PHOTO: M.CPL. ROBERT BOTTRILL, CF COMBAT CAMERA

Soldiers from the Royal 22nd Regiment fall towards a drop zone during a joint Canadian and American exercise at Fort Bliss in Texas.

During this past federal election, Conservative leader Stephen Harper went to Canadian Forces Base Trenton, Ont., to make the first of several announcements revealing his party’s defence platform. Among Harper’s promises was a commitment to establish a new airborne battalion, based at Trenton.

Almost as soon as the words were out of his mouth, some members of the media claimed that Harper intended to revive the old Canadian Airborne Regiment, disbanded by government order in March 1995. The Polaris Institute, which styles itself as an “independent, public interest research group based in Ottawa” immediately reminded Canadians of the Airborne’s sordid past and conjured up the ghost of Shidane Arone, tortured and then killed by Airborne troopers in Somalia in 1993.

We should never expect much rationality during an election campaign. Although Canadians of virtually all political stripes are generally far more willing today, than they were, say, 10 years ago, to accept the argument that the Canadian Forces are a vital instrument of Canadian diplomacy there are still those–like the Polaris Institute–who decry virtually any effort to build true combat capabilities into the Canadian Forces.

In his Trenton proposal Harper only put into words what almost everyone concerned with Canadian Forces transformation has known for some time–that Canada badly needs to re-establish a formation very much like the old Airborne–but with a much better defined mission and a much higher standard of discipline and training than the regiment that went to Somalia in late 1992.

In fact, General Rick Hillier’s own transformation plan calls for the standing up of a Canadian Special Operations Regiment in Petawawa, Ont., sometime this year. The selection, screening and training of its first company is to be completed by August. This entirely new regiment will be recruited from across the regular and reserve components of the Canadian Forces and will eventually be the size of a small battalion with a special operations–and an airborne–capability.

That plan ought to surprise no one who has kept a close watch both on the continuation of parachute training within the army since the disbandment of the old Airborne, and on the CF’s new special operations requirement. The latter is an integral part of the CF’s desire to hone its ability to fight the asymmetric battle as part of the three-block war.

Parachute training never died within the Canadian army. Almost as soon as the Airborne was disbanded, three parachute companies were established within the army’s three infantry regiments. Although those jump companies were never publicly combined into a jump or airborne battalion for purposes of training or exercises, they were as carefully selected and trained as any parachute troops in the world. As time passed, and the very name “Airborne” lost its ability to put government ministers into shock, Canada’s paratroopers were even allowed to don the maroon beret, the international symbol for parachute soldiers.

The capability was not kept because anyone in today’s CF ever expects that masses of troops will ever again jump into combat, as they did on the night before D-Day in 1944 or the drop over the Rhine in March 1945. There are much better ways today of creating what the military calls vertical envelopment. But the harder training, the greater mental toughness, the survival skills in both combat and non-combat environments that are normally demanded of parachute troops are still invaluable resources for any fighting army to maintain. So is the capability, if ever needed, to jump from an airplane or helicopter directly into a dangerous environment. That’s why the United States, France, Britain, Israel–indeed many of the world’s best trained militaries–continue to maintain a jump capability. Jumping into combat may be a rare need today, but no one can say that it is completely obsolete either.

In the case of the Canadian Forces, a jump capability is as much needed now as it was in the days of the old Canadian Airborne Regiment. The new Canadian Special Operations Regiment will serve two vital functions. As a more highly trained and readily deployable formation than other standing army units, it will form the back-up force that special operations Joint Task Force II must have in place when conducting combat operations. In that sense it will play a role very much like that played by the U.S. Army Rangers who give the Green Berets–the U.S. Army Special Forces–their operational support. It will also form the primary reserve pool out of which JTF II members will be recruited.

The Polaris Institute will no doubt claim–as they did after Harper’s announcement–that Canada is instituting such a formation to help fight U.S. President George W. Bush’s wars. In fact, however, such a formation is very much in keeping with the International Policy Statement issued by the government on April 19, 2005, and the Defence Policy Statement that went with it.

The policy statement laid out a vision for Canadian foreign and defence policy that projects an active Canadian military, civil and aid role in stabilizing failed or failing states such as Afghanistan. In that environment, the military has to be prepared to fight the three-block war–an asymmetrical conflict where soldiers may be engaged in heavy fighting with terrorists in one part of a city, providing security for aid convoys in another, or helping police or judicial authorities re-establish civil authority in a third. In that kind of war, special operations forces such as the planned Canadian Special Operations Regiment–or Stephen Harper’s airborne battalion, will be at the cutting edge of the security requirement. This may not be the only future for the Canadian military, but it is a likely one in the years immediately ahead, and it will serve Canadian interests and bolster Canadian pride at the same time.