Canada’s military is withering

Opinion

The world has clearly become a more hostile place. Yet around half of the Canadian Armed Forces’ equipment is unusable and its branches face a combined shortage of nearly 16,000 personnel. Only 58 per cent of military elements Canada has committed to NATO operations could mobilize to enter combat if required.

Those findings were contained in a recent internal presentation by the Department of National Defence leaked to CBC News. “In an increasingly dangerous world, where demand for the CAF is increasing, our readiness is decreasing,” the report warns.

While committing $500 million in military aid to Ukraine during a visit to Kyiv last June, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau praised the country for defying Vladimir Putin’s imperialist gambit.

There’s a crucial lesson here for Canada, including for the prime minister himself: defending western interests won’t happen by accident. Nor will it come for free.

But a decades-long bipartisan trend in Canada has seen defence spending neglected because it isn’t considered politically expedient in a nation relatively far-removed from military flashpoints. Political parties have wagered — correctly, it seems — they won’t suffer at the ballot box for embracing a lax approach to defence and foreign policy.

Renewed Russian aggression and jingoistic rumblings by China may be changing that. Many liberal democracies are re-embracing the necessity of hard power.

Yet Ottawa remains an outlier.

In a world where economic interdependence, multilateral institutions and humanitarian law now appear incapable of constraining the use of force, Canada has become a weak link in the West’s security apparatus. Whether it is pro-Beijing networks operating with ease within Canada’s borders, huge gaps in Arctic defence or our country’s anemic contributions to NATO, Ottawa is endangering both Canada itself and the collective well-being of our closest allies.

Solving Canada’s military procurement issues will be fundamental to improving the situation. Much of this stems from an entrenched silo-effect between Canada’s federal departments of industry, public works and defence. Attempts to acquire new hardware for the military therefore chronically produce made-in-Canada quagmires. Domestic regional economic interests, job creation targets and electoral strategies are prioritized over supply and delivery concerns of the military.

The Trudeau government must also enact its promise last year to create a national security council. Once formed, the council’s first task is obvious: updating Canada’s only national security strategy ever written — in 2004, when the world was radically different.

For Canada to resurrect its defence capabilities will also require navigating a tightening fiscal environment. Spending a minimum of two per cent of GDP on defence, a benchmark Canada committed to at NATO’s summit last year, equates to outlays of roughly $20 billion more per year.

The Conservatives under Pierre Poilievre have offered only muted criticism. Rather, his leadership has animated the libertarian and reactionary strains within Canadian conservativism, those fixated on waging culture wars and condemning internationalist policies.

At their national convention last September, the party invited retired lieutenant-general Michel Maisonneuve to give a keynote speech in support of Poilievre. The firebrand former military officer — known for his public tirades against diversity policies, climate action and Ottawa’s decision to formally apologize to survivors of sexual assault in the military — proceeded to claim Canada is being destroyed by a “woke movement.”

By trying to politicize the military to their advantage, Poilievre and his brain trust risk undermining the institutional neutrality of Canada’s military — perhaps for a generation. If that were to happen, the consequences would be far worse than the status quo of denying the military resources.

Public opinion may finally be shifting.

New polling data suggests 29 per cent of Canadians view modernizing the military and reinforcing Canada’s global standing as their top political priority — the highest level in recent memory. Nearly two-thirds of voters want defence spending to hit the two per cent NATO benchmark. In a May 2023 survey a majority of respondents agreed that Canada’s military weakness is a “source of tension with other NATO allies and defence partners.”

Canada’s citizens and closest allies are urging the country to take security issues seriously. Will Ottawa listen?

Kyle Hiebert is a Winnipeg researcher and analyst, and former deputy editor of the Africa Conflict Monitor.