When the Trudeau Liberals announced their long awaited Defence Policy Update on Monday, April 8, it did not take the sceptics long to take to social media to criticize the policy paper.
While the announced spending hike is enormous -the Canadian defence budget is to nearly double from the current $30 billion to roughly $59 billion by the end of this decade - the problem is that close followers of the Canadian Armed Forces have good reason to believe that little of what is promised in the DPU will ever see the light of day.
Comic strip aficionados will recall the Peanuts character Lucy perpetually convincing Charlie Brown that this time she will hold the football in place so that he might 'kick it to the moon'. Inevitably, at the last minute Lucy snatches the ball away and Charlie Brown ends up flat on his back swearing to never again trust Lucy's word.
Only a foolish military analyst -and there have been a few out there -would hail this current DPU as a solid building block to rebuild our badly depleted CAF.
For those who remain unconvinced that when it comes to the Canadian Military, government promises are meant to be broken, here is a short peek back down memory lane.
Back in 2003, the Canadian Army had a battle group deployed to Afghanistan, and as insurgent resistance was stiffening, Canadian commanders realized that they would need better protection and more firepower.
Thus it was announced that Canada would spend $600 million to purchase 66 Mobile Gun Systems (MGS) from General Dynamics Land Systems (GDLS). This was controversial among senior Army commanders who were hoping to acquire a new Main Battle Tank instead.
The MGS are based upon a Light Armoured Vehicle (LAV) wheeled chassis, with the addition of a 105 mm gun for fire support.
Doubters of this purchase were put in their place by then Chief of the Defence Staff General Rick Hillier. A former armoured officer, Hillier was of the opinion that Main Battle Tanks were at that juncture "Cold War relics". Fortuitously the MGS purchase never went ahead and Canada ended up borrowing Leopard 2 MBT's from Germany to support our troops in Kandahar.
In 2005 there was a lot of fanfare when the government announced they were investing $750 million to produce 30 Multi-Mission Effects Vehicles. The MMEV's were to become the nucleus of our ground forces combat fire support.
The concept was in fact a marriage of the Air-Defence Anti-Tank System known by the acronym ADATS mounted on a LAV 3 chassis. The ADATS had been built in Canada immediately after the Cold War ended and had been mothballed almost immediately. Alas as events unfolded, they have remained in mothballs as the MMEV project was quietly cancelled.
By 2009 the Army realized that it needed something heavier than a LAV 3 in Afghanistan and they needed it on an urgent basis. The Army wanted to buy the Swedish Combat Vehicle 90 off the shelf, but bureaucracy prevailed. A competition was then launched to ascertain which Close Combat Vehicle (CCV) would be best suited for Canada's future Army. The project called for the purchase of 108 CCV's at a cost of $2.1 billion, and they were to be the backbone of our combat forces for the foreseeable future. After two rounds of what was called 'testing to destruction' the three remaining bidders - BAE Systems, Nexter and GDLS - were informed that the whole deal was off. Given that our combat mission in Afghanistan was concluded, the Harper Conservatives killed the procurement to save money.
It was the Harper Conservatives who had also originally announced in 2010 that they would buy 65 Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighters to replace the RCAF's 80 CF-18's at a purchase cost of $9 billion. The first delivery of these CF-35's was to be in late 2016. However in 2015 the Trudeau Liberals ran on the promise that if elected they would scrap the Conservative’s plans to purchase the controversial CF-35 Joint Strike Fighters. Once elected, Trudeau did scrap the initiative to buy the F-35s and the Liberals subsequently ordered the RCAF to hold a competition to determine the CF-18's best possible replacement. Lo and behold the F-35 won the competition and the price tag is now $19 billion for 88 aircraft, the first of which will not be delivered until 2026.
For the long suffering Royal Canadian Navy nothing exemplifies their dangling carrot of procurement promises better than the saga to replace the now long retired HMCS Protecteur class supply ships. First announced in 2004, the original timeline called for a contract to be signed by 2009 with the first of three ships delivered and in service by 2012. There is now only two such ships on the order book and the first will not be delivered until 2025 with the second due in 2027. The cost has continued to climb.
So when the Liberals table a DPU in 2024 promising $73 billion in additional defence spending over the next 20 years, forgive me if I do not believe that this time Trudeau is going to 'kick it to the moon'.
