A well-equipped Canadian Forces engineer leads a Nyala armoured vehicle down Route Hyena in the Panjwaii district of Afghanistan.

PHOTO: SGT. MATTHEW MCGREGOR, CANADIAN FORCES COMBAT CAMERA

With the possible exception of the first two years of the First World War and the Korean War, governments of Canada have historically spared no effort to make sure its soldiers, sailors and airpersons went to war with the best equipment possible. We may bemoan the fact that the First Division went to war in 1915 with the inadequate Ross Rifle, but by the same token, Canadian battalions had far more light machine guns than did their British counterparts by 1917.

Many will remember that the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry deployed to Kandahar with green Canadian disrupter-pattern uniforms in February 2002. But by the time of Canada’s withdrawal from southern Afghanistan in 2011, the tanks, mine-protected vehicles, unmanned aerial vehicles and other communications and anti-IED kit of the Canadian military was at least equal to the equipment used by other North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries.

Thus a government’s willingness and ability to support the military in time of war is not the true test of a government’s commitment to the nation’s defence. The truest test of a government’s commitment to defence comes when the guns are not firing anywhere close to Canada or in such a way as to pose obvious threats to Canadians or to Canadian interests because those are the times when it is much harder for a government to justify sensible military expenditure to citizens, to opposition members, and to the press.

Canada has pulled out of combat operations in Afghanistan. Canadian soldiers are still engaged in training Afghan National Security Forces and will remain so engaged for another year or so, but after that there does not now appear to be any obvious dangers lurking to Canadians or to Canadian interests.

So other than protecting the borders, air and space, the waters and the economic exclusion and environmental protection zones claimed by Canada, what does this government wish to do with the Canadian military in the future?

Ottawa has offered no specific answers. It is a given that the time-honoured three-fold mission for the Canadian Forces first enunciated by Defence Minister Brooke Claxton in the late 1940s still holds: defend Canada, help the United States defend North America, help our “allies” keep the peace overseas. But does this mean, for example, that the Royal Canadian Navy should help our Asian allies contain China’s growing sea power?  Does this mean that Canadian aircraft should take part in future missions in situations such as Libya?  Should Canadian troops be sent to fight another insurgency in Asia or Africa or drug lords in Mexico or in Central or South America?

Other than protecting Canada, what do our political leaders plan on doing with our military forces?

A question as important as this one needs to be asked and answered in periods of quiescence in Canadian military deployments because it is in just such periods that the right equipment, training and doctrine should be developed to suit whatever Canadian interests will need to be protected or advanced in the years ahead.

If any such thinking is going on at the moment—at National Defence Headquarters, in the Prime Minister’s Office, in the advanced echelons of the Canadian Forces—there is little evidence of it. In fact, Defence Minister Peter MacKay announced at the end of February that he won’t attempt to define future roles for the Canadian military until the current run of defence budget cuts are concluded. And these cuts are very deep.

Defence analyst David Perry of the Conference of Defence Associations Institute says they are almost as deep as the cuts imposed by the Liberal government in the mid-1990s. If they continue past 2014, he says, they will indeed surpass the Liberal cuts of the “decade of darkness.”

At this time (March 2013) no one seems to know very much about anything going on inside the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Forces when it comes to the impact of the cuts. A report from the Parliamentary Budget Officer in late February strongly implied that the government’s much vaunted $35-billion ship-building plan is unlikely to deliver as promised. MacKay quickly denied that possibility and claimed that the money necessary to build new support vessels will be found, one way or another.

Former Chief of the Land Staff Andrew Leslie—who authored a report on why it is necessary to shift defence dollars from “tail” to “tooth”—has decried many of the cuts as doing exactly the opposite of what he urged.

One thing is certain in all this fog, the minister of Finance, firmly backed by the prime minister, is now the ultimate decider of what sort of a military Canada will have; dollars available and not mission, will determine the shape and size
of the Canadian Forces.

There is nothing inherently wrong with that concept. The health of the Canadian economy is too important to be left in the hands of generals and admirals as they themselves will be the first to admit. But cuts that will determine the very future of the military ought to be made with some definite and realistic plan in mind.

Maybe that is happening. But if it is, it is the best kept secret in Ottawa.