By Scott Taylor
Last week the Department of National Defence was once again in the public spotlight. First it was the news that the Liberal government is trying to cut up to $1 billion from the defence budget as part of the government’s overall goal to trim federal spending.
Then, during an appearance before the House of Commons defence committee, Chief of Defence Staff General Wayne Eyre admitted that a cut of that magnitude would have an impact on operations.
At the same time, he used the occasion to remind parliamentarians that the Canadian Armed forces have an authorized strength of 115,000 personnel and that the CAF currently has roughly 16,000 positions that are vacant.
For those doing the math this means that National Defence has already been saving more than the $1 billion the government is seeking in cuts. To wit: the current budget for National Defence is $26.5 billion with the majority of that money spent on personnel and benefits.
If one were to pay just the salaries of the 16,000 unfilled jobs at a median estimate of $50,000 this amounts to roughly $800,000,000. Throw in benefits, the cost of uniforms etc, and you are saving well over $1 billion already off the bottom line.
Interestingly, some pundits chose to link the threatened budget cut with Canada's recent pledge to work towards meeting the NATO proposed goal of spending two per cent of Gross Domestic Product on defence.
Canada currently spends roughly 1.3 per cent of GDP on National Defence.
Rather than simply parroting the "two per cent of GDP" message like many other defence analysts, I have long argued that a nation's defence commitment be measured as a tangible combat capability based on a percentage of population and regional circumstances.
Canada is blessed with sharing a single border with the world's most powerful super power. This means we have the luxury of choosing the conflicts to which we commit resources.
The notion of simply spending an arbitrary amount as being reflective of a nation's commitment to defence was well illustrated in a recent column by the National Post's John Ivison.
The target of his piece was the Canadian Surface Combatant program to build 15 new frigates to replace the Royal Canadian Navy's current 12 aging Halifax-class frigates. The gist of Ivison’s argument was that this massive program has been plodding along with a steady stream of delays and cost overruns, before the shipyard has even begun to cut steel.
The title and subtitle of the article summed it up thus: "The uncontrolled military program plundering the public purse, desperate for adult attention: Canada's defence spending is an embarrassment, yet the massively expensive Canadian Surface Combatant program appears to have next to no cost controls."
To illustrate his point, Ivison compared a recent U.S. Navy frigate acquisition wherein they paid $1.66 billion per ship, to the now estimated price tag of $5.6 billion per ship, under the Canadian Surface Combatant program.
Once again we need to be clear that since no construction has started yet, that price tag is expected to climb even higher.
Which brings us to the question of why those analysts pushing the two per cent of GDP message aren’t highlighting the problems with the CSC program.
For just the CSC project on its own, Canadian taxpayers are forking out 300 per cent more than the U.S. Navy to acquire the same level of combat capability. Spending ridiculous amounts of money in cost overruns for long delayed equipment purchases is certainly not what NATO had in mind with their target goal of two percent of GDP.
