Looking Back on Twenty Years of Canadian Defence and Security

2024.03.16

Like many Canadians, I have become increasingly concerned by my country’s seeming inability to resolve security issues. In recent years, we have witnessed egregious cases where the rule of law was not or could not be enforced. Reports of foreign interference in our electoral processes have been suppressed. And the deteriorating international security picture has spotlighted how woefully unprepared our military is to operate in contemporary conflict.

While all these failures alarm me, it is this last one, the decay of the Canadian Armed Forces, that I find most concerning. I say this because the world order is changing rapidly and dramatically, and the remainder of the 21st century will likely be marked by intense security competition between nation states. Put simply, I believe that any country that cannot defend itself will not remain a country for much longer. And Canada is such a country.

In an effort to understand how this situation developed, I have researched the major policy statements from the Government of Canada on defence and security published since September 11th, 2001. I believe I have detected a disturbing trend among those statements that is about to become very relevant in the next year and a half, the period leading up to the next federal election. I will begin by explaining the trend and then explain why Canadians should be concerned about it.

To put it bluntly, Canada does not have a security policy and has not had one since deep in the last century. Instead, what we have are a bunch of government documents that purport to be policy but are in fact completely meaningless. This is because they are generated in an ad hoc fashion in response to one of two circumstances: a security crisis or a change of government.

(There is one anomaly case where both circumstances sort of apply, namely, the Liberal Government of Paul Martin. He came to power in 2003, in the aftermath of 9/11 and at the beginning of Canada’s involvement in the war in Afghanistan. I say that both circumstances only sort of apply because he came to power through a leadership race and his Liberal Party had been in power for a decade already.)

The ad hoc nature of Canada’s approach to defence and security can be summarized as follows.

A new government comes to power. They want to distinguish themselves from the previous government, so they call for a defence policy review. That review takes about 18-24 months. It gets published. It always looks suspiciously like that last government’s policy because Canada’s strategic interests rarely change (protect Canadian territorial sovereignty, be a reliable partner to the US so that North America stays safe, and contribute to international missions so that the world is a better place). But to balance out that similarity to the last government’s policy, the new statement is also peppered with buzzwordy goals that are ambitious to the point of being delusional, usually with huge price tags.

The no-longer-new government then makes a lot of political hay out of this new policy statement. It commits to huge long-term spending projects and 20-year plans. New initiatives are announced. The policy is trumpeted as a massive overhaul of a broken system. Citizens are told over and over again that the first priority of the Government of Canada is to protect the safety and security of Canadians both at home and abroad.

There is also usually a rebranding exercise that goes on to align the military with the ruling party’s preferred image – war-fighters for the Conservatives, peacekeepers for the Liberals. In line with this re-branding, operations that the previous government committed to get turned off and new ones are stood up.

But everything remains pretty much the same. Every government quickly realizes how expensive their new policy is and immediately abandons it, usually within the very next fiscal year. The operations that seemed of global consequence two years earlier are completely forgotten about, and they languish with no direction nor even a purpose. CAF personnel are left to divine strategic intent from off-the-cuff remarks made by ministers at press conferences.

It is at this point that the concerning trend sets in that I mentioned in the beginning. The trend is marked by three consequences of the failed policy.

First, because it is the only statement of direction that the CAF has, the leadership continue to use it to plan and make decisions, effectively divorcing military action from government direction and civilian oversight.

Second, the government of the day comes to realize they can’t afford to talk about defence policy anymore for fear that to do so will only remind Canadians how their government failed to deliver on its policy.

Third, everyone in the DND/CAF as well as the government realizes a policy review is needed and eventually the opposition parties clue in that this is a huge vulnerability for the party in power.

The outcome of this situation is that the sitting government, now increasingly senile and dysfunctional and plagued with other problems, refuses to provide any new policy guidance to the military. Then they lose power, and the new government starts the whole process all over again.

Is there a way to break this cycle? I believe there is and, what’s more, I believe we must break it. The world is becoming an increasingly dangerous place and Canadians can no longer count on our geography nor the US to protect us. If we enter another revolution of the disturbing and vicious cycle that I have outlined here, we will almost certainly end up in a military conflict on our own territory and we won’t have a military.

How can we break the cycle? The next government must recognize that defence policy is not merely an opportunity to distinguish itself from the old government. That is why the cycle keeps perpetuating itself. Canada must have a comprehensive security strategy (comprehensive meaning national and international) and the policy must be written to enact that strategy. Hopefully, the next government can resist the urge to press repeat on defence and actually start “protecting the safety and security of Canadians both at home and abroad.”