As of this writing more than 900 Canadian soldiers remain in Afghanistan completing the last part of the training mission that this government took on when it ended Canada’s mission in Kandahar province in 2011. That mission has an achievable objective and the resources necessary to meet its goals. But what about the rest of the Canadian “defence team” as the government calls it? Not so much clarity of purpose or action there.

The Canadian Army has been doing some serious doctrinal thinking about what to do with itself now that Afghanistan has almost ended, but larger mission objectives that can only follow government strategic choices about the future of Canadian defence are not being considered. Overall army doctrine–like the rest of the Canadian Armed Forces–is still based on the tried and true principles of: defence of Canada; defence of North America in co-operation with the United States; and participation with allies or coalition partners in collective security.

This is the equivalent to saying that the Canadian military’s basic mission is to act to achieve peace and justice through the world. As policy it is claptrap.

What is the army going to achieve its goals with? It won’t have the new medium-weight trucks which were to be contracted for years ago but which have been postponed yet again. Nor the Close Combat Vehicles (CCV)–medium-weight armoured fighting vehicles that are designed to fight on their own or to accompany tanks into battle. The CCV has been endlessly discussed in Ottawa but so far, no contract.

Should the Canadian Army be a niche fighting force? Should it train primarily for counter-insurgency operations? For peacekeeping? Or should the army train for full spectrum combat with heavy forces? But to fight whom? Canada is unlikely to be at war with another state for a very long time if ever again.

There’s been one recent change: the army now has “divisions” across Canada in place of the old “areas.” For example, what was once Land Force Western Area is now the Third Canadian Division but to get real, what resemblance do these divisions bear to real divisions, with all the troops and capabilities, let alone the numbers, that a modern division is made of? Not much.

Why divisions anyway? The U.S. army now deploys primarily in brigades. As do the British. Does Canada have a single deployable brigade? And with the deep budget cuts, particularly to readiness and training, does Canada even have a deployable battle group today? There is no direction from government.

In late August one of the navy’s two last supply ships. Her Majesty’s Canadian Ship Protecteur rammed the 40-year-old destroyer HMCS Algonquin as the two vessels conducted a towing exercise while en route to a Pacific deployment. The Algonquin suffered the bulk of the damage, raising the spectre that the ship–Canada’s only command and control destroyer on the west coast—could be out of action for a very long time and might even be paid off. So much for a Canadian naval shift to the west coast.

In the meantime, the National Ship Building Strategy moves forward at its stately pace while another Canadian ship, HMCS Winnipeg, damaged last spring in a collision with an American fishing trawler, languishes in the repair yard. To make matters worse, the 50-year-old, “thousand parts flying in formation,” known as the Sea King helicopter continues to do yeoman service (at great cost per flying hour) while the Sikorsky H-92 which was to replace it is proving totally unsuitable nine years after it was first touted as the Sea King’s replacement. The government is now talking publicly about rejecting it outright.

As for the air force, the fighter replacement program remains stalled, the fixed-wing search-and-rescue aircraft won’t fly for another five to 10 years, and Canada is now out of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s Airborne Warning and Control System operations. The replacement for the Aurora long-range aircraft is little more than a concept, and the aging Griffon helicopters labour on even though the new CH47D Chinooks have finally started to show up. But here too, the very air force that was last used, apparently with good effect, to help topple the Libyan dictatorship in 2011, has received no real strategic direction either.

When this government was elected in January 2006, one of its highest priorities was to continue the work the previous Liberal government had already started to rebuild Canadian military capability. It takes a long time and a lot of money to modernize and upgrade a military; it takes a short time of deep budget cuts, fuzzy mission planning, absence of policy leadership and sheer apathy to let that military spoil. The Canadian Armed Forces may not be over the edge just yet, but they are rapidly approaching another decade of darkness.