Canada’s newest defence policy has vision, but lacks prioritization to strengthen Canadian Armed Forces
The new defence policy should have created a strategy that would see our military structured as a maritime force, prioritizing the CAF’s sea and air domains supplemented by space and cyber capabilities.
Canada’s latest defence policy, Our North Strong and Free, has laid forth an ambitious, albeit more domestic-fo cused strategy for the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF). With the international order becoming more confrontational—with wars waging in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, as well as being more prone to the stressors of great power politics return ing to a “might-makes-right” perspective to territorial, economic, and diplomatic inter ests—a new defence policy was needed to chart an updated vision for how Canada’s military will be structured and operate.
By focusing on the Arctic and North America, the defence policy represents the Liberal government’s newest attempt to make military spending more palatable to Canadians in a time of budgetary and social concerns over housing, health care, and inflation. In the hopes of getting Canadians on board, the defence policy has directed its vision for how investments in sea, air, land, space, and cyber domains will secure and defend our territory and our people at home while also providing the CAF with the tools and equipment needed to fulfill our defence obligations to NATO and interests in the Indo-Pacific, inseparable areas the prime minister believes—quite correctly—are key to defend ing the Arctic and North America.
Policy experts and academics have applauded the government’s tilt to stress the importance of Arctic and continental defence in Canada’s military posture. How ever, they also reflect that the defence pol icy continues Ottawa’s ineptitude to reach NATO’s two per cent spending target while also failing to lay out a functional method to implement the large-scale spending it pledges. In effect, the policy is a good experiment for something the government cannot or does not intend to fully carry out.
Nonetheless, the defence policy did strike a new note by expressing a legitimate vision to make the CAF ready, resilient, and relevant for “global uncertainties at home and abroad.” This motivation is something I greatly applaud the government for pushing as the CAF—with record low recruitment and retention rates and an aging naval, air force, and land forces—is not a bolstered military that can credibly protect and defend Canada and Canadians as well as reinforce Ottawa’s role as a re liable and capable partner in international security efforts.
However, in its pursuit to make the right investments to strengthen the CAF as a combat-effective and relevant force, the policy lacks a genuine understanding of how to hone its fiscal and budgetary re sources to accomplish this mission. Instead of attempting to modernize the entirety of the CAF’s domains simultaneously, the policy should have prioritized certain domains over others. Given that Canada has a persistent recruitment crisis, an abysmal procurement system, insufficient military industries, and the high cost of modern capabilities, there must be tactical trade-offs in modernizing the CAF as a credible and lethal military to defend and deter threats.
In this case, if the vision for the CAF is to defend and protect the Arctic and North America, then the defence policy should have established a strategy that would see Canada’s military structured as a maritime force, prioritizing the CAF’s sea and air domains supplemented by robust space and cyber capabilities, given the large swath of coastline and aerial spaces needed to be defended and surveyed. As a result of this approach, the government would have needed to refocus the Canadian Army away from tank and artillery capabilities in favour of lighter forces that provide relatively inexpensive, adaptable, and prompt military options for larger multi-domain operations like airborne task mission with the Royal Canadian Air Force or littoral combat operations with the Royal Canadian Navy—a valid trade off in my opinion.
Prioritization also has the impromptu ability to assist the government in better promoting investments in air-to-air and surface-to-air missile capabilities for the navy and air force, a new submarine fleet, unmanned underwater vehicles, as well as more squadrons of fighter jets, multirole aircraft, and unmanned aerial vehicles by alleviating the longstanding issue of overestimating equipment use and under estimating support costs that has beset the military.
Having a better course to attain a vision in this way would assist the Canadian public to understand how their taxes are designing a ready, resilient and relevant CAF.
Andrew Erskine is a Young Fellow with the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy, and Canada-Asia Young Professional Fellow at the Asia-Pacific Foundation of Canada. The Hill Times
