The Long Awaited Canadian Defence Policy Review

The DPR as it is known to all except the Department of National Defence's twitter account (#CanadianDefence? Really?) finally came out, and it was not too shabby.  I have quibbles and concerns, but, overall, it does an excellent job of explaining what is going on, what the threats are (sort of), and setting a path forward.  I tweeted my entire reading of the document, so I will focus here on the bigger issues. The first question asked last spring as the exercise unrolled was whether the consultations would make a difference.  The short answer is: I think so.  The best evidence is the $4.5 million for academic outreach, which I am sure would not have appeared if the roundtables and other efforts didn't consistently harp on the loss of the Security and Defence Forum.

Anyhow, enough about me and my kind.  What does the DPR do and what does it mean?

It is supposed to chart the course forward.  While it exaggerates heaps of new-ness, the basic missions of the Canadian Armed Forces are the same as they ever were: defend Canada and do disaster relief at home, support NORAD, participate in NATO and various other multilateral efforts, some peackeeping.  Oh, and one myth that apparently developed today to bust--none of this new money will allow the Canadian Armed Forces to operate independently.  They can do so in Canada and no where else.  Canada is too small and has too many limitations (it has not been full spectrum for a long time) to operate alone.  Nope.

The DPR made clearer what is needed to do this stuff AND also put at the front of Defence how to improve the lives of the folks doing the defense stuff--the personnel side.  Which makes sense since 50% of the budget and 100% of the lives at risk are personnel.

To be clear, Canada does not face a great threat, despite the section that did a nice job of describing a dangerous world. Those dangers mostly lay elsewhere.  There are only two immediate threats to Canada--cyber terrorism/crime/war and Trump.  The DPR deals with the former with new money and personnel (not re-shifting money from other areas because, well, bureaucratic politics--more on that below).  And the Canadian military can't do anything about the latter. 

Still, Canada sees itself as a force for good in the world and an upholder of the international order, most clearly articulated only yesterday by Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland.  So, it needs a modern military that gets asked to do all kinds of stuff.  Right now, that stuff includes training in Iraq and Ukraine, deterring Russia in Latvia (the Canadian deployment is this week), various special operations that we don't know much about (no elected officials know except the Prime Minister and Defence Minister), taking turns patrolling the air space above Iceland and the Baltics (two NATO missions that are regular commitments), and someday maybe that peacekeeping mission.  The money in this will not fund a much more capable military--just one that can keep doing the job it has been doing but with newer stuff and less broken stuff.  Which means less risk for those sent into harm's way.

Speaking of money, the big news here is, of course, about the money.  This DPR promises a heap of new money for the CAF.  Given that complaints about underfunding were a key theme at the roundtables last summer, this is good news and largely unexpected.  Why?  Because there is no real lobby for more defence money.  The Liberals spent last election competing to get NDP voters who don't want this, nor do Liberal voters.  Conservatives? Not really, given their performance in power.  So, here's where Trump might fit.  The document, unlike Freeland's speech, could have been written before Trump became President.  But the threat of Trump, the US as unreliable, may have helped grease the internal Liberal debates about spending more money.  I have no evidence of this--just a guess. 

On the other hand, the document makes clear that while defence spending is going up and there will be much progress on getting closer to the ballyhooed 2% NATO guideline, Canada will not get to 2% or even near it by 2024.  The aim is 1.4%, which is a significant improvement but far short of what Trump expects today.  Well, Trump is unrealistic, so there's that. 

Of course, all of this DPR stands on a very thin reed: that this 20 year plan will last beyond the next election.  Ok, maybe it will last into a second Trudeau term, but this Prime Minister cannot tie the hands of the next.  And defence spending is a very partisan issue that some might call a cluster foxtrot.  Ok that someone is Kim Nossal who wrote a book squarely putting the blame of the defence procurement mess on the two major parties.  The DPR may put the Conservatives in a tough spot: they want to balance the budget but they want to be strong on defence.  This DPR will make it hard for them to fake doing both.  Oh, and if/when Canada hits a recession and deficits spiral, you may see the Liberals cut defense as well since that is where the discretionary money is.

