobs in some particular riding or part of the country. Note that the handgun procurement exercise alluded to (and with the link to the excellent article) has taken well over a decade because it started with a desire to have the jobs in one place. Just go buy the damn guns - even Cabellas would be a better option than what we have now.
I am fine with understanding the job creation side of things and it is important that our government departments, especially one which spends as much and is as large as DND, spend money within Canada whenever possible. But if we are going to talk about failing capabilities and failed procurement projects we have to talk about the made in Canada policy that all federal governments have been committed to without any evidence it has actually benefited the military. If we picked a lane and decided to develop X-weapon for ourselves and also to sell to other NATO countries than bam I'd be all for sharing the economic wealth and like any other country which their own weapon systems, we'd be silly not to use the best of it for ourselves. But we have no expertise in Canada in any relevant military system. We once had decent frigates with good sub hunting capability that were crewed and commanded so well we did make an impression among our peers. That is gone though even though no one seems willing to openly admit it. Buy in Canada all you want, but buy in Canada and undermine the very people you are making the purchase for in the first place...that's just so Canadian now.
You might want to check out who built the engines and electro-optical suite for the TB-2 Bayraktar UAS, the ones being used in Ukraine, before you say Canada has no expertise in weapon systems. Unfortunately the GofC blocked those sales to Turkey because of 'concerns' thus preventing Bombardier and WesCam from profiting from the very good press the TB-2 has been getting lately. Same can be said for the LAV III / Stryker armored vehicle. Canada has a very good industrial military manufacturing capability that unfortunately is not reflected in the federal government procurement process.
After 20 yrs in uniform within military procurement, I believe the issues are with the process not the govt, ministers or parliament at all. The paradigm that is procurement is laced with absolute risk aversion, Industrial benefits and the delusion that repetitive competitions trump multi-decade relationships. It’s the unjustified need to “canadianize” everything, instead of Military Off The Shelf MOTS. So, no, it’s largely not the politicians, but the enshrined Treasury Board enabled requirements. Fix the process and a puppet minister could get procurement done rapidly.
Terry, we can be cheerleaders for the current Minister of Defense, but she is only one of three Ministers involved in this process. There is also Public Services and Procurement Canada and Innovation, which falls under its own Minister, and actually runs this process, not the DoD or the Minister of Defense. Also, Science and Economic Development, which ensures "industrial and technology benefits" are front and centre in the process falls under the Minister of Small Business, Export Promotion and International Trade of Canada. There is lots of room here for economic glad handing to those considered important by the gov't of the day and for Defense criteria to be one dimension of the "whole package". Jeff makes good points that I take seriously.
I wish her well and do hope she is able to push through the entrenched process. I will be happy thank you in six months but Jeff's points about repeated competitions instead of relationships and Canadianizing everything remain important. Cheers.
The fact that you think this is a 'case' that can be resolved in six months is my first clue that you really don't understand the underlying systemic roadblocks and interests involved. I have little doubt that over the course of the year we will see much activity from the Minister with announcements, action plans, and funding (most of it will be several years out).
The question is whether these plans (and funds) can be sustained though cabinet shuffles, shifting political priorities, new problems of the day, and changes to leadership and governments. Regardless, any meaningful evaluation will be years, not months, down the road. I wish I could say that 5 years from now, I think things will be different but I don't. And if you can say 'I told you so' at that point, no one will be happier than I to be proved wrong.
I foresee many studies in our future :)
"Canadian popular sentiment to spend more on defense has never been higher."
That is a pretty bold statement to make actually. We saw a tremendous uptick in support and interest from Canadians immediately following 9/11 and during our operations in Afghanistan. But where did it lead us in the end? We got some transport aircraft and a slew of failed plans. I remember a big shiny posted from Public Works Canada that showed their "plans" for shipbuilding at the federal level, for example back in 2005, and it had ice breakers and supply ships and coastal patrol vessels for the RCN, RCMP and CCG. Where is all of this? That was a Liberal government then too. Emboldened by the highest support and attention on our military in decades. It all went nowhere.
Political affiliations aside, the current paradigm restricts the influence of a minister, so irrespective of her tenacity and skill, the bureaucracy will limit any effectiveness. I don’t doubt her desire, but my experience tells me that no minister of the crown will expedite. It’s the process that’s broken, not the elected officials, they waffle yes, but even when they are firm, it is a disastrously slow and absurdly expensive. Look at the choice for fighters, two left. Make a call. Cannot, it’s the process driving the bus.
I’m going to leave this here, because it’s clear you believe the vaccines were procured in an efficient fashion. I’m not interested in a political debate on our current federal government. Enjoy your day
My bias is on the system underpinning any attempt by a Minister of Crown to affect paradigmatic change. It has zero to do with political affiliation or talent. The procurement process is imbedded in tens of thousands of pages of regulatory framework that is governed by administrative law, not politics. This government and all before it, other than Trudeau senior who tackled a generational change in the PS and TB, are aghast at the thought of tackling this, hence the foundation for my position that irrespective of talent, this Minister will track along with the previous. I have no doubt in her ability or tenacity, dedication
Your use of vaccines is actually a very good example of why we will not be able to fix defense procurement.
