DND struggling to trim admin costs: documents

OTTAWA — National Defence is struggling to implement a program to give the military less administrative tail and more operational teeth — a signature initiative of the outgoing Conservative government.

Documents, written this year and obtained by The Canadian Press under access to information legislation, show officials running the Defence Renewal Program are searching for more “reinvestment opportunities” to meet the government’s goal of finding between $750 million and $1.2 billion a year in departmental savings.

The plan, as announced in the fall of 2013, was to divert savings from redundant programs to front-line initiatives.

The program was supposed to be fully in place by the 2017-18 budget year, but the memos suggest the department needs more time, possibly as much as two years.

A briefing prepared for former defence minister Rob Nicholson on Jan. 16, 2015, says a cumulative total of only $146 million in savings had been earmarked to the end of the fiscal year in March.

Maj. Doug McNair, a spokesman for the renewal team, said that figure was eventually bumped up to $158 million.

He said the original dollar amounts and timelines were “an estimate of possible savings developed by a consultant using data from 2012” and that refinements were expected and are underway.

“No new estimate and timeline has been finalized or approved,” McNair said in an email. “We remain committed to achieving the strategic outcomes of Defence renewal and reinvesting the resulting substantial savings in readiness and capability development.”

The administrative overhaul of National Defence, which the Conservatives long considered bloated and inefficient, was one of the pillars of the outgoing government’s reform agenda, something in which Stephen Harper took a personal interest.

Prime ministerdesignate Justin Trudeau, during the election campaign, signalled he would follow a similar path to Harper and proposed “a leaner, more agile, better equipped” military, saying he believed “there’s a lot of administrative weight” in the department, compared with the uniformed branch.

The new government will be sworn in next week.