In terms of the details, I found the personnel stuff to be great, including tax breaks for those deployed overseas and the serious inclusion of gender analysis  The particulars of the stuff to be bought?  Not so great: 15 ships?  I just don't expect that to happen as the costs spiral.  88 fighter planes? Again, seems unrealistic.  My big question is whether any stuff was left off of these shopping lists.  One way to handle bureaucratic politics is to let everyone have what they want, but that might not be wise.  My biggest regret about this DPR is that it looks like there were no hard choices made.  Everybody gets what they want.  They could have closed obsolete bases, but that would be politically costly.  There is simply not enough new money to make all of this happen.  I am not sure how much of the new money is really new.  That is, defence inflation is high, so adding more money may just keep up with inflation rather than allow one to buy more stuff.  I think this budget is not bad--that it keeps up with inflation and then some.  But I remain skeptical that there is enough new money to do everything this document promises.

Last spring, in my conversations around Ottawa, there was heaps of skepticism that the DPR would be anything significant--that the review effort was token/theater and that the DPR would be pre-cooked. I don't think so--I think the review built on the roundtables as much as it built on the wishlists of the branches of the CAF.  There are lots of good ideas and intentions, but I am skeptical that they will be able to make much progress on fixing procurement, for example. 

Still, the process led to a pretty good explanation of what the CAF needs and what it plans to do over the next decade or so.  If Canadians read this or pay attention to the discussion about it, they will be better informed and less ignorant.  And, you know, lots of government exercises create ignorance and prevent learning, so this DPR is a real contribution.  The proof, as they say, is in the pudding.  So, the words and pictures in the DPR are good, but we should continue to pay attention (and some should actually oversee) how this plays out.  Overall, a good day for the Canadian Armed Forces and for the Department of National Defence.

Figuring Out Low Expectations: The Rolling Out of the Defence Review.

The long awaited Defense Review is due to come out next week, so the Minister of National Defence gave a short, very scripted speech to tease the review.  To be clear, as I told the media (I was scrummed!), this was the teaser, not a trailer, for the forthcoming movie.  It gave a hint that a review was coming but gave us very little idea of what the movie would look like--what the plan would be.

MND Sajjan explained that the defence challenge is worse than they imagined when they started (Mercedes Stevenson of CTV asked: is this really surprising? No) and that the hole is deeper than they thought. The news reported last night that this was an effort to set low expectations.  But I am confused:

Are the expectations now low because the file is so bad that any improvement they make will be really cool?

Or

Was the skepticism in the room so deep, that there will be no new money and no hard choicess so that no one expects them to be successful?  

I think they might have been aiming for the former and hit the latter instead.  How so? If the problems are so vast, then shouldn't we expect some combination of hard choices and more money?  They could claim to be more effective, efficient and efficacious in spending the dollars they have, but they would still need a story to explain how they get there.  On the other hand, Sajjan said that they would be looking to long term plans (despite the fact that this government is putting heaps of $ into interim planes--that would have been my question).

I participated in the defence review last summer, and, at the roundtable in which I participated, there was not much consensus.  The academics basically said: make hard choices, have less capability and then do less with less not more with less.  The ex-mil said that any cuts would make it hard to be a full spectrum combat capable force (because they love to conflate full spectrum with combat capable--two different things).  But what they did agree to is this: the only real threat Canada faces is cyber.  Everything else is too far away (prePresident Trump).  So, invest in cyber.  Well, that means more money or shifting money.  I told the media that the latter is unlikely as we would have heard one or more of the services complaining about cuts if they were losing money to fund more cyber.

So, the folks who talk defence in town were probably dissatisfied the teaser when they wanted the trailer--tell us not just about the problems but give us a clue about the plan.  Instead, we had to guess about the plan, and started with our own preconceptions and previous evidence.  Given that Sajjan said last year that personnel would be cut (they are 50% of the budget) and that military bases would not be closed (some are redundant or obsolete but it would job losses for some communities), hard choices don't seem to be likely.  I think the MND didn't help himself much, even though I refrained from asking any obnoxious questions.

Anyhow, I storified my live tweets here.

