In 1971 I was in the process of considering my future. I had just graduated from High School and was in the process of considering a life in the Canadian military. For four years, from 1968 to 1971 I had served in the Royal Canadian Naval Reserve and was contemplating the Regular Officer Training Program (ROTP) to become a commissioned officer in the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN), (to which I had been accepted).
In that year, Canada had spent 2.13% of its GDP on the military. And while the Royal Canadian Navy was aging, still a credible naval force. However, like Canada’s navy today, Federal Governments seem prepared to let the military capability degrade to the point of irrelevance before actually beginning the process of procurement of new ships and or weapon systems to fight and survive in a modern military engagement.
The fault for this lies with both principal Federal government parties. Both have, for the most part, ignored the Canadian military’s needs. Both have been absent without official leave. Canadian sovereignty should never take a back seat to political expediency and public ignorance. Canada deserves better.
The chart (below) illustrates how successive Canadian Federal Governments have failed to support the Canadian Armed Forces. The downslope began in 1972, and except for a brief five-year stint in the 1980’s has continued to decline. While Canada recently committed to increase military spending to slightly above 1.7% of GDP, the rest of NATO’s military powers are committed to between 2.5% and 4% of GDP to provide a credible deterrent to Russian aggression and the provision of military equipment and ammunition to Ukraine’s fight for its sovereignty. A fight NATO may yet have to fight in the coming years.
Right now Canada’s navy and army are at that point, once again. Not only can Canada not equip its military personnel, but active full-time members of the armed forces have shrunk to the point where providing a combat brigade of 5,000 personnel in a foreign engagement is almost beyond its capability, and that would be with massive deficits in terms of trained replacement personnel, combat equipment, close-in air support, artillery, tanks, and logistical support.
It would be, for all intents and purposes, a liability on the battlefield. This would occur almost immediately due to a lack of sustainability and replacements of any necessary resources. Meanwhile, Canada’s Navy is so limited in terms of trained personnel that only half of Canada’s 35-year-old Frigates can be put to sea at any given time. Suggesting that reserve personnel will be capable of manning advanced weapons systems as replacements are falacious.
Canada needs to get serious about its military commitments. This includes every facet of military establishment provisions. From training to logistics, from weapons systems to sufficient manpower, Canada is incapable of delivering anything but the most limited of combat-ready systems and personnel. Canada’s Chief of Defence has clearly intimated as much.
Today’s threat environment has likely not been as dire in 90 years. For forty years, America has been the pre-eminent military power. Today, while still the pre-eminent power, other nations, specifically China are willing to test that philosophy, at least in terms of regional power. While Russia has expansionist ideals, its economy and military might are still no match for NATO in a confrontation, but confrontation is not what Russia intends.
Russia’s goals, while limited in the short-term are driven by visions of an Empire, by a sociopath, kleptocrat, and autocrat with no concern for his people or concerns as to the costs associated with its creation. With total control of the media and a constant diatribe of threats and lies about his aims, Putin looks likely to survive for the foreseeable future, barring his death by illness or disease.
With a land war in Europe, now ongoing since 2014, Canada can ill-afford the luxury of pretense. Canadian sovereignty will be on the table in the next decade as Russia’s expansionist goals branch from Europe to the Arctic. Canada needs a strong military presence, just to be credible about deterrence alone. Sending the equivalent of an unarmed icebreaker into the Arctic and building a seasonal boatyard on the Arctic Ocean in response borders on the ludicrous.
Canada needs to greatly expand Nanisivik on Baffin Island and build another large deep-water naval installation, and airbase, complete with brigade-sized land forces if Russia is to ever take Canada seriously. Deterrence requires commitment, not vacuous assertions by weak-kneed federal politicians about ‘future’ possible military spending and equipment procurement programs.
Get on with it. Now. Or the next generation of Canadian politicians may be faced with the equivalent of what Ukraine has been subjected to under Putin. In addition, the next Republican administration may well not support either NATO or Canada’s sovereignty claims in the North. Unless the United States sees value in the protection of Canadian interests, (and who is to say a Republican Federal government will in the future), Canada may find itself, on its own, surrounded by an adversarial, hostile, and expansionist Arctic Ocean neighbor, without assistance or protection.
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