The Line Interview: Lieutenant-General Steve Boivin, commander of Canadian Joint Operations Command

"In my 34 years of service ... this is probably the most uncertain and chaotic global environment that I've seen."

Canadian Armed Forces ships and personnel during Operation Nanook. Photo by: Pte Brendan Gamache, Canadian Armed Forces Photo.

A note from Matt Gurney: Late last year, The Line was offered a chance to interview Lieutenant-General Steve Boivin, the commander of Canadian Joint Operations Command (CJOC). Aligning our schedules took some time; we weren’t able to do a meeting until about three weeks ago. And then getting the interview transcribed took a few days … and then the news went insane. I’ve been sitting on this for about ten days now waiting to publish it at a quiet moment. Alas, no quiet moment has presented itself!

With an election call expected tomorrow, I’ve decided to take the unusual step of publishing something at The Line on a Saturday evening. The general and I didn’t talk politics — I knew it would be unfair to ask. Other than a passing reference to the Liberal leadership race, which you’ll see below, there’s no politics here. But I don’t want the general getting any heat for commenting on stuff during a campaign, so here’s my interview with him, which studiously avoids politics, and was recorded well before the election was called.

And published before, too!

My thanks to the general and his staff for their time and cooperation.

— MG

Oh, and P.S.: I originally used the general’s first name and initials from his official bio, but I’m told he prefers Steve. So adjusted!

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Matt Gurney:
Alright, we’re rolling. No curveballs, I promise.

Lt.-Gen. Boivin:
Don’t worry about curveballs. I'm happy to take any questions. Obviously, I'm the ops guy in the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF), so yeah, I spend 90 per cent of my time on current and future operations. Therefore, if you want to go into other areas of the CAF, I'm part of these meetings, so I can talk to you about recruiting, but if you go into a very high level of detail or you're looking for specific answers, I'll probably just ask to put you in touch with the chief of military personnel or one of the service commanders who can give better, more precise answers than I can.

Matt Gurney:
That's totally fine, and I understand. Obviously issues of recruiting and retention and readiness rates for equipment — I know they're important — but most of that stuff's public. The equipment serviceability report just came out recently.

So let me start, I guess, with a big-picture question, and this will be one that is kind of right down your alley. This might be almost too big a question to be helpful, but I’m just curious right now, what’s your sense of the state of the world here, like directionally? Where do you think the world is, and where do you think it’s going?

Lt.-Gen. Boivin:
In my 34 years of service — I’m finishing 34 years this summer — this is probably the most uncertain and chaotic global environment that I've seen in that time. I haven’t seen it as concerning as it is now. I look globally at what’s going on, and I start at home. In 1924, a Canadian senator talked about Canadians living in a “fireproof house” — I don’t see us as being fireproof anymore.

When you look at any of the domains — the maritime environment, aerospace environment, cyber — there’s a number of threats that we are seeing manifesting very often here in Canada. Then you look at the global environment, what’s going on in Europe — the illegal invasion of Ukraine by Russia is causing a lot of destabilization and divisions in Europe. Look at the Indo-Pacific, where land claims are a reality. And then you look at Chinese actions toward Taiwan and other countries in the region — and those are just the two bigger hot spots. Then you look at the Middle East and what’s been going on since October of 2023 — it got pretty tense with state-on-state strikes between Israel and Iran, and then the number of Iranian proxies that Israel has fought since October ‘23.

So I tell you, you asked me about the global environment — it’s as chaotic and uncertain as I’ve seen it.

Matt Gurney:
We could talk about any of those, but I was going to a Leafs game with my dad a few months, and we’re in the car, and my phone is blowing up. I was watching from Toronto, in real time, high-definition video clips of ballistic missiles hitting a modern Western city. It was all these people in Tel Aviv looking up and going, “Whoa!” and streaming off their phones. And it just kind of occurred to me — thinking about your 34 years in uniform — the amount of stuff we’ve had to deal with in just the last five years would’ve blown my mind if you had told me about it 10 years ago. We’ve had a plague. We’ve had a series of wars. We’re looking at new technical developments like AI. There are obviously global political developments. How do you want to — and I know it’ll be hard — but how do you want to position the Canadian Forces to be ready for ... all of it?

