From the man who wrote, amongst other things, Who Killed Canadian History and Who Killed the Canadian Military?, a piece that I think is bang (as it were) on.
From the man who wrote, amongst other things, Who Killed Canadian History and Who Killed the Canadian Military?, a piece that I think is bang (as it were) on.
German Coast guard trainee
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yR0lWICH3rY
Jack’s column is regrettably largely correct in his assessment.
The lame assed procurement schedule for end of life cycle equipment is quite frankly pathetic.
If a few artillery regiments fired for effect at the bureaucracy I would not countermand their signals!! At least it would have the salutary effect of breaking up the bureaucratic log jam that infests the procurement snails who spend more time haggling on who gets a cut of the defense budget pie.
In all truth Mark; “BANG ON”…is probably what the snivel serpents really need.
Now, where did I put that division of Leopard II tanks?
Cheers
Hans Rupprecht, Commander in Chief
1st Saint Nicolaas Army
Army Group “True North”
Well, I agree with Hans that Jack’s column is largely correct, but would not put too much stock in the objectivity of what Granatstein says on this topic and if possible see what the Tory story is. He and Jeffrey Simpson are still ticked at PM Harper for acting on dispelling the War of 1812 militia myth and awarding War of 1812 battle honours to some militia units that are perpetuated by their current successor reserve regiments. See Dorchester Review, Volume 3, Number 1, pp 12-18.
Both Granatstein and Simpson downplayed the Canadian (militia) role in the war and suggested that PM Harper was rewriting history, but the battle strength, casualty statistics, and regional battle participation levels brought forward by Robert Henderson in his article The Militia Myth dispel Granatstien and Simpson’s assertions.
I do have a few of Granatstein’s books and generally he writes fairly objectively, but he also writes from a Liberal point of view.
Hans, that video was funny.
Yeah well, nobody in the military, pretty much anywhere, seems happy lately.
My associates in the US, French, OZ, German and Russian forces all have the same complaint. Wornout equipment not being repaired/refurbished/replaced, obsolecance, recruitment/retension problems, political foot-dragging in procurement. Then the reality of having too much on their plate…….and no respect.
Canada should simply import several Chinese Army Divisions on a contract basis. We could import a couple of their Air Force Squadrons as well,save us a lot of money. Is their Navy up to snuff?
Royal Chinese-Canadian Air Force.RC-CAF.
Has a nice “ring” to it.
I’d start putting a whole bunch of weight into securing the Arctic. Either the government is serious or it isn’t.
Back in ’09 whilst in Toronto I picked up some good pickings on 1812 history at Fort George and Fort York, which also detailed the militia contributions which in some circles gets ‘glossed’ because at the time they weren’t ‘officially sanctioned’ regiments. In this case, I would agree with PM Harper’s assertions and grasp of the period.
Cheers
Hans Rupprecht, Commander in Chief
1st Saint Nicolaas Army
Army Group “True North”
In a country without naval shipyards, Ottawa chose to try to create an industry, massively increasing costs and greatly increasing the risks that nothing of use will emerge for years, even decades. Britain’s Royal Navy is buying supply ships from South Korea at a cost of about one-seventh of the Canadian estimates for roughly similar vessels.
Another brilliant move from Harper. I guess starting up Canada’s own military-industrial complex is just more important than actual military capability.
Why can’t we just privatize the military? Cambodia was thinking about it.
And here I thought it was people like LAS whose heads were exploding when Bush used private defense contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Well you thought wrong. Don’t worry, at least 60% of the commenters here are too dumb to criticize what I actually state as opposed to strawmen and the voices inside their heads. Such is the burden of an intellectual giant like myself in a sea of…’little people’.
You’re brilliant at persuading people. Call them stupid and BAM! Instant followers.
But, in the real world, you’re just being a jerk.
Go praise Paul Martin or something, dingus.
Your modesty underwhelms me.
I have a better idea. Just farm our entire defense out to the USA. For several reasons. They could have us any time they wanted as we are defenseless. They would never allow a invasion on our soil because it’s in their best interest, not to mention they own most of the industry in this country. Russia, the only invasive threat would have to get past Alaska and the USA would never allow that. We could not put a single Division in the field and there are more cops in NY that we have in the entire military. They have 10 times our population and the only reason we are free is that we have not been a threat for hundreds of years. They get what they want through honest bargaining. Also, it seems that every Canadian has a relative or two in the US. A MOU could be worked out without too much difficulty. If we think we could actually defend this country I have bad news for them. Hell….we caved in at Oka and haven’t regained our confidence yet.
“…but he also writes from a Liberal point of view.”
Aye, that’s for sure. But, as you say, his book was fair.
AS a few posters have already pointed out, the very political obsession to have preferably all (or at least some) components of every piece of equipment, from rifles to ships to guidance systems “made in Canada” leaves our DND with empty pockets, inadequate equipment, and few boots on the parade squares.
