Photo Credit: DND
By Michael Nickerson
It can get cold in Canada. Seriously, I kid you not. We’re quite famous for it. Last winter I even saw snow! Indeed, it’s that white stuff dogs love to roll around in and people wish for every Christmas. Tad cold to be around if we’re honest, but amazingly we have stuff to deal with that: gloves, boots, toques, sweaters, scarfs, long underwear, and parkas to name just some of those tried and true solutions. Like good little scouts you can count on Canadians to be ready for whatever winter throws at us!
Well not quite all Canadians. For if you’re one of the poor slobs kitted out with the latest and greatest from the defence department, namely the new General Purpose Sleeping Bag System (GPSBS), you better hope the weather is mild and you have an extra pair of long johns in your sack. Because doing anything north of the 50th parallel will be at best uncomfortable, and at worst downright dangerous.
As recently reported by Murray Brewster of CBC news, last November 350 soldiers belonging to the 3rd battalion Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry were out on a training exercise in Ram Falls Provincial Park near Red Deer, a place not known for its balmy climate. With temperatures approaching minus twenty at night, soldiers complained of being cold even while tucked in tight with their GPSBS in a stove-equipped tent. According to an internal briefing note from the battalion’s quartermaster, the new sleeping bags were "better suited for use in weather conditions that are characteristic of late spring to early fall."
Now when the government released this year’s defence policy update “Our North, Strong and Free: A Renewed Vision for Canada’s Defence” I dare say it didn’t stress being strong and free south of the 50th parallel. Though to be fair, the new GPSBS was meant to be a bit of a jack of all trades. As a member of the GPSBS project team Alexandre Legault indicated in a government news release in 2023, “It’s about making sure we have everything the soldier needs to be able to perform in Iraq in the summer all the way to the high Arctic in the winter.” Unfortunately they missed that winter bit.
Needless to say, for an arctic nation this has become a bit embarrassing, even making international headlines. You can almost hear our allies’ snickers. As defence expert Rob Huebert of the University of Calgary put it to the CBC: “I wonder if they should have just gone to Canadian Tire.” A bit cheeky that, but considering the program has so far cost $34.8 million, he might be on to something.
If you were to average out that cost over our combined regular and reserve army strength, it works out to about $765 per soldier. And while Canadian Tire is a little lacking in military grade sleeping solutions, a quick check of what other arctic nations are using is instructive. Consider the Finns, who proudly use sleeping bags by Austrian manufacturer Carinthia. A sleeping bag actually designed for the “high Arctic in the winter” will set you back about $425, without factoring in bulk buying. I dare say if you bought 45,502 sleeping bags you could do a hell of a lot better than $34.8 million.
And this brings us to the thorny issue of military procurement in this country. It’s so poor that we have sleeping bags better suited to New Orleans than Nunavut, at almost twice the price of our allies. It’s one of many cockups by a ministry more concerned with covering its ass than properly supplying our soldiers. The result is either substandard equipment or none at all with never ending promises of things to come providing cold comfort for our freezing soldiers.
We can’t afford to spend years sorting out a problem decades in the making. We have allies, like the Finns, who have already done the legwork for us. Given how eager NATO members are for us to rearm, one can bet they’d be more than happy to share that knowledge so we could start buying off-the-shelf solutions now instead of customized solutions later. Our thermally compromised soldiers deserve no less.
