Over the two years that I’ve been a contributing writer at The Hub, I have discussed a fairly wide array of issues and thinking surrounding defence. Generally, my articles identify a problem or issue and attempt to provide a solution at the end. However, I have had a growing desire to put together a series of articles about how to reform the Department of National Defence. It really catalyzed when a friend asked me, (after my long, dispiriting rant on problems that the military faced) how should a government fix these issues: or in short, what a Department of Defence 2.0 should look like. For about a year, I’ve had the idea in the back of my mind, all the while collecting my ideas and thoughts on the topic. What follows, in a series of three articles, is my take on how to structurally reform Canada’s Department of Defence so that we may restore both our security capabilities and our standing in the world.
It is abundantly evident that the Canadian Armed Forces are in crisis. There are signs of it everywhere. The foremost is the lack of military capability and capacity of the CAF compared to Canada’s close allies. Canada’ is only able to contribute token units to continental defence, not to mention to any foreign contingency.
A key part of the capability challenge involves a procurement system that often delivers equipment years late, at higher costs, and that is less effective than what is available on the market. Furthermore, the military’s capabilities and capacity are hamstrung by a dire personnel situation within the CAF. Many key positions are at half of the authorized manning. Finally, there are the issues surrounding the utilization of the military, including over-deployment and ineffective and/or counterproductive uses. These issues were observable during the recent port visit of the HMCS Margaret Brook to Cuba, where the diplomatic benefits of improving relations with Havana severely—and embarrassingly—conflicted with Ottawa’s support for Ukraine.
Considered together, these issues really should be considered symptoms of a sick patient: they are the consequences of deeper systemic problems that afflict the Department of National Defence and defence policymaking more broadly today. The failure to properly diagnose the problem before attempting to treat the symptoms is evident in many of the reform efforts over the past fifty years. For example, last year the government formed a national security council to advise the prime minister and coordinate policy between departments. Yet as reporting at the Globe and Mail discovered, the body has met sparingly, and according to individuals interviewed over the course of my research, its actual salience on the policymaking and implementation is extremely low.
This example is indicative of many of the reforms that have been implemented over the years—they focus on secondary consequences rather than addressing many of the root causes of these challenges. In many ways, this approach has steadily deteriorated DND’s capabilities, subsequently causing an intensification of the problems they are trying to solve.
But, at the end of the day, isn’t it all about the money? Many have pointed to the decades of underfunding experienced by the military as the primary cause of the mess the country finds itself in. It’s not so simple. Certainly providing more budget stability would help immensely, as National Defence currently suffers through another round of budget cuts. Yet it would be too reductive to attribute the situations only to budgets; in some respects, they also are merely a symptom of the deeper issues afflicting defence. If additionally allocated funds are not able to be properly maximized—or utilized at all—then writing bigger cheques will not by itself turn things around.
Thus any reforms require a clear understanding of these problems. Unpacking these problems will be the focus of this first article in this series. The subsequent two installments will concentrate on specific reform efforts to address these challenges.
Our poor public knowledge environment
To start, a foundational challenge that affects Canadian defence is the information environment it operates within. The challenge is that it is not limited to a specific group of individuals, but pervades among all Canadians, from the lay public up to the senior political leadership of the government. Their awareness of the role that the military plays, how it operates, and its limitations and challenges is extremely low. This creates an environment where misinformation and potentially self-defeating ideas surrounding defence are able to propagate and obtain political support for implementation.
The potential for long-term damage is significant: the development and sustainment of capabilities frequently require decades of work, and ill-considered decisions can have deleterious long-term consequences for the force. The lack of public knowledge also allows for serious issues to pass by without scrutiny or interest. Cost overrun and delays of major procurement programs and shoddily planned military interventions all pass by with the barest of scrutiny or public outcry despite their consequences for military outputs and/or the public purse. Observe the decade-long effort to bring the CC-295 into service as Canada’s primary fixed-wing search and rescue aircraft. Despite all of the failings in the program, it has largely evaded any scrutiny.
Improving public knowledge would also enable the government to build more durable support for spending and better tolerance for accepting risk in defence, particularly with regard to procurements. They would prepare the public better for the issues and possible remedies where required.
The facade of the headquarters of the Department of National Defence is pictured in Ottawa, on April 3, 2013. Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press.
Technical ignorance and lack of qualified personnel
A somewhat related issue is the severe dearth of technical knowledge surrounding defence, even within the government. This is more of a talent management issue. The military is an exceedingly technologically dependent field—soldiers, sailors, and air personnel must have the technical expertise to oversee the development, employment, and sustainment of the systems necessary to undertake their roles. No other employer in Canada involves flying and maintaining a tactical fighter that can reach Mach 2, network its sensor data, and deliver thousands of pounds of munitions within a few metres of a target, but that is a routine day for someone within the Royal Canadian Air Force.
It extends beyond STEM fields and also involves specialized areas like defence economists, managers of complex programs, and the like. Thus the Department either has to attract highly skilled staff or develop them internally and then retain them for as long as possible. Currently, it is facing challenges in all three areas. The lack of skilled staff members has corrosive consequences across the entire organization: incorrect decisions, inaccurate estimates, and a slowing of decision-making are all hallmarks of this issue.
Lack of accountability
The final core issue with National Defence in Canada—and arguably the most important one— surrounds accountability, authority, and leadership. A persistent lack of accountability all the way to the highest levels has created an inability to implement decisions quickly and without a minimum of resources. Normally within government departments, public servants show a strict adherence to policy and consensus-based decision-making that effectively requires all players around the table’s viewpoints to be aired and addressed.
Yet defence is by no means a “normal” department. Operating a military requires acknowledging the uniqueness of employing deadly force and sustaining personnel and equipment that are necessary to achieve that aim. And culturally, the military relies heavily on individual leadership within a chain of command to achieve its objectives. This is fundamentally different from any other department or the public service.
Rather than elevating leaders and providing them with the requisite tools and authority to effectively manage programs, participants must “work the process” and build consensus with governmental stakeholders, which could take weeks or months to achieve. It should be noted that the government approach is also fundamentally different from best practices in the private sector, where authority tends to look somewhat closer to the military model than the public service one.
The consensus-based approach dilutes accountability; while there might be a nominal project manager, the reality is that everyone in a program has the ability to affect the outcome negatively by throwing up roadblocks based on their own perspectives. This means that in practice, too many people, each with any particular agenda, are able to derail the department’s objectives.
And crucially, when things go wrong—as they so often do in Canada when it comes to procurement—blame is dispersed, no one is held ultimately responsible, and nothing is fundamentally changed.
Any comprehensive reform effort must address these points. From them, major aspects of defence would fall into place—personnel management, procurement, budgets, etc. The next two columns will address those issues directly. But first and foremost, if Canada is to fix its national defence and reach the incredible potential of its capabilities, it must actually grapple with the actual root causes of the problems it is facing.
Richard Shimooka is a Hub contributing writer and a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute who writes on defence policy.