#1. They are obviously dragging their feet. The deficit is still massive. If they can put off spending on the military it just puts them that much closer to getting back to surplus in 2015…right before the election.
#2. The return on investment for the military isn’t what it used to be. We haven’t been invaded in over a century. The whole idea of a defensive war seems like a Hollywood notion at this point. Why not put the money into more effective areas like health care?
#3. What the military does do and does have, SHOULD be all made in Canada. I don’t care if it’s five times more expensive. Keep it in house, or else if that Hollywood scenario comes to pass, we’re screwed.
#4. We need a couple of dozen ICBM’s with 50 megaton payloads. This way, we need not spend so much on the Tonka Toys. If you mess with Canada, we push a button.
re. #2. Health care is an endless swamp. However much is put into it, it’s never enough and provides a diminishing rate of return. Haven’t you learned anything from the Paul Martin debacle?
re. #3. By your logic, Canada should only have pineapples if it can grow them here. I DO care about five times more expensive. What you seem to want is money wasted on bureaucratic paper-shuffling, not actual stuff that shoots.
Nicholson as a choice to head the DND sends a mixed message from Harper.
Obviously he want’s to cover up this mess instead of fixing it – and he picked the right jelly fish to do it – Nicholson as a Cabmin has been a total invertebrate ,a perfect rubber stamp and fartcatcher for the PMO. I doubt he has ever has an original idea or policy of his own – he has never had an open opinion on anything in his department – unless he cleared it with the “boss” first. My take on his move to defense is that Harper will now micro manage defense and that department has now become a black hole of info flowing to media.
Will Harper fix the mess or spend political energy covering it up?
AFAIK the only policy on defense Harper ever had was to build up our manpower and military strength on the northern border – dunno where that promise is – probably stalled or lame-ass symbolic attempts like parliamentary/senate reform and decriminalizing duck hunters.
Professor Granatstein is largely correct about the ‘problems’ at Defence. What fails to mention is that the Harper government has only just recently begun to free itself from the snares of the ‘pros’ at NDHQ who have been in place for decades. Those are the guys that the Minister trusts will present the best options from which to choose…and we all know how so many of those recommendations have turned into boondoggles. The ‘CF’ establishment was resistant to the Conservative government from the beginning and Granatstein himself a Grit has been almost pathologically hysterical over the restoration of the RCN, Army and RCAF which have generally proved very popular. National Defence requires some fresh thinking and practical oversight. Rob Nicholson is a capable man. If he gets the kind of co-operation that one would expect perhaps some of the ‘mess’ can be cleaned up and money flow into the care for those serving instead of serving those with grandiose schemes.
The Lancaster bomber came out of a hurried rework of a failed design that had tried to meet unsuitable government specs.
Today things are much worse because complexity is constantly increasing, technology is accelerating, lead times are growing,
and relative economic strength compared to potential adversaries is diminishing.
Granatstein is right. Decisions are always made in Ottawa for political reasons – and that is one thing the Tories and the Liberals have in common. Pointing fingers in any direction is pointless – they all are guilty. Soldiers in wartime are honoured, then they are tolerated, then ignored, then forgotten. Welcome to reality.
As an example, 10 or 12 years ago, the US Army was about to buy a huge fleet of medium trucks. They were heavy-duty, STANAG-compliant, all-terrain, all-weather vehicles; they would have been a very good replacement for the then-already-decrepit Canadian MLVW fleet. Given the numbers being made in the USA, the cost would have been very low, delivery quick, we would have had commonality with our largest partner and spare parts would have been available for decades. Instead, the Army was told that the deal was a non-starter as it did not comply with federal purchasing requirements, not the least of which was Canadian content. Now, in 2013, our Reserves have been given a painted-green civilian vehicle which cannot even fit through some armoury doors and the Regulars are still using MLVWs a generation older than some drivers. Brilliant.
As to buying Canadian, that’s is fine so long as there’s an infinitely large budget. There isn’t of course. Every penny we spend is in competition for health care, better roads, harbour improvement, etc. In common with most other medium players, major items of equipment such as aircraft, tanks, ships and such are simply beyond our capability to make on a cost-efficient basis.
Take the Chinook helicopter as an example. To make a purely Canadian one would mean hugely expensive R&D. If that cost $10 billion (not unreasonable these days), the first chopper would cost us (other things aside) $1B. If we only needed a dozen, each one would cost us $83 million just in R&D costs and not counting the actual cost of producing them. That’s just unaffordable. The only way to beat that price would be to sell them overseas – which means that we would have to be producing a chopper significantly better and cheaper than those already in the air. It just isn’t viable. For us to be 100% Cdn equipped, would limit the CF to constabulary-level equipment such as trucks, light armoured vehicles, rifles and the sort of choppers normally used by radio traffic reporters.