Lt.-Gen. Boivin:
I believe the best way — and the way that we're working to position the CAF right now — is an all-domain approach. We’ve been operating for a while in terms of land-centric operations, maritime-centric operations ... I believe that we’re at a point where we absolutely need to have an all-domain approach. This is where we get the best understanding of the environment — because it starts with that. Anything you do, you need to understand the environment that you're operating in.

So if you bring all of those different domain capabilities together, this is where you get the best decision-making information, and then can orient your troops and set them up to deliver the effects that you need. So really, looking at this through an “all-domain lens,” in my mind brings us a lot of benefits.

Matt Gurney:
Talking about all domains, you mentioned in your introductory comment, cyber. And I’m not zealously focused on cyber. I worry about it, but I worry about everything these days. But you guys will probably remember this — when the Rogers outage happened, I kind of woke up in my house, and I’m poking at my phone, and I think, “Piece of garbage,” and I throw it down. And then I pick up my landline — it doesn’t work either, because it was running through VoIP. And I didn’t know for about two hours if someone had done a bad software patch or if Russia had turned us off. And I don’t know anymore if Canadian society is aware of the threats.

What are you guys doing, as an institution, to broaden people’s horizons of thinking? Because you said before — the infantry fights on the ground, the pilots fight in the air — how do you get all these guys to start thinking about disinformation and cyber and just a billion other things we wouldn’t have worried about 10 or 20 years ago?

Lt.-Gen. Boivin:
One aspect of your question — what do we do to make Canadians more aware of these things — these interviews are an example of that. I’ve been working really hard since last summer, since taking command, to get more exposure of our operations.

So we’ve got Murray Brewster now embedded on Operation Reassurance in Latvia. We’ve got Susan Ormiston — you might have seen her reports — from HMCS Margaret Brooke. So we’re really working to get the message out about what we do on operations, and by extension, to raise interest and get people paying attention to the threats that are out there. And this links up to what I’ve said — I don’t believe we live in a fireproof house anymore. There are some real threats.

Cyber Command is really busy with defensive cyber operations — how do we protect our networks, our systems? — and then looking at what they need to do to inform and make people more aware.

Matt Gurney:
As an institution, what about your internal understanding of this? What are you training around? What are you talking about — to the extent that you can answer that? How are you trying to reorient not just the capabilities, but the mindset?

Lt.-Gen. Boivin:
Yeah, so we stood up a cyber command. So when you talk about being focused on it — better understanding the environment, and then setting yourself up for defensive or offensive operations — we’ve taken those steps. We’re still growing the command. And as we grow this command, we’re making people more aware, more informed, and decision-makers like myself better educated to be able to operate in this domain. It’s one of the five big domains. It’s one of the five domains that we look to integrate in CJOC on each operation: Land, Maritime, Air, Space and Cyber

Matt Gurney:
Talking about the whole picture here — how do you train the warfighters of tomorrow when you have no idea what kind of war they're going to be fighting?

Lt.-Gen. Boivin:
Bringing in as much flexibility of thinking and initiative — and forcing that into our training system — is, in our mind, the solution. And I believe we’ve been good at that in Canada. We take an approach where everyone goes through the same basic training to establish a baseline understanding, a basic set of skills. And then, as we turn people over to our services — we’ve got a smaller military — people can’t necessarily afford to become very narrowly specialized, and therefore are capable of operating across a spectrum of tasks.

And I think that’s one of the strengths of the Canadian Armed Forces: people are more flexible, they show more initiative, and it allows us to be way more flexible in the face of an uncertain environment.

Matt Gurney:
So, General, just a bit of personal colour. I have a daughter who's 12, and I have a son who's 10. My great-grandfather was shot off his horse by the Germans. My grandfather fought the Japanese. My dad and I slid through — you know, the greatest thing my country has ever asked me to do was stay home and order Uber Eats during the pandemic so I could support local restaurants without risking killing my grandmother. And now I'm looking at my kids — the things they've already experienced are nothing like I experienced growing up. And my daughter, being 12 years old, has already said to me, “Am I going to have to join the army?” And I didn’t know what to tell her. I didn’t have a good answer.

