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What happens to a country when its military can no longer defend it? That is the question Canadians should be asking right now. The Canadian Armed Forces (caf) is facing an existential crisis.
Chief of Defense Staff Gen. Wayne Erye issued an order to halt all nonessential activities in order to focus on military recruitment and retention. The caf is 10,000 recruits short, which handicaps the forces from being able to launch a large-scale operation. That amounts to 10 percent of military positions being vacant. Eyre said: “Owing to personnel and staffing levels that have been compounded by the caf’s heavy commitment to operations, the negative effects of the covid-19 pandemic and a culture crisis, National Defense continues to lose its ability to deliver and sustain concurrent operations at the scope and scale necessary.”
Besides sending small detachments overseas, deployments to help with weather disasters and covid-19 vaccine programs mean the caf could not defend the country on a large scale due to manpower shortages. Even in 2019, former Chief of Defense Staff Johnathan Vance said the caf was “being pushed to the limit responding to an increasing number of climate-related events.” If the caf can’t handle climate change, how could it fight a real enemy?
The caf is not only facing a recruitment crisis: procurement, obsolete equipment, identity, culture, leadership and morale are all debilitating the forces. The Canadian Press wrote: “To that end, the order directs commanders to prioritize fully staffing recruiting centers and training schools and calls for a complete reassessment of the military’s current structure and composition.” This crisis is ushering in a complete restructuring of the force. The caf is about to be transformed.
How did Canada become the first major Western nation to have a military that can’t fulfill its primary reason for existence? There are a myriad of factors at play, but the most important to realize is that it was a deliberate agenda to collapse the Canadian Armed Forces.
Force in Crisis
The issues confronting the caf have been brewing for decades. Several policy decisions by Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in the 1970s sent the caf reeling. The policy of integration severed the three branches from their historic traditions, while the introduction of national health care condemned the caf to fiscal obscurity: Health care gets more votes than defense in Canada.
The underfunding of the caf is no secret. Senate committees have been seeking to increase spending for years, but to no effect. Even when the Trudeau government increases spending, billions of dollars are wasted in underspending. Since 2008, the Department of National Defense has failed to spend $9.9 billion. What’s the root cause of the problem? Canada’s broken procurement system.
Richard Shimooka, a senior fellow at the Macdonald Laurier Institute, said Canada has the “worst military procurement system in the Western world.” Nearly 70 percent of projects are not delivered on time, delays in major programs last years, and costs often become inflated. “[T]he vast majority of Canada’s military procurements involve what is known as ‘off the shelf’ purchases,” wrote Shimooka. “Such programs should be straightforward, as all of the risks involved in technological development are resolved. Nevertheless, Canada frequently is unable to execute even this basic level of competence.” This has left the caf without the most basic of equipment needed for defense. Shimooka continued:
Read More :
https://www.thetrumpet.com/26842-canada-imploded-its-military-on-purpose.
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