Jamie MaMaster is correct; we are obsessed with our domestic defence industry. Napoleon was able to outfit his army in coats that were made in Britain, because they were cheaper and better made than what he could obtain from sclerotic French suppliers.
We have been exulting in Halifax over the past couple of years about a ship-building program that, so far, has caused a temporary spike in house prices, and has propped up the corporatist Irving Shipyard and its comfortable union. It is the perfect supplier for a Navy that has far more ships than boats.
One of the biggest challenges to our military is the budget/equipment problem. We have a generational hog trough that has build up in both the military and Ottawa surrounding equipment. For example, the military decides they need a portable generator. Instead of just going out and buying a well proven Honda whisper quiet and attach a bilingual sticker. We allow the idiots in the military and Ottawa to try and design a better generator in 2 official languages, that can fly, that can float and that can march and shoot guns at the same time and will not start and run and perform its original function start easy run quiet and generate electricity . I was in an army surplus store last year and looked at a surplus generator, what a joke. What a very very expensive joke. Fire them all hire a good purchasing agent and an expediter, buy what works, not what some idiot in Ottawa or the military designs.
RFB;
Bang on! The reality is sad but the graft and corruption that surrounds government procurement has been established for 100’s of years. Feeding at the trough covers all aspects. Not limited to the military by any means.
At least we still have a military, the Liberals have been trying to dismantle it completely for decades.
Reviewing the comments makes one wonder if anyone actually spent any of their life in the military both/or regular forces and reserve forces.
I guess the many reactions, ignoring the trolls, is why the military is and will ever be a political decision. The cost of defence and defense is and also will ever be significant.
Possibly a read of Thomas Hobbes, without the kneejerk retorts, generated by the deterioration of liberal thought and the distortion of Adam Smith over the last couple of centuries will increase the understanding. Maybe a discussion with a discerning veteran and I have found the vast majority of veterans to be among the aware people. Cheers
“We have been exulting in Halifax over the past couple of years about a ship-building program that, so far, has caused a temporary spike in house prices, and has propped up the corporatist Irving Shipyard and its comfortable union.”
I live in Halifax and know people inside the shipyard, and I’m getting very close to saying that this vaunted shipbuilding program will NEVER GET OFF THE GROUND. The Navy seems to have no idea what it even wants. There are no finished designs, and they (meaning we, the taxpayers) will pay a fortune to Irving to design and redesign as all the various power brokers inside DND keep putting in their $.02 worth. Meanwhile Irving keeps milking the provincial government for subsidies and sweet loan deals (Irving is DAMN good at hitting up the NB & NS governments for money).
How I see it playing out is this: not one piece of steel will be cut before a federal government change takes place, then that next government – which sure as hell will be some god-awful Liberal-NDP beast – will put it on hold, then study it, then declare it’s gone massively overbudget, and cancel it. Halifax property values will be in for a rude correction when the shipbuilding air comes out of the bubble. Irving will cry poor to both the feds & the province and get a few hundred million in “compensation”. Whatever the Libs put in place of this stillborn program will wither for a decade until the Cons get back in and replace that. Rinse & repeat.
DND can’t seem to buy a toilet without studying & nit-picking it to death, never mind any actual fighting equipment (where are those Sea King replacements? When are they being delivered? Nobody knows). The entire upper echelon of DND probably ought to be purged to put an end to this crap. Putting a milquetoast minister in charge of the department won’t change a damn thing, not that McKay demonstrated much of a spine running the department either.
Ken, you are quite correct over the leftist insistence over their theory of the ‘Militia Myth’.. They are pushing this, because its a big part of the foundation for their nanny state.. plus that, if it was disproved, it would remove a large part of their rationale for gun control.. Can’t have the peasants armed and ready to defend themselves.. don’t-cha-know.
Yes – Jack Granatstein, the guy who wrote the same military history book 20 times. Me – I bought the same book maybe five times. Granatstein thinks a bloated bureaucracy with tons of toys is the ideal military. Me – I think that a weak regular army and a strong militia is the answer. Granatstein thinks that, although the militia was the key contributor to every war up to Afghanistan, that militia accomplished nothing and it was the regular army that accomplished everything. In 1939 we had 3,000 regular army and 60,000 militia – nice ratio.
“Why can’t we just privatize the military? Cambodia was thinking about it.
Posted by: LAS on July 16, 2013 12:54 AM | Reply ”
Sorta like the brown shirts in High River?
Look at this picture I took at the PNE a couple of years ago, read the text and then pick up your jaw after it drops. The description gives first billing to the bureaucrats at DND and states the deputy minister is the equal of the Chief of the Defence Staff. When paper pushing desk jockeys are even mentioned on a sign describing our military you can easily see where the problem lies.
Sorry, link should be to this picture, not my blog… Apologies
Obvious typo math. My point remains.