Generationally, how are you balancing the need to have a Canadian Armed Forces today — especially on deployments — that is probably going to be tasked with different missions than you guys would have spent the last quarter-century planning around. I wrote a column a year or two ago where I’m like, for 20 years everybody was disparaging Cold War thinking — “Oh, Cold War thinking, it's over.” I really wish we had some tank divisions in Europe, right? Tomorrow, we’re deterring Russia in Europe. Next week, we’re sending a naval task force to the Pacific. And this summer, the forests will all be on fire again. How do you even begin to plan around that?

Lt.-Gen. Boivin:
So, it’s interesting you say this. I was just this morning with the leadership of the Army, and telling them that, whether we want it or not, we in CJOC need an Army that can force-generate to be capable of fighting at, for example, the multinational brigade level, as we are doing now leading on Operation Reassurance, our mission in Latvia. But also, down to small training teams that are going to deliver training — for example, in the specialty of engineering — for Ukrainians, as we’re doing now in Poland.

So those are very different tasks. And then you have what you just said: let’s go operate in the Arctic on Operation Nanook. Let’s go do flood relief efforts in support of Canadians. So, it’s a lot we’re asking from our people. But it comes down to: we’ve got a small military, and we have got to be capable of being multipurpose — of addressing a number of tasks.

Matt Gurney:
What about at the leadership level? How flexible did you guys have to be in your thinking? You’ve been in for 34 years. This 34th year is probably not the one you would’ve expected back in your 25th. I tell my business partner all the time: every day, we have to wake up and have no expectations about what the day’s going to be. We’re going to read the news and be like, “Okay, that happened.” We’re not going to waste time being like, “Well, that’s weird.” We just need to respond to the facts. At the leadership level, how are you telling your commanders — and just your colleagues — how are you guys keeping your minds open to all of this?

Lt.-Gen. Boivin:
So, first of all, I’ll acknowledge that it’s fundamentally changed. You talk about when I was at the tactical level — like, I commanded task forces in Afghanistan, where we were all located in the same place, conducted a few missions, came back to that same place, and resupplied.

Today, I look at my task force commanders that are deployed — they’ve got troops in multiple countries, spanning an area of operation that is bigger than we could have ever imagined for a small task force — 300 to 500 troops. So, it’s very challenging from a command-and-control point of view, and from a communications point of view.

How do we make sense of all of this? It comes down to flexibility of thought — and then anchoring your decisions on facts. There’s a lot of noise out there, there’s a lot of disinformation out there. And we, as senior leaders, we have to be capable of finding the facts and giving as much certainty as we can to our deployed troops.

We owe it to them. They deserve that. We provide it to them — as much as we can.

Matt Gurney:
I’m not going to drag you into politics. I won’t be that unkind. But obviously, right now with what’s happening in Washington, we’re starting to hear from different Liberal leadership candidates about a larger, better-funded Canadian Armed Forces. The Conservatives will probably come up with something similar.

Assuming we do start to build out the Canadian Armed Forces into a larger institution, what are some of the capabilities — or at least competencies — you’d like to add? Where would you want to put those investments? If you had more money, more personnel — what do you want to grow?

Lt.-Gen. Boivin:
So first of all: gap in personnel, Matt. The Chief has said it — this is our first priority: recruiting and retention. I’m totally on board with her. As the ops guy, I’d like to be the priority — but I fully agree with her. If we want a sustainable CAF, to sustain our operations, we’ve got to fix that first. So that’s number one.

As we have more funding, we absolutely need to fix the recruiting and retention issues that we have.

Number two: we’ve got to invest in the foundation. So, you just talked about new equipment — but before we field new equipment, we have to do better on the serviceability of the equipment that we have. You talked about it up front. You said, the serviceability of the equipment is relatively low. I’m privileged, because the services are doing an excellent job at making sure the equipment they give me for operations is in good order — and that we can service it and keep it serviceable on operations. But the equipment that we have for the two other brigades back in Canada still needs to be up to speed, because they’ve got to train and be ready to go and replace the deployed brigade in Latvia.

So that’s number two — making sure the equipment that we have is serviceable and that our people are properly trained on it.

