National Post (National Edition)
A SERIOUS CANADA: NATIONAL DEFENCE TOO IMPORTANT FOR POLITICIZING.
A new geopolitical order is taking shape. The globe is rapidly realigning under American and Chinese spheres of influence and the pandemic has only raised the stakes. How can Canada finally get serious about its internal stability and external security so it can effectively play a role as a middle power? That is the question this National Post series will answer. Today: Charles Davies discusses the politicization of military procurement and national defence and security policies.
Political parties will have already begun developing the messages they hope will sway voters in the next election, whenever that comes. These will include a range of well thoughtout policy positions, but if the past is any guide, they will also come up with some half-baked boutique ideas they hope will sway a few votes here and there — and this can end badly for them.
Election promises related to defence and national security have too often been of this latter kind. Unlike such areas as economic development or fiscal policy, where parties generally try to establish credentials for being “ready to govern,” defence and national security commitments are often poorly considered afterthoughts that can become political handcuffs for new governments. Worse, they can so seriously distort the government's view of an issue that it loses its ability to objectively assess where the national interest lies.
The greatest modern era example of this was Jean Chrétien's infamous promise to buy “zero helicopters” in the 1993 election. As a former senior defence official observed in testimony before the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance in 2019, this election commitment to cancel the acquisition of a common platform to replace Canada's aging search and rescue and shipborne helicopters subsequently put the new government into a damaging political box. Leaving aside the more than $500 million it cost ($800 million in today's dollars) to cancel the contract and buy nothing, it became politically embarrassing when the subsequent new competition for search and rescue helicopters resulted in selection of the same EH 101 aircraft. As the official commented,”… the prime minister was not pleased …” and the government looked for ways to discredit the competition and start over again. Only when this effort proved unsuccessful did the government hold its nose and allow officials to announce the results.
Far more seriously, the government also took the wrong lesson from the episode — it became excessively focused on close management of the military's requirements determination process, politicizing what had previously been a largely objective activity done within the bureaucracy. To be sure, all governments apply political lenses in determining the national interest when it comes to deciding on the acquisition of equipment for the Canadian Armed Forces, but until this point governing parties had not interfered with the process of analyzing the multitude of operational, technical, cost and other factors that go into framing the bureaucracy's presentation of options and advice to ministers.
The consequences of this politicization were deeply felt within the Maritime Helicopter Project, where manipulation of the process did deliver what initially seemed to be a politically acceptable result (i.e. not the EH 101), but it very quickly hung a millstone around the necks of the Chrétien and Paul Martin governments (and every administration since then) when the chosen Sikorsky aircraft (the CH 148 Cyclone) proved to be much more of a “paper airplane” than hoped. Consequently, the project to develop and produce it ran into recurrent cost and schedule overruns, technical difficulties and contract disputes, undermining the reputations of multiple governments for sound stewardship of public resources.
While political manipulation of the process for analyzing and defining military requirements is, thankfully, relatively rare, when it happens it is very costly on many levels (witness the current dragged-out fighter replacement program). Why it persists at all is very difficult to understand, since the potential political rewards from making half-baked election commitments in the defence and security area are so small in the first place. Few, if any, Canadians cast their votes based on these considerations, and the risks of bad political outcomes are so great that it is, frankly, a stupid and pointless risk to take. Parties would be far better served by building their defence and national security election promises on analytical and intellectual foundations that are as sound as those of their economic and fiscal policies.
How would voters know if they had done so? First, party platforms and promises would not talk about buying or not buying specific systems or products. The drafters of these commitments can't possibly do the depth of analysis of operational, technical, financial, economic and other factors that must go into deciding the best solution for Canada, so voters should steer away from these kinds of poorly considered promises and look instead for party platforms that explain their broader approaches to safeguarding Canada's security, engaging with the rest of the world, and managing the acquisition and support of the associated resources.
Second, parties would commit to placing the defence and security of Canada above partisan politics and work to build a more enduring political consensus around defence and national security policy, as is done in other Western democracies such as Australia and most European nations. Defence and security investments typically take years or decades to plan and implement, so decisions taken by past governments have largely shaped the options the current government has to act on. Today's decisions will similarly shape the options of multiple future governments. This means that it is in political parties' long-term interests to bring to an end the uniquely Canadian wasteful gamesmanship around the acquisition of these important national capabilities. The fact that doing so would also very much be in the national interest would make it a win-win for everyone.
FRANKLY, A STUPID AND POINTLESS RISK TO TAKE.