Engaging the Object of My Research: Parliament and Civ-Mil

Parliament owns the small building that appears to be
part of the big hotel to the right but is not.

Today, I had the chance to participate in the Opposition's Defence Review.  The Conservatives are running a parallel process to that of the Minister of Defence.  I will be participating in the latter Def Review next week in Montreal.  I am not sure what the rules are for today's, in terms of Chatham House or whatever, so I will only discuss my views and my experience with some broad descriptions of the event itself.

It was a smallish group of around 12 participants plus two members of Parliament (James Bezan, the Defence Critic, and Cheryl Gallant, one of the two Vice-Chairs of the Standing Committee on National Defence), and their staff.  Besides Hon. Gallant and a staffer, the participants were male, and I was at or below the median age.  The group included retired military officers, retired public servants, defence contractors, and two academics (my colleague Jeremy Littlewood and myself). 

What did I have to say?  Well, I was reacting in part to the Conservative defence review document, which was fairly (extremely) partisan.  My basic point was that the problems Canada faces in dealing with its various defence challenges are not due to any party, but due to structural dynamics (including the partisanship that focuses on point scoring rather than improving governance).

Which structural dynamics?

Spiffy room with heaps of technology
for translation, video, etc.

1. Every democracy screws up defence procurement in its own special way.  For Canada, everything is more expensive, takes longer, etc.  If we can figure out how to just fix it a little bit so that things cost 5% less, things are just a little bit less late, etc, that would be a major contribution.
1. I did raise the problem of "industrial benefits" as being a major factor in choosing contractors.  How so?  That any protectionist measure ultimately costs more per job than whatever that job pays.  It is unlikely that Canada will develop a comparative advantage in naval ship-building, for instance.  And in those areas where Canada can compete, it ends up selling stuff to yucky places like Saudi Arabia.
2. The forces of the status quo will always raise the argument that Canada needs to be flexible and have stuff across the full spectrum of military capability so that it can do combat. Yes, conflating niche/specialization with not being able to do combat. This rhetorical device is ever present in Ottawa and is aimed at avoiding decisions.  I hammered away at this:
1. Canada is already a specialized force as it has no aircraft carriers, attack helicopters, etc, etc.  Choices have already been made about what Canada can bring to the fight, and "not everything" is that choice.
2. The example I raised is the troubled shipbuilding program--that we can either have ones that are good at fighting subs or good at knocking down missiles but probably not both.  What do our allies need/want us to do?
3. A key military mantra--don't reinforce failure, only reinforce success.  Do not invest additional resources into something that is not working (I hinted at subs).
3. When we speak of the budget, there are three categories: personnel, procurement, and operations/training/maintenance.  The first two have fan clubs/advocates.  At any of these meetings, there are folks who say not to cut personnel and to spend more on personnel.  Personnel is nearly 50% of the military budget, and this is a big problem. All of Canada's allies face a similar problem but not to this degree.  The procurement issues always have fans/advocates as well: the defence contractors who are involved, the politicians representing the ridings (districts) where the stuff is built, etc.  But outside of the military, there is no one lobbying for money to be spent on maintenance, training, and operations.  Sure, the government can promise to give the military more money for a new operation, but in reality that usually means that some other defence program is cut to pay for that operation.

Anyhow, that was my two bits, plus a short rant in the Q&A about how Russia is not a threat to the Canadian arctic.

As someone doing research in the role of parliament in overseeing the military, this was very much a participant-observer kind of thing. Good times.

Defence Review Help

In the next two weeks, I am participating in two Defence Review roundtables--the widely publicized series that I have, um, discussed AND the Parliamentary version.  I am going to the Montreal roundtable on the 27th, but the more immediate one is the Parliamentary one.  I have been invited by the Opposition (the Conservatives), and they gave me a link to their conversation starter here.

I have written a short paper for each one, which I will post on my blog after each meeting with some discussion, of course, of how it went, what I said, and what I learned within whatever confines of the the meetings (the Montreal roundtable will be either Chatham House rule or in camera...).

Anyhow, before I go to these meetings, I thought I would ask my readers: what should I talk about?  What would you want to say either to the Review panel or the Defence Committee?