And I will tell you that the third bin — the third area or priority — is new equipment. We’ve got a number of capability gaps that we’re very much aware of. You’ve heard the navy commander talk about submarines — we need submarines. You’ve heard the air force Commander talk about the F-35s that are coming in. You’ve heard the army commander talk about long-range precision fires and Canadian Army modernization.

So those are all concrete capabilities that we need to buy. So I’d say it’s those three.

Matt Gurney:
Talking about capabilities, and you’ve mentioned Operation Reassurance in Latvia a little bit, and you talked about the capabilities gap. I remember a few years ago when Azerbaijan and Armenia started going to war, and I looked at a relatively well-equipped, modern, armoured mobile force getting wiped out in a week by an enemy that had a lot of drones. And I went, “Oh.” And then obviously in Ukraine, watching them hold back a massively numerically superior force with drones ... I’m sure the Taiwanese have taken some notes.

How are we going to get ready to fight wars that are a hybrid between kind of conventional Cold War–style encounter battles, but also having some guy with a joystick flying a drone the size of this table [gestures to a small table in the general’s office] behind the lines? We’re talking not just new capabilities — we’re talking new doctrines. We’re talking new ways of thinking. Are we going to be able, psychologically and institutionally, to keep up with what our enemies might be thinking of doing?

Lt.-Gen. Boivin:
To learn from what’s going on — what we’re seeing right now in Ukraine — I’d say there are two aspects to the answer to your question.

The first one is: we better learn from what’s going on. Because, as you said, other countries are looking at it and learning. So, between the army and CJOC, we’re really looking at the conflict in Ukraine and identifying the areas where we must learn and implement.

Unmanned aerial vehicles, or UASs, is one of those. Counter-UAS is one of those. The pace of technological development has been exponential in Ukraine — between Ukraine and Russia. So, we’ve got to learn from that conflict — that’s aspect one — and bring in new technologies into the CAF.

You mentioned the conflict in Azerbaijan — there’s a balance of capabilities. New technology is a good thing, and you better learn and be ready to implement it. But you can’t necessarily move away from some of the older capabilities that still have a place on the battlefield.

So I look at it from a balanced point of view, Matt. We still need those tanks — even though UASs are a threat to those tanks — because you still need to own the land. And you still need direct fire capability that will allow you to prevail on the day.

Matt Gurney:
We’ve talked a little bit about Ukraine, we’ve talked a little bit about Latvia. Given political developments, especially in the United States, I think it’s a statement of the obvious that we’re going to have to start paying a lot more attention to our own Arctic. What kind of capabilities are you looking at, even as a wish list? Or even not necessarily capabilities — but presence? What would you like to see Canada have in the Arctic, and what can we do to start moving in that direction?

Lt.-Gen. Boivin:
I’m not sure how familiar you are with Operation Nanook...

Matt Gurney:
I know the basics.

Lt.-Gen. Boivin:
Good. Right. It’s our operation in the North. It’s mostly been, up to now, a sovereignty and presence operation. We initiated — back in October — a complete revamp of it, where we’re looking at it again through an all-domain approach. And what we’re doing is looking at it in order to detect threats, deter any activities in the Arctic, and then be ready to defend it if required.

So that’s how we’re revamping Nanook — all-domain. And we’re looking at an almost permanent presence during the 12 months of the year, versus the four serials that we’re doing now. So moving toward seven serials, almost permanent presence, with allies. We’ve got a number of allies that have expressed a desire to be with us on operations in the Arctic, and we’re bringing together the five domains that I talked about. So we’re really looking at turning Nanook into this detect-and-defend-if-required operation.

Matt Gurney:
One of the obvious issues we’re going to run into here — and I know I’m not telling you anything you don’t know — is going to be the challenge of having a brigade in Latvia, having the ability to generate new forces for whatever fresh hell happens next, while also having units that have time to train and maybe even see their kids once in a while, and then put out forest fires, and then throw sandbags — and the list just goes on and on.

I don’t see any way around this without a larger full-time force and probably a larger Reserve. How are you guys load-balancing the existing force now? Because we talked about retention, right? I’m sure you’re hearing from your commanders that you’ve got men and women who would love to keep serving — but they haven’t seen their spouses in a long time, and it just gets to a point where something’s got to give. How are you trying to balance that now?

