PHOTO: METROPOLIS STUDIO

Just off the courtyard in the inner sanctum of Parliament Hill’s East Block is the high-ceilinged office of retired brigadier-general Gordon O’Connor, Canada’s minister of national defence.

It is a very nice office. In the big outer room there’s a flat-screen TV mounted on the wall in front of a leather couch. There are grand windows, wide-open spaces and elegant architectural features. It is sort of like a modern, Canadian-style castle.

Not that O’Connor gets to spend much time there. You see, the 67-year-old O’Connor is the first minister of national defence to oversee sustained armed conflict since the Korean War. He’s also smack in the middle of spending over $17 billion on new ships, aircraft and trucks, so it’s not surprising that he showed up late for his interview with Legion Magazine, and ended up leaving early. Parliament held him up and there was a plane waiting to take him to Quebec City.

During the interview, O’Connor was amiable and quick to smile, but not unflappable. He spoke in the clipped, staccato cadence so common among Canadian Forces officers, and while answering questions glanced frequently at a staff member who was hovering nearby. He seemed to be a man under pressure.

Of course, as a former armoured officer who helped stare down the Soviets in central Europe, he might be used to a little pressure. It was in West Germany after all that he was commanding officer of the Royal Canadian Dragoons from 1978 to 1980, at the height of the Cold War. During this time he had an energetic junior officer working for him by the name of Rick Hillier, who is now the chief of defence staff.

From Germany, O’Connor went on to National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa where he worked in a variety of staff roles. After retiring from the military in 1994, he worked in public relations for Hill & Knowlton Canada and as a lobbyist for several major defence industry companies, including General Dynamics and Airbus Military. He continued his work as a lobbyist until 2004, when he decided to change careers once again. “I chose to become a politician because of the state of the military. I had no serious interest of going into politics at all until about four years ago. But I watched the air force, army and navy decaying and so I decided I had to do something about it. I joined a political party.

“I was encouraged to run and ran and I got elected in 2004 and got re-elected in 2006. In ’04 I was the official Opposition critic for defence and in ’06 I’m the defence minister–so you can’t do it faster than that.”

O’Connor was elected in the riding of Carleton-Mississippi Mills, just west of Ottawa where he has lived with his wife for the past 20 years. He has been a member of the Legion’s Kanata Branch since becoming a politician in 2004.

Since his appointment to the ministerial position in early 2006, O’Connor has wasted no time making good on his commitment to rebuild the forces. In a series of announcements that gladdened the hearts of military men everywhere, O’Connor revealed that the government is planning to spend $17.1 billion dollars on new equipment and services, including new long-range heavy lift aircraft, new support ships, new helicopters and new trucks. In addition, O’Connor plans to add about 13,000 regular force troops and at least 10,000 reservists.

Beyond the new equipment and new troops, O’Connor brings with him a new policy and a set of new priorities. Many of these new priorities came in the way of campaign promises during the 2006 election.

The new policy–called Canada First–is based primarily on maintaining Canada’s sovereignty by bolstering Arctic defence and surveillance, while co-operating extensively with the United States on continental defence.

The major elements of this plan were announced during the election campaign. They include: Three new armed icebreakers with about 500 regular force crew to be based at a new military/civilian deep-water docking facility near Iqaluit in Nunavut; a reconstituted Airborne Regiment to be based at Canadian Forces Base Trenton and used as an emergency response force throughout the Arctic; an Army winter warfare training centre near or on the Northwest Passage; and new fixed-wing search-and-rescue aircraft for 440 Squadron at Yellowknife. “One of the thrusts I want to deal with is our sovereignty. To me that’s pretty important and that’s why our policy has a lot of emphasis on our northern sovereignty. The ice is melting in the North and the Northwest Passage is year by year becoming more and more ice free and very soon we’re going to have legal disputes because ships will be moving from Asia across to Europe or North America through the Northwest Passage,” said O’Connor.

