Crowds wave to a Royal Australian Navy Sea King helicopter during the Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands in 2003.

PHOTO: WO2 GARY RAMAGE

The developing problem of what Canada is going to do about replacing its aging CF-18 fighter aircraft is not the only major procurement issue the government now faces. Early in January reports began to surface that the navy’s proposed joint support ship has been under the microscope of the same parliamentary budget officer whose report may have shot down the F-35 purchase.

Is there any measure that Canada can resort to that might help the public to better understand the dollars and cents of defence spending in a way that “ordinary” Canadians can grasp? After all, accountability and transparency are two sides of the same issue. And there has been a decided lack of transparency in following military procurement projects in Canada from their initial announcements, usually by a minister, through all the phases of project development, to the actual acquisition of a final product.

Australia appears to have found a way through a unique government-funded organization called the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI). Established in 2001 by the government of Prime Minister John Howard, ASPI is an independent, non-partisan think-tank funded largely by the Australian federal government but which operates at arm’s length from the government to proffer advice on Australia’s defence and strategic policy choices. More specifically, as its website says, “ASPI is charged with the task of informing the public on strategic and defence issues, generating new ideas for government, and fostering strategic expertise in Australia.”

The aim of the Howard government was simple in conception: set up an organization that government could call upon for advice that was not in any way tainted by the self-interest of the military forces, the bureaucracy, or a minister’s political staff. ASPI has a very small permanent staff with an annual budget approaching $3 million Australian (C$3.1 million).

The staff is largely made up of former military or foreign service personnel and academics who are mandated to contract out as much work as possible. The institute’s annual budget is guaranteed by the federal government, although ASPI is also expected to raise funds on its own. It is governed by an independent board appointed by the government.

Australia has many more strategic challenges than Canada because it exists in a much tougher neighbourhood. Its strategic and economic issues are closely intertwined and its next door neighbour, Indonesia, is the most populous Muslim country in the world. And Australia has had more than a few procurement embarrassments of its own, most particularly with its Australian-built, overly-expensive and troublesome Collins-class submarines. Thus the very existence of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute can’t be said to have made Australia a paragon of rational defence analysis. But work done by the institute has had more than a minimal effect on defence and security matters in Australia.

ASPI made out a good case for Australian intervention in the Solomon Islands in 2003 pushing for the Regional Assistance Mission in the islands which went far to restore order there.

ASPI has also focused on what its director calls its “plain-English analysis of the defence budget”—something that is sorely needed in Canada—and in lifting the standard of media reporting on defence procurement questions. The institute pushed the government to address maritime issues such as counter-piracy in Australia’s recent and successful bid for a non-permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.

It is hard to know exactly what ASPI has been able to accomplish in its first decade or how much influence it really has, but whatever it is, the institute remains a trusted source of disinterested advice. It has no counterpart in Canada. There are a small number of Canadian think-tanks that tackle defence and security issues but they are all in a constant struggle for private funds and there is little evidence that their studies gain any consistent attention in Ottawa.

Our own Department of National Defence and the Canadian Forces have known about the existence of ASPI for years but there have been no public moves to emulate the institute here. In fact, defence and security policy studies within DND and the CF have been very much downgraded in the recent past. Why would anyone in Ottawa want to set yet another place at the budget table now even for a policy institute that costs a mere $3 million a year?

Yet the defence community ought to push for that very thing. As former chief of defence staff Rick Hillier once proclaimed, the Canadian Forces are not just another branch of the bureaucracy. Their mandate is to kill people and break things on behalf of the Canadian people at the direction of the Canadian government. The more quality defence policy information the people of Canada have, the better.