Lt.-Gen. Boivin:
Being the privileged guy that runs ops, I’ll tell you, Matt — the three services have done a really impressive job privileging, training, and equipping people to go on ops. So I can’t complain. I haven’t had to say no to any operations at this point because I didn’t have the personnel resources together.

The services have increased their tempo —and let’s be clear, they’ve got some personnel pressures — but they’ve increased the tempo in order to support CJOC.

But I am at a point where the current tempo that we have is probably what we can deliver. Additional operations — going to your point — if there’s such a demand, I’m now in the space of: “All right, what do we stop doing in order to do this?” And that’s the hard discussion until the recruiting and retention focus increases the size of the force, as you just said.

Matt Gurney:
So your eyes lit up a few minutes ago when I asked about the Arctic. So let me ask you: when you talk about being kind of at the upper limit of what you can do, does that include the enhanced Arctic presence? Or is that maybe where we start to hit the problems?

Lt.-Gen. Boivin:
That includes the enhanced Arctic presence. And I’ll tell you why — there’s a ton of activities happening in the Arctic, but most of them have been stovepiped over time in the Canadian Armed Forces for a number of good reasons. They were a training activity, they were a force development activity. What I’m trying to do is cohere all of those things — because by bringing coherence, we’re going to achieve the operational effects that we want. So there’s very little new demand. There’s some new capabilities and new demands that we’re going to deploy, but generally, we’re cohering a lot of what we’re already doing.

Matt Gurney:
In terms of the Arctic — I’m actually really interested in that. I’m interested for a few reasons. Obviously, there’s the political stuff, but there’s also the climate stuff. I’ve asked you — you’ve answered the question a little bit about the five domains — but just in terms of having the ability to actually sustain a presence, and I don’t just mean having ships going through, but actual infrastructure in the Arctic, what kind of infrastructure would you like to have up north?

Lt.-Gen. Boivin:
I’ll start with what we’ve got, because it’s actually not well known that we already have a footprint that supports operations.

We’ve got permanent presence in Yellowknife with Joint Task Force North. That operates out of Yellowknife — so under my command, I’ve got a brigadier general who’s permanently posted there, with a staff, and they command and control the activities that are happening in the North. On top of it, they’re the link-up with the territories and with all other government partners. So that’s in Yellowknife. You’ve got our presence in Alert — all the way up to the North. And then you’ve got forward operating locations, which are not permanently staffed but are turned on when required, in support of operations or training.

You asked: what would you like? We’re working on the next step — Northern Operational Support Hubs. So that’s a project that’s been talked about. CJOC is the lead for it. We’re looking at building some operational support hubs to support operations. Some of them will be permanently staffed. Some of them we’re going to need to be able to activate on demand, with 24 to 48 hours’ notice.

And we’re looking at a number of locations across the Arctic. With the size of it, we’ve got to be able to force project and sustain from different locations. On top of it — you might have seen that the Navy is doing an assessment on a reserve unit, potentially out of Whitehorse.

Matt Gurney:
I tell my kids this all the time: if you look at a map, you get one sense of the world. Look at a globe — you get another one. In terms of having the ability to do some of those traditional missions — “oh, the Russians are sending a bomber,” or “now the Chinese are sending bombers with the Russians” — would you like to see more air infrastructure up there as well? Or are we still going to be able to project north from where we’ve got now?

Lt.-Gen. Boivin:
NORAD modernization — northern infrastructure, northern basing infrastructure — addresses some of it. So we’re looking at, for example, airfields. We need airfields in order to support operations. That’s very much in support of NORAD, which has the aerospace warning, control, and maritime warning tasks.

Matt Gurney:
I was reading the other day about the Arctic refuelling station that we’ve been talking about since I had hair like yours, and we still don’t really have it operational yet. If there is political urgency and investment, how quickly can you move on these things? Are you guys ready to go? What are the bottlenecks, particularly in the Arctic? You can’t just hire the local contractors and say, “Go build me a warehouse,” right?

