by Ray Dick

After a decade of budget cuts andshrinking manpower, the Canadian Forces are caught in the worst of worlds with “conventional capabilities in decline and new capabilities unaffordable,” says the Conference of Defence Associations, the country’s largest pro-defence lobby group.

In a report entitled Caught In The Middle: An Assessment Of The Operational Readiness Of The Canadian Forces, the CDA says what is needed is an immediate infusion of funds, and billions of dollars over the next several years just to put the Canadian military back on an even keel.

The CDA is an umbrella organization of 16 military groups of which the Legion is the largest. The principal author of the study was Sean Harvey, the association’s senior defence analyst.

The study presents a report card on the three branches of the service and concludes that the Canadian military of today could not, as required by the 1994 White Paper on defence, “fight against the best (and win)” beyond a marginal level. That White Paper called for Canada to retain multi-purpose, combat-capable armed forces ready for action on short notice.

The CDA recommends the government take action to:

• Provide funds necessary to implement the policy in the 1994 White Paper, a minimum of an additional $1 billion in the budget for the Department of National Defence in each of the next two fiscal years to stabilize the situation and assist in eliminating the ongoing deficit in the operations and maintenance account. Ideally, the report says, the same amount ought to continue to be applied to the DND budget base over the next five years.

• Restore Canadian Forces manpower to the approved ceiling of 60,000, as recommended by the House of Commons Standing Committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs in its recent report in June 2001. The CDA says the CF now has about 57,000 serving people, only 53,000 of those considered effective troops.

• Consider incremental increases in manpower towards the 75,000 level originally considered appropriate for the current level of commitments of the CF in the 1994 White Paper.

• Take action to ensure that a larger proportion of the DND budget is available for investment in military capabilities.

• Address the challenges presented by the approaching mass “rust-out” of Canadian Forces equipment over the next decade. (The Chickens Have Come Home To Roost, May/June). This would involve allocation of 23 per cent of the DND budget to the capital equipment account.

The CDA report says a trend to run down the Canadian Forces began in the early 1970s, but that several additional blows were struck in the early 1990s which further debilitated the already weak structure.

Although admitting that some new high-technology systems have been introduced to improve combat capability in selected areas, the report says they are overshadowed by the greater “negative impacts on the CF of reduced manpower, insufficiently trained and burned out by overtasking. Similarly, shortfalls exist in the realm of old and worn-out equipment such as the Sea King helicopter.

“Replacement and upgrades have been discussed, but few commitments have been made and funding for complete programs has remained elusive.”

The report notes that the real problems and shortfalls of the CF arise in the roles of co-operation with the United States in the defence of North America and in contributions to international security. The commitments of the Canadian military in these cases as designated in the 1994 White Paper could not be met because the military is “simply not operationally ready to do so in terms of manpower, doctrine, training, equipment and logistics.”

The report quotes Dan Goure, a defence analyst with the Lexington Institute in Washington, as typical of the growing criticism by allies of Canadian defence contributions: “As far as I can tell, the Canadians are out of business, They don’t fit with the European rapid reaction position. There isn’t really a role for them in continental defence.” He suggested that Canada’s future lay with either United Nations peacekeeping or simply abandoning military pretensions and opting for a home guard like Costa Rica.

The CDA report says the situation will not improve until Canadians realize that effective armed forces are a price of doing business. “If the government does not respond now with an adequate level of funding to rebuild the CF, its influence on the international stage will continue to decline and it may be incapable of meeting future emergencies.”