Hooray! Canada’s military bought something
Congratulations, Canada. Your Army was able to buy a gun.
Brand-new C19 rifles, almost 7,000 of them, are to equip the Canadian Rangers, a reserve force of part-time warriors drawn in large part from Canada’s Inuit and Indigenous communities in the far north. The Rangers, 5,000 strong, are Canada’s only real military presence in the region.
Since 1947, the Rangers have been issued Lee-Enfield rifles, specifically, the Lee Enfield Mk. 4. The Mk. 4 dates back to the 1930s, and was the main battle rifle for Canadian units during the Second World War. The basic design of the rifle is even older, having first entered service with British units in 1895. This is not as bad as it sounds. The basic design of the Lee-Enfield rifle was superb, and it served Canadian soldiers well in two world wars. Further, its continued use in the far north made sense: the rifle remained reliable even in extreme cold and, after the Second World War, the Canadian military had many thousands of surplus Lee-Enfields.
So it’s not outrageous that the Lee-Enfield rifle remained in service with the Rangers long after it was retired in all other Canadian units. The gun was an acceptable solution to a unique situation. In recent years, however, it’s become clear that it’s time to replace the guns. Spare parts are increasingly hard to find. Their .303-calibre ammunition has been phased out of military use in favour of ammunition used by all the NATO allies (standard alliance-wide ammunition simplifies production and logistics in time of war). It was time for a new rifle.
So a tender to replace the Lee-Enfields was issued ... in 2011. And then re-issued in 2014, after the first attempt to replace the rifles failed. In 2015, the government was actually able to successfully review the available options and settled on a Finnish rifle design, to be manufactured domestically by Colt Canada. The contract was signed, and the first rifles began arriving last month. They start going to Ranger units this spring, with the delivery of the rifles expected to be completed by next year.
By Canadian military procurement standards, this is virtually miraculous. It would be nice if a modern military buying new rifles wasn’t actually something to celebrate. But Canadians have to take their procurement victories where they can find them. This will have to do.