Lt.-Gen. Boivin:
I’m not an expert in infrastructure in the Arctic, Matt. What I will tell you is: I really started turning to this last summer, when we got tasked with the Northern Operational Support Hub project. We’ve gained a lot of time. What I would tell you is, making sure that we’re linked up with the communities over there, and then assessing how we do the construction — the construction season over there is what takes a lot of time. Besides that, I don’t think I can give you a precise answer on how much time it would take.

Matt Gurney:
Totally fair. I’ll sneak in a few more questions before we run out the clock. We talked a little bit about the global environment changing, and you’ve said a couple of times that you don’t think Canada’s a fireproof house anymore. I agree. And I feel like I’ve been screaming that in people’s faces for 17 years, and not many people have been listening. What do you want the Canadian public to be thinking about? When you say, “We’re not a fireproof house,” I get it — I get the historical reference — but how do we tell the Canadian people what you want them to know? What are the threats? What are the dangers? What are the risks? Whatever word you want to use — what does the public not understand about Canadian security?

Lt.-Gen. Boivin:
So first of all, there are real threats out there, Matt.

Maritime environment — we’ve now seen for some years, specifically last summer — China cooperating with Russia and making their way to the Bering Sea and then up north. They stayed in international waters, they never got into our territorial waters or Exclusive Economic Zone, but this is an indication of their intent.

Number two, in the aerospace environment — look about a week ago, when the Alaskan Air Defence Identification Zone, from NORAD, was entered by a Russian bomber. So now, that’s a threat in the aerospace environment.

I spoke about cyber — where we’re seeing more attacks, more cyberattacks than we’ve ever seen before. The numbers are quite frightening.

So Canadians need to understand — hear — about those threats. And my key message would be: this is why we need the investments to two per cent, in order for the CAF to have the right capabilities and to be sustainable in defending Canada.

The defence of Canada, in a North American context, is my first priority. So when you think about CJOC:

• Priority One is the defence of Canada and the North American continent.

• Number two is the defence of Europe, through NATO.

• And number three is the implementation of the Indo-Pacific strategy with other government partners.

So when you think about our situation here — we’re taking it really seriously. And it’s not just CJOC. You go to CFINTCOM, you go to CANSOFCOM — they’re all going to tell you: this is our priority. We are very much focused on the threats and the capabilities that we need.

I didn’t mention the Middle East, but I always pay attention to it. And Africa. And the list goes on. But that’s the top three.

Matt Gurney:
I told you earlier that my colleague Jen and I wake up every morning and start texting back and forth, asking “What the hell happened overnight?” And it’s a lot to keep up with. We’re getting to the point where I’m going to wake up one day and it’s like, “Well, New Zealand just nuked Belgium,” and I’m going to be like, “Well, okay. Sure, makes sense. I’ll go have some tea.”

Lt.-Gen. Boivin:
I didn’t say that — you said that.

Matt Gurney:
No, I know. [Laughs] Don’t worry — I’ll take the blame. But just ... the Overton window of the stuff we have to be ready to think about ... it’s not just that it’s wide. It’s bizarre.

Lt.-Gen. Boivin:
Yeah.

Matt Gurney:
I got an email from an American friend recently apologizing for everything that’s going on, and I thought to myself, well, that’s a first. We’re just living in a weird world. Last question for you, and I think it’s a big one — and I always like to end on these questions.

If there’s anything you wished I had asked about but didn’t, please tell me. And if there isn’t — if there’s just a message you’d like to send to the Canadian people — my recorder is still running, so I yield the floor to you.

Lt.-Gen. Boivin:
So what I’ll tell you is — I’ve taken over at CJOC last summer, and on a daily basis, I’m really impressed by the work that our Canadian Armed Forces members are doing on operations.

Whether it’s here at home — we’ve talked about Lentis, we’ve talked about Nanook — whether it’s expeditionary — on Reassurance, Unifier, Horizon, or any of the other smaller operations we’re conducting — I’m really impressed by the work that they’re doing.

Going back to a question you asked — how do you train these people to do all these missions? Well — they do it, Matt. And it’s quite impressive to see the flexibility in our members.

So the message I’ve got is: there is purpose in serving in the Canadian Armed Forces. We need Canadians to join the Canadian Armed Forces in order to address all of the threats that we’ve discussed today.

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