The nub of the issue in the North isn’t solely about territorial sovereignty, though that is an issue as well. Instead, the problem is protecting Canada’s right to assert legal control over the Northwest Passage, which could potentially open up for shipping within two decades. According to legal experts, every time a ship passes through the Northwest Passage without seeking Canada’s permission, our legal rights are eroded. If we have no way to enforce compliance, that also weakens our legal position. “We have to impose our sovereignty so people acknowledge that when they’re coming into the Northwest Passage they have to check with us. We will never refuse anybody but they’ve got to follow our laws,” said O’Connor.

Ever since he became minister there have been rumours of a clash of perspectives and priorities between his office and Chief of Defence Staff General Rick Hillier. Though quite possibly the issue has become overblown, there does seem to be a divergence of opinion and priorities between the two old colleagues.

Almost from the moment Hillier became the chief of defence in 2004, he has been attempting to establish a new role for the CF based on a kind of contemporary grand strategy that seeks to limit the threats posed by international terrorism.

This new strategic role grew out of a bunch of simple but significant ideas–that militaries couldn’t defend their nations from terrorist attack merely by putting up fences and increasing transit security. Instead, preventing another 9/11 was going to take a multi-pronged effort, including police work, intelligence collection and, most importantly, denying the terrorists the advantage of using failed states as their training areas and safe zones. It’s the latter tactic of bringing law and stability to the disordered parts of the world that Hillier once argued should be the present and future focus of the CF. Much of the current force transformation effort is directed at this goal.

Though O’Connor has some faint praise for Hillier’s vision, noting that he doesn’t disagree with Hillier, it’s clear that advancing this grand expeditionary strategy is not a top priority for the new government. “I guess our policy and our approach is more encompassing than that. I don’t disagree with anything Gen. Hillier has said because, yes, that’s inside what we want to do. But our orientation is twofold, it’s at home and abroad. And we want to build up our capabilities to protect our sovereignty at home and our security at home but we want to build up assets that are flexible enough to be used abroad, to help the world when there are failed states or humanitarian disasters, et cetera,” said O’Connor. “But our policy is called Canada First and that’s what it means, Canada is first.”

As far as Professor Douglas Bland is concerned, the apparent struggle between priorities is simply a part of the transition to a new government. “In all my studies of all the chiefs it is a very common feature that new defence ministers and new chiefs of defence go through a period where they have to sit down and come to a consensus on what they’re going to do with limited resources. And often that will produce sparks and friction and even acrimony but at the end it’s the sound of the machinery doing normal business,” said Bland, who served in the CF with O’Connor before becoming the chair of Defence Management Studies at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont.

Though it’s an open question whether there will be enough resources and public support to develop the military as extensively as early promises indicate, there is the possibility that Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government will fund the military on a level not seen in Canada for several decades. “Here’s a point that people miss. The military in Canada has been so used to niggardly contributions by politicians that when a government comes up and says we’re going to go off on a new track, all they can think is that this is going to take away from what we’ve done before. What is surprising everybody, including the CDS I think, is to find that the government said we’re going to take on new tasks and we’re going to give you new money. So all of a sudden the whole equation is stood on its head,” said Bland. “When you come down to it, what O’Connor is suggesting for defence of Canada is pretty minimal stuff. It’s hardly going to overthrow this nation’s ability to do something else.”

And for his part, O’Connor has certainly not forgotten that the CF is currently doing something else–fighting in Afghanistan–and that Canadian troops are constantly in harm’s way. “It certainly orients me that what the troops need there on the ground I will fight to get. If they need special training they will get it. If they need more protection they will get it. I don’t care how many millions it costs me–if I can protect our soldiers from becoming casualties, I will.”

Though O’Connor prefers not to call the operation in Afghanistan a ‘war’–arguing instead that the ongoing battles constitute ‘armed conflict’–he is keenly aware of what’s at stake in this mission. “The ultimate North Atlantic Treaty Organization plan is to build up the army and police so that they can effectively provide their own security and when there’s a government stable enough to manage this, we’re outta there. I mean, we have no desire to stay there forever.”

Though O’Connor is one of the highest-ranking former soldiers ever to hold the minister of defence position, it’s not clear that’s working to his advantage. In fact, it’s hard to know what to make of O’Connor, who is beset by critics on virtually every front. And it’s not just coming from politicians and the media, but from within the defence community itself.

