Prime Minister Justin Trudeau may be - as Paul Wells describes him - in a “scrappy mood, eager to defend himself, confident that he is providing better government than you’d suspect given the coverage it’s getting.”
But last week’s defence policy update shows just how much Trudeau and his cabinet are not serious people.
And that’s the larger political problem Trudeau and the Liberals have at home and abroad.
This unseriousness is not just defence.
But let’s use defence to see it.
Last month, that is literally 30 days before this latest update, defence minister Bill Blair said the Canadian Forces were in a “death spiral.”
“Over the past three years, more people have left than have entered,” Blair said. “That is, frankly, a death spiral for the Canadian Armed Forces. We cannot afford to continue at that pace. We've got to do something differently.”
Yet on April 8, Trudeau and Blair announced the government would do nothing about it.
The document itself recites every cliché of every defence policy since at least the 1968 version that was rooted in the tautology that the top priority of Canadian defence policy was the defence of Canada. There’s talk of strengthening the foundations, getting new capabilities, yada yada yada, in order to assert Canadian sovereignty, defend North America, and advance Canada’s strategic interests. The only difference is that it claims to apply a strategic approach that identifies the Trudeau Liberals’ hobby horse of climate change as a greater strategic threat to Canada than Russia, China, or any of the actual strategic threats that have been around for decades and that are today like Russian, China, and Iran waging a war on our allies’ borders. We have troops on the Russian border, if anyone forgets.
There’s nothing strategic in the document since it identifies threats that exist today and promises to deal with them in 20 year’s time. One of them would be the death spiral of recruiting, which remains the same decrepit paper-based system 25ish years into the new century that it was in the 1990s when I suffered through it.
The system is so sluggish that it takes upwards of two years to get someone from streets shoes into combat boots. That was ridiculous then. It's unfathomable today but that continued neglect and abuse helps explain why the Canadian Forces are short 17,000 people on their minimum staffing levels needed to meet existing commitments.
And it tells you how unserious the government is about anything to do with national security. After all, dealing with the personnel crisis should be getting serious action. It is the first topic in the department’s backgrounder and highlights help with housing and health care to go with the improvements to “personnel management policies.”
So you'd expect real action. Housing a big topic in the civilian world and it’s something the Liberals are keen to convince people they care about too. Not surprising then, that this at the top of the backgrounder along with health care, another big civilian priority. “We will establish a Canadian Armed Forces Housing Strategy,” the update boldly declares, “rehabilitate existing housing and build new housing so that our military members can afford to live where they and their families are posted.”
The spending annex to the update tells a different story about the priority for housing given that the 20 year commitment is merely to develop a strategy not actually improve housing: Zero dollars this year. Zero in 2025. A million in 2026, a couple of million in 2027 and four million in the last of the five years covered by the update. As a rule, any government spending commit that is backloaded like that is not a priority at all. And that fits with the measly commitment itself: a strategy in 20 years time, but not new housing. Meanwhile people who are and are expected to serve literally on a front line must wonder if they can keep a decent roof over their families at home without going broke with no help coming from the government that put them there. Again, no wonder people are quitting and fewer and fewer are volunteering.
The government commitment in health care is to get a software program for the Canadian Forces health system that can work with the provincial health systems’ electronic medical records, which is where Canadian Forces members and their families actually get their care when not deployed. Not a new plan., though. It started three years ago. The thing was supposed to be fully operational by 2030 and the planned spending in the defence update looks like commitments already made to meet that timeline rather than new cash. Plus the update claims the government will “accelerate” delivery of this new system even though it appears to be pretty much on track to meet the original commitment, at best. No one should hold their breath.
Things are worse for the hardware commitments. Apply the rule that backloaded spending means zero real commitment. Thus you will findeverything from new tactical helicopters (needed 20 years ago) and new long range rocket artillery (needed 30 years ago) to anything else needed to meet threats today are just fluff.
Literally the only places where the so-called update actually has real cash anyone can count on is the bits that keep the existing stuff lashed together. That and hiring new civilians. Anything that involves real military capability beyond what’s already there and already announced is not real.
The thing about defence policy is that it isn’t that hard. We'll, it shouldn't be hard. In Canada’s case, it is pretty much been the same policy commitments since Justin’s Dad took office. We need a military force of a given size to go out in the world if we need them to do the stuff it is trained for. And the commitments have been almost exactly the same.
The Persian Gulf in 1990 was basically Canada’s NATO commitment but in the sand instead of western Europe. For the army that meant a brigade of about 5,000 soldiers with tanks, armoured personnel carriers, artillery, and so on. A staff assessment at the time showed we literally could not do it despite four decades of knowing that’s what we were going to do, if needed. Seven in 10 crucial vehicles - a civilian pick up truck painted green - were not working at any given moment. There wasn’t enough ammunition and the army lacked modern training equipment.
Basic stuff. Not there. The Americans offered us tanks and APCs free. We turned them down. We have the same military commitment to NATO today and we cannot do it. The same is true for the navy and air force, each of which has only lately been able to replace aircraft that were clapped out 20 years ago, the navy has a brand new helicopter that is already obsolete, and where things as simple as new ships and submarines are delayed for no reason. Our ability in cyberwarfare is laughably worse despite it being a real thing for the past 20-odd years if not earlier.
The truly laughable thing about all this is that even if you accept the primarily civilian nature of defence spending in Canada - pumping money into Canadian businesses and towns - relentlessly shagged up procurement means all of those benefits don’t happen either. That's just dumb politics and the current crowd are certainly no better than others. In some ways they are way worse. Like Chrétien and naval helicopters worse and that’s saying something.
All of which means that not only are Canadian politicians in the current administration not serious defence people, they are really not serious political people full-stop.
Everyone knows it.
Just look at our foreign relations.
Just look at the domestic polls.
This will not end well.