The only real solution for Canada is to look at the Swiss model and include a real Navy. Roll the Coast Guard into the Navy and be done with it, we have 36,000 miles of coastline and no ships. Make every able bodied male take mandatory military training 2 months every year from age 18-40 and guarantee their jobs. Do just like the Swiss. Canada’s Military should always be defensive in nature, we are the 2nd largest country in the world and we will never be a world power in this sense and we don’t want to be. Forget the global ambitions, forget the useless Peace Missions, think only of what is required in a logical step year by year program to protect what is ours and forget the Grande Schemes and designs. Think Swiss citizen soldier.
Sgt Lejaune: “…complexity is constantly increasing, technology is accelerating, lead times are growing,”
That’s one reason for the purchasing maze. It is however only a problem because of some other reasons.
First, the law of the land, federal law, requires all purchases made by any member or representative of the government (which means everybody in DND) must comply with a stringent, complex and hideously confusing set of rules, mostly emanating from Treasury Board. Purchases over a certain dollar amount (and a low one at that) cannot be made by DND; they must be referred to a totally different department – Public Works and Government Services Canada. They have their own agenda and are in no particular hurry. Really big-ticket items draw attention from virtually everybody and they all want to be consulted. They all also have their own agendas and what’s best for the troops is seldom there once the project leaves DND.
Another factor is, oddly enough, that there are not enough people in NDHQ. Really. This point has been raised several times by external auditors. It takes real skill and knowledge to squire a major purchase through the federal bureaucracy. Good project officers are scarce and unqualified ones get the project tripping over its own feet. Worse, an inept project team winds up missing crucial deadlines and violating obscure regulations, which anybody opposed to the project can jump on and use to stall and maybe even cancel the whole thing. (I suspect that this is one of the reasons DND has unspent money – not enough people in the right place to touch all the bases to get spending authority.)
So, take an item like, say, GPSs for the Army. You and I can go down to the local sporting store and come away 10 minutes later with a perfectly serviceable GPS for $200. Now take the requirement for 5,000 of them. Somebody has to draft the statement of requirements – keep your eye on that, because what the grunts wind up with starts with those specifications. The SOR gets vetted and, eventually, funding is approved. Because of the size of the buy however, it gets passed to PWGSC and the game begins. It has to be put out for tender. The bids eventually get evaluated. The evaluation may include spin-off benefits for Canada. Etc etc etc. Eventually, maybe years later (no, *probably* years later), the purchase is made. Now, remember that what is being bought is what the SOR asked for, years before. What do you call a five-year-old electronic device these days? Yup – heavy and obsolete. So we have taken years, spent more money per item than you or I would have in paid WalMart and it’s been overtaken by more sophisticated kit before it is even issued. To be sure, the new item is probably more rugged than what you can find in Canadian Tire and probably a tad more accurate (think one meter vs 10 meters). It’s still big and heavy.
That, boys and girls, is the game as she is played.
Ain’t life grand?
There are at least two former serving military commenting on this thread, including myself.
In between wars the military is neglected and when a war is entered into soldiers pay with their lives for this neglect. In between wars political and fiscal priorities are geared toward civilian needs.
It takes strong leadership to override the bureaucracy and procure proper cost efficient equipment.
Correct … and remember that Harper HAS take the first steps toward busting up the the bureaucracy at DND.
He’s been doing that slowly but surely. Here’s the rub: Trudeau’s Defence Minister, Donald MacDonald, legally united the Department of National Defence with the Canadian Armed Forces. Result? It made senior officers into civil servants with conflicted interests. The Armed Forces are supposed to be ‘independent’ from politics but the Liberals made them into their own CF Brigade. There was much scoffing at Harper when he said that he had to fight not just the Liberal party but the Liberal bureaucracy and Liberal Supreme Court but that was presicely the case and he has had to gradually entertain a more balanced civil service. The hard-core CF Hellyerites are mostly gone now and so we have some young Turks gradually taking their place with a Canadian identity instead of a political one. It’s hard slogging out there. Still the progress made in the culture has been substantial. I also agree that the Tories cannot surrender the Military or Veterans file to the Grits. Canadians get really upset when they feel their military isn’t being given the respect due them. The government cannot give everything but if there is anything to give priority must be to our ever-smaller armed forces.
This department needs a Jason Kenney to drain the swamp and craft some sensible policies. Procurement has been a disaster for decades in the Canadian military because politicians of all stripe try to use it to solve regional economic and political problems when all they should be doing is buying needed military equipment. For example, every time the RCN needs new ships, we try to re-invent the wheel starting with domestic ship-yard creation (or revival) when multiple foreign ship yards in friendly countries could easily fill our orders in a timely fashion.
Good luck to Nicholson trying to sort out this mess of conflicting priorities and in-grained incompetence.