Ever since O’Connor took office, opposition politicians have questioned how somebody with his recent lobbying background could avoid a conflict of interest while overseeing military procurement. This most recent spending spree was no exception. “Nearly all of these purchases will either be awarded to, or bid on by, companies that the Minister was once paid to represent, making the appearance of many potential conflicts quite clear,” stated Liberal MP Denis Coderre in a June 27, 2006, statement that appears on the Liberal party’s website. Coderre notes that O’Connor has connections with at least two of the leading contenders for the recently announced supply ship and truck contracts. “The minister’s refusal to step aside risks years of delays and multi-million dollar lawsuits should companies take legal action over how these procurements are structured and decisions are made.”

Others have claimed that O’Connor’s technocratic style and sometimes ill-considered comments tend to alienate many, even those in uniform.

O’Connor first gained some notoriety for comments he made during his time as defence critic. One of his most memorable blunders was a statement about the potential perils of having the Joint Task Force 2 counterterrorism squad continue to be based at Dwyer Hill, just outside Ottawa. “They’re very highly trained people who are trained in anti-social skills, I would call it–they’re trained to kill people in various ways,” O’Connor told the Ottawa Citizen newspaper’s editorial board. “I would prefer them to be under iron-tight discipline inside a military base.”

Though O’Connor has argued that quotes like these misrepresent his position, much of the military community was insulted by this comment, which seemed to imply that the members of the CF’s most highly trained and stringently selected ‘all-star’ team are a danger to the surrounding community.

Comments like these, and others, drew some pretty heavy criticism from places like www.army.ca, a popular virtual gathering spot for current and former CF members which has more than 10,000 registered members. The website generally presents a wide range of ‘pro-defence’ opinions and its members are frequently quoted by newspapers such as the National Post. In a statement from 2005, an editorial board composed of the site’s senior members decried O’Connor’s “monumentally silly ideas,” and concluded that he may not actually be helping the military very much. “Simply because someone wore a uniform ‘once upon a time’ does not mean that they are cognizant of today’s operational and strategic realities. Mr. O’Connor has demonstrated that he knows very little about either…and has instead alienated a large number of those for whom he presumes to speak.”

On the other hand, there are those who believe O’Connor is actually very well suited to the minister’s position. “I think there is clash for some people who would like Gord to lighten up a bit, you know, tell a few funny stories or something. Well, Gord doesn’t tell funny stories, he’s busy,” said Bland. “So, there’s a certain difficulty with his style and manners that other officers who have different manners and styles don’t like. But there’s also a deep-seated resentment from senior officers who were always suspicious of officers who were more or less independent thinkers, who weren’t following the tribal lines, who spoke out about issues and ideas. Gord was one of those kind of people.”

Retired CF general Lou Cuppens, chairman of the Legion’s defence committee, also acknowledged there have been criticisms of O’Connor, but stressed that on balance the good far outweighs the bad. “Our perspective in the Legion is that we’re really interested only in making sure the forces are well-structured, well-equipped and well-compensated. And they have done all that.”

“The guy is very intellectual, a very caring person, and certainly anyone who knows him would join me in applauding Prime Minister Harper for selecting such an experienced and dedicated individual to be the defence minister.”

In the end, O’Connor’s great challenge may not be as simple as rebuilding the CF or defending the Northwest Passage, though neither of those is easy, either. Instead, O’Connor seems to be tasked with bridging two somewhat distinct roles for the Canadian Forces–the expeditionary vision of Hillier on one hand and the domestic Canada First priorities of the Harper government on the other.

Whether O’Connor can succeed in this mission will likely depend on his ability to keep the money and resources flowing. So far he’s been exceptionally successful and if he can keep it up, maybe, in the end, everybody will be happy. “I’ve always argued there are two forces. There’s the present force and then there’s the future force. The CDS mostly manages the present force and the future force just a few years from now. The minister, if he’s any kind of thinking person, like O’Connor, is managing Canada’s defence policy and the future force,” said Bland. “So he’s doing very well as a politician in the sense that he’s putting through an expensive and difficult rebuilding of the armed forces over the objections of other people in cabinet.”