Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I am honoured to be invited to speak to this committee.
The starting point for any conversation about Canadian security is that Canada is in a rare position in the world. Geography limits the threats that Canada faces, and its economic strengths and its political stability mean that Canada is quite secure compared to the rest of the world.
While there is much talk about terrorism, cyberthreats, and other unconventional challenges, the reality is that Canada is secure enough that it can make mistakes without paying too high a price, which is a good thing since Canada does tend to make mistakes because its politicians refuse to face some of the difficult trade-offs and make the hard choices needed to confront the changing realities of 21st century defence. Of course the problem is that mistakes can still be quite serious as they can endanger Canadian soldiers, pilots, sailors, and others working for the Canadian government.
To be clear, many of the defence procurement challenges are not new to Canada, nor new to advanced democracies, nor the fault of the current government. That Canada is facing recapitalization of its navy while having to purchase replacements for the core of the air force is a real problem. In my family we try to buy one car at a time and pay off one car at a time, space those purchases out, so that we are not facing too high a price at any one point in time. That worked great until a school bus rammed my younger car.
In the case of Canada, the life spans of the ships and planes were entirely predictable, so it should not have been the case that Canada needed to replace all the ships and the planes and the Arctic patrol vessels all at the same time. Even if the accounting allows for all the stuff to be spent at the same time, I'm not sure Canada has the expertise inside the government to run so many programs simultaneously. Clearly, we apparently do not have the shipyard space to be building many ships at once.
Still, this government has been in office for quite some time, yet refuses to face the trade-offs that must be addressed. The best example of this is the notion that more than $3 billion can be cut from the budget without any real consequence. Perhaps the most important and least necessary denial of reality is this. We have been keeping to a symbolic level of 100,000 troops, which is very costly, and it's almost entirely unnecessary. That is a commitment to a symbolic level. Personnel costs are a huge part of the budget, more than 50%, so if we're going to cut the military budget we should cut there, as well as other places.
The refusal to do this, combined with the large procurement projects, means that cuts will fall on operations, maintenance, and exercising. In the U.S. there is always much concern about the hollowing out of the force, that they will still have much equipment and many soldiers, sailors, marines, and pilots, but they will lose their sharp edge due to a lack of practice. This is going to happen in Canada. Here the consequences are being ignored for the symbolism of being strong on defence by keeping the force at that level.
Experts know that the government today is spending about the same as it was in 2006, once you control for ordinary inflation. The problem of course is that inflation in military equipment is hardly ordinary. A flat budget is problematic when inflation is significant. Exacerbating this is the move to emphasize industrial benefits of defence programs so that systems that are built in Canada are advantaged in competitions over those that do not employ Canadians.
The shipbuilding program seemed to be a good idea, to have a nationwide competition to decide where in Canada the ships are built. The problem is that restarting long-dormant shipyards means that Canada will be paying a premium for these ships, and a hefty one at that. The ships will be much more expensive and almost certainly less capable than those made in Europe or elsewhere. This will almost certainly mean fewer ships, which means that DND should be thinking now of what a smaller navy means, including what kinds of cuts can be made to the number of sailors and officers, since fewer ships means fewer sailors and fewer officers.
Of course, this speaks to an enduring problem. Canada’s military should be designed to fit Canada’s strategy: an assessment of the threats Canada faces, the means by which those threats will be dealt with, and a balancing of commitments and capabilities.
The Canada First defence strategy was overcome by events a long time ago. The new strategy that takes seriously the fiscal constraints and the increased costs of equipment will recognize that Canada will have to do less with less, not more with less, including a smaller navy, a smaller army, and a smaller air force. Canada can still be a good partner in NORAD and a good ally in NATO as long as the forces it contributes to the various missions are not hollow. Smaller is better than hollow.
Rather than cutting by default and cutting by accident—literally in the case of the navy with some of the accidents it's had—Canada can, and should, make difficult choices. This government is actually in an excellent position to do so since—here is where I become the political scientist—the opposition parties are unlikely to pick up votes from those who want more defence spending. To be sure, those problems are not unique to Canada, as most advanced democracies face these problems: tighter budgets, defence procurement challenges, and alliance commitments.
Canada can choose the traditional path, which is to muddle through, but this time the stakes are higher since the programs are so very expensive, and all of this is coming to a head at this time, at the same time.
I look forward to our conversation today.
Thank you very much.