That's a point I've heard a lot from the military—that they wish they had more policy guidance. The problem is, you can't get any more policy guidance. The fundamental principles of Canadian defence policy have been in place since the end of World War II—the defence of Canada, the defence of North America in conjunction with the United States, and contributions to international peace and security. As to the specific missions, consider the Canada First defence strategy, the 1994 white paper, and “Challenge and Commitment” in 1987. You can go back to all the white papers you want to look at this. If you look in detail at them, what are the missions of the Canadian Forces? With minor changes, they haven't changed at all.
Translating these missions into specific guidance is politically problematic. One of the lessons was the 1987 white paper “Challenge and Commitment”. The government specified how it was going to translate the missions—here's the guidance, this is what our forces are going to do. But in two years, the economy went down the toilet, the budget went out the window, and the challenge and commitment, despite what National Defence officials said, was thrown out the door. There was a lesson learned by government and policy drafters: you just can't do that; it's politically problematic because the future is unseen.
I think you're right. The problem is, how do you translate general policy guidance, our national interests, which are not apt to vary in my lifetime, into specific guidance for military development and military doctrine? That's always ended up as something for the military to decide. I don't see any change in that. I don't think you will get very far by going down that path.