Canada was forced to go outside it's borders to procure vaccines because we had no "built in Canada" solution. This allowed tremendous latitude in contracting to get what was needed in a timely fashion. And Canada was/is leading in getting the population vaccinated, that is fact and not a discussion point.
However with defence procurement there are a number of Canadian companies available build armored vehicle, ships, planes, trucks, etc. With the rules as they are those companies get first dibs on all contracts before it can be outsourced outside our borders.
It would be nice if we could move on from this notion that big ticket military expenditures need to be made in Canada. We could replace our entire RCN fleet with US warships that have already proven capability as well as interoperability *and* can be purchased and maintained at far lower costs that anything new we could design (even if we had a world class ship building industry, which we don't). The same is true for many vehicles and expensive pieces of important kit in the army. I do not think we should be having any discussion on procurement without a frank and honest discussion about where we source our material and how little our so-called Defence Community has done for our men and women in uniform these past six decades.
Or tell the US we will buy their equipment if they get rid of the "Buy American" policy on EVs
That won't get us anywhere at all actually, they'd just shrug and walk away from the table. Playing politics with our military equipment is a HUGE part of the problem. I know why we have a build and design in Canada policy and it has absolutely nothing to do about national defence or economics. It is 100 per cent about funding industry and large Canadian families that support certain politicians in power. There are not many facilities capable of building ships or manufacturing equipment as complex as what is required through military procurement and every time we've put together lines for ship building, for example, we've spent the equivalent or more of our equipment costs to building capacity at private firms. I am talking about Irving and SNC and Seaspan-- particularly regarding our RCN fleet.
At least someone’s making a lot of money selling rakes.
I speculate that Harjit Sajjan's failure as a minister may well be related to his being TOO close to the CF, with the "leadership" too familiar with his performance as a middling officer in the forces serving in Afghanistan, and who may have had too much ON him to permit him to do his job without embarrassing blowback/payback. Just speculation.
With respect to procurement, nothing ever seems to happen without industrial spin-offs being a major part of the process, thereby complicating everything, and preventing the "selection and maintenance of the aim" operating, which I was taught was important as a principal of war when I was a young Officer Cadet MANY decades ago when the Browning pistols still had their vintage-1944 tri-lingual decals saying "Canada" on the grips.
It took Canada 25 years after the Yanks adopted the M-16 rifle for us to adopt it and replace the FN C1/C2s, which, by that time, were twice the age of most of the soldiers.
If we have such difficulty replacing relatively cheap and simple, but very basic and very necessary, small arms in Canada, we obviously have an immense problem procuring anything costly, like, for example, a system to defeat enemy tanks and aircraft.
The current crisis in eastern Europe requires major and painful re-investment in our professional, but ludicrously SMALL armed forces. I'm not looking forward to the increase in my Taxes to pay for it, but we will be foolish not to pay up to stay in the game.
I think Sajjan's failure was due to incompetence and inability to catch the ear of Trudeau. Defense was of little to no interest until this month.
Even now Trudy won't commit to any extra $ for defense. Plus even if you're able to catch his ear, it goes in one ear and blows straight out the other. There's nothing in there to stop the message so it can look around for the 3 or 4 cells that compose his brain.
I've already vented my 'brilliant' strategy to take advantage of the US Army hating that the USAF is ditching their close-air-support jet (A10) - by buying a bunch off the USAF and promising that our NATO role will be close-air-support specialization. (If harshly pressed, we could buy, say, four of their stupid F35s, enough to keep one in the air every other day during a fight.)
Other than that, it should just be LAVs and snipers, LAVs and snipers. We're good at both, and they're a huge, highly affordable, contribution: delivering boots on the ground, the thing that most western militaries fear, wanting to win the whole war with strategic bombing that only kills as many civilians as soldiers.
Also, we should build more small, cheap ships that do mine-sweeping. We're good at that, too, and America's busted procurement system produced only the LCS ("Littoral Combat Ships") called "Little Crappy Ships" by those who have to sail them, which work very poorly, leaving America deficient at mine-sweeping.
Nobody should even comment on this issue without reading three books first:
The Pentagon Wars, Col James F. Burton, 1993, reprint 2014
The Spoils of War, Andrew Cockburn, 2019.
....both books detail how military procurement is almost indifferent to battlefield effectiveness and the fighter's survival; the top priority is funneling money to the suppliers, regardless of need for the weapon, or whether it works.
Canada in the Great Power Game 1914-2014, Gwynne Dyer, 2014.
