New defence strategy still not on horizon
Kenney says rewrite underway since 2011 still a work in progress
The Conservative government doesn’t appear any closer to producing a new Canadian defence strategy than it was more than four years ago, after the original was declared unaffordable.
The government has been promising to update the Canada First Defence Strategy since 2012. But speaking to reporters on Monday, Defence Minister Jason Kenney said he could not provide a time for when the update would be complete.
“I can’t give you a precise timeline,” Kenney said from Colorado Springs, where he was touring the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) headquarters. “We as a government continue to work on renewal.”
The original strategy, the centrepiece of the Conservative government’s long-term vision for the military, was unveiled with much fanfare in May 2008 and amid promises to invest $490 billion in new equipment and upgrades over the next 20 years.
But defence officials quietly declared it unaffordable in 2011, only three years into what was supposed to be a 20-year run. Troublesome procurement projects have also largely hollowed it out, with plans to purchase new planes and other equipment postponed or cancelled.
Kenney denied that the government’s current fiscal situation or the low price of oil have had an impact on the rewrite. He also said that even without an updated strategy, the government is moving to acquire new military equipment, such as naval ships.
“So it’s not as if we’re down tools,” he said. “We’re moving forward with all of those procurement projects.”
Yet there is no denying that the strategy has passed its best-before date. For example, the strategy says Canada will obtain new maritime patrol planes as well as fighter jets by 2020. Both projects, however, have been shelved for the foreseeable future.
At the same time, plans to buy new armoured vehicles have been cancelled, while billions of dollars in cuts and unspent funds have largely undercut an annual two-per-cent budget increase that was supposed to help the military keep up with inflation.
Documents obtained by the Citizen last year also showed Defence officials asking hard questions behind the scenes about the state of Canada’s military, including whether the military should try to save money by relying more heavily on its allies, and whether it has too many soldiers, sailors and air personnel.
The lack of a strategy has prompted complaints from both inside and outside National Defence, with concerns that the government’s failure to explain what it wants from the military threatens to have long-term implications for the Canadian Forces.
After the armoured vehicle cancellation in December 2013, Canada’s defence industry association took the unusual step of releasing a statement saying the decision “is evidence of a compelling need for urgent consideration and articulation of a renewed and affordable Canada First Defence Strategy.”
Even before the Canada First Defence Strategy was declared unaffordable, some panned it as little more than a glorified shopping list that has no strategic underpinning.
“It was an investment plan,” former military procurement chief Dan Ross told Postmedia News in 2013. “It wasn’t a white paper. It wasn’t a defence policy. In fact, I don’t think it even had any written narrative to it. It just had an introduction.”
Auditor General Michael Ferguson’s report on the national shipbuilding program in November 2013 also reiterated this lack of strategic guidance, noting that while the Canada First Defence Strategy laid out how many ships the government wanted, it didn’t say what it expected them to do.