...goes over Canada's entire military history from 1812. Save for that defense, our military has only defended other countries. Since WW2, we have really only acted to legitimize and support American military initiatives, to please our essential trading partner. Our military procurement has been distorted to buy what they most want to sell, resulting in the current pressure to buy the F35.
And all three books remind the reader that every single security crisis is used to sell the currently-pumped product, whether it has the slightest thing to do with that conflict or not. Selling fighter jets for the "War on Terror", against enemies with no air force, hit comedic levels.
A depressing albeit realistic assessment of just how poorly placed Canada is when it comes to national defence and, more particularly, the rejuvenation of the Canadian Armed Forces.
I’m especially pleased that the culprits behind this mess were properly identified (successive Liberal and Conservative governments, as well as a hidebound and often self-serving public service, and political culture itself).
Mind you, there was one culprit that you didn’t name.
Canadian voters, who simply do not pay sufficient attention to defence, foreign policy(and the corollary to both: intelligence collection and analysis).
Yes! Voters don’t care!! They should! But they don’t. Canadian governments know that. Thank you!
If no party runs on a stronger defense ticket how do taxpayers get through to the politicians? Who wants to buy guns when we need hundreds of thousands of windmills? Why pay for defense when the planet will be gone in ten years? Who cares if we live the last decade on earth as subjects of Russia or China? The only thing that matters is stopping fossil fuels. Did nobody get the memo?
Perhaps your assumption (that we lost the plot on defence, foreign policy and intelligence because we were all too busy with worrying about climate change mitigation—and the pandemic) has merit.
Nonetheless, surely the rot (I respect of Canada’s foreign, defence and intelligence needs began loooong before the public, industry and politicians were seized of climate change (and had not even imagined a pandemic like COVID-19)?
I was being tongue-in-cheek. We've been more interested in many other issues that provide better sound bites: Truth and reconciliation, multiculturalism, multilingualism, #metoo, genocide, apologizes for our colonialism etc. etc. etc. to the exclusion of our armed forces.
We were ignoring our armed forces long before those issues came to the front burner....as they should have. A government should be able to do more than 2 things at once. Alas, we've already spent our 2050 defence budget on happy little shiny objects that have allowed two parties to stay in power...failing us all.
As we all know military procurement has been virtually criminal incompetence here for decades. Everybody knows its broken but the feds don't want to fix it. Anybody in power who cares would search around for a system that does work. I've read that Australia does a much better job; so go there and find out what they do right. Or whatever country that does a good efficient job. But fix the system, and if that requires sacking a bunch of high level bureaucrats, so be it. If our vets from WW2 and Korean wars could see what we've become they would weep.
Australia lives in a potentially dangerous neighbourhood somewhat by themselves. That means they have to take their defense more seriously. Our living under the American umbrella allows for the ridiculous procurement shenanigans. I don't look forward to the higher taxes either but it may be money well spent.
First, there has to be a will to move past politics. We're not there yet.
Do they know how to fix it? There I times I suspect they don't know what they don't know.
I sincerely appreciated this article but think there could have been some editing around the casual reference to "recent personnel scandals" here. Doesn't need to be "pervasive and ongoing history of sexual misdeeds directed to women" but maybe there's some middle ground in language that's more true to the scope and severity of the issues?
A truly excellent evaluation of a government failure that goes back to WW1. Canadians have to get on board as well, because the cost of this one is going to hurt. The military doesn't make money, but it sure goes through it.
Largely outside my experience and knowledge. But clearly a conversation that needs to be pushed towards the front burner of public discussion. Can the Canuck political class make logistics and procurement sexy enough to pry folks away from Netflix? The standard opposition has been about spending too much taxpayer money on nasty toys in a corrupt market place.
Might the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the shift in political assumptions about global economic and military issues (the pandemic actually brought supply lines out of the financial papers and into public focus), put foreign affairs on the front burner of the next federal election? Canucks love to pretend that that's someone else's problem or at least it won't touch us. Are the flower children, or at least fantasizing consumers, waking up to reality?
I'll add that TB and especially PSPC (Pathetically Slow Procurement Canada) need to be on board too and stop trying to constantly derail everything.
Good Article. It needs to be a responsible Minister though not Ministers.
Good Article. It needs to be a responsible Minister though not Ministers.
I guarantee China is loving the Russian blowing through tons of material and personnel in the current war. They are also watching the west deplete their stocks of arms. All of this and all they have to do it encourage Putin. They win either way. If Russia takes a shit-kicking they have a weaker opponent on their border and since Russian supplies India, India is weakened since Russian cannot keep supplying it with arms. Again China wins on another front. China is busy learning all about the cyberwar that is going on as well as tactics and intelligence from both the West and Russia. What you say about E and W is true but it will be China with their vassals in Russian and India and the west with the US and its vassals in Europe.
China is also getting all the natural gas they could ask for at a steep discount.