Opinion | The Saturday Debate: Are Canada’s Armed Forces too small?

Most of the time, during periods of lowered international tensions, or day-to-day life in Canada not shaped by a pandemic, or excessive natural disasters, most Canadians do not think about our Armed Forces. Neither the size, nor various priorities of our Armed Forces, are discussed publicly or in the media.

Recent decisions taken by the government addressing cultural challenges around allegations of harassment have received and merited more public discussion, quite justifiably.

Recent tensions with Russia’s threatened invasion of Ukraine affords us all a chance to reflect on whether the size and scope of our present military is sufficient for a country with our population and geography abutting three oceans.

The evidence that our Armed Forces are too small is pressing.

Having a total Armed Forces complement of 67,000 personnel, with only a small fraction being combat ready and trained, is deeply insufficient. When compared to other countries’ ratio of military-to-general population, we are well beneath the vast majority of our NATO partners and many other friendly non-NATO countries.

No country is the G7 has an Armed Forces as small as ours. When the relative “firepower” (kinetic impact) of our Armed Forces is compared to other countries, we rank 21st from the top. Many smaller countries rank much higher.

As we have seen during the pandemic, the federal government has had to deploy Armed Forces personnel to assist the provinces, which had insufficient provincial and agency personnel to handle the long-term care caseload or operate vaccination centers. Canadians all recall the use of Canadian Forces personnel to assist in flood remediation, combating forest fires and the rest.

We need a Canadian Armed Forces of at least 100,000 regular personnel and an Armed Forces Reserve (Army, Navy, Air Force, Special Forces) of no less than 60,000.

That would allow us to have an Armed Forces that could provide aid to the civil powers domestically, while still having sufficient personnel to deploy abroad as alliance, national security or UN requirements may require.

In our present global context, if the US and other European allies in NATO decide to deploy military forces to our sister democracies in NATO that border Russia, Canada would be well advised to contribute combat-ready Canadian troops, aircraft and ships to that defensive engagement . As has always been the practice of NATO, preventive defensive deployments have constrained the former Soviet Union and sustained peace.

Present efforts by President Putin to intimidate his way to a new balance of power in Europe, merit not only financial sanctions should there be an invasion, but military deployments that would discourage the Russians from doing the wrong thing.

Our Naval and Army commanders have already spoken of considerable personnel shortfalls. Endless delays in procuring a new jet fighter for the RCAF have seen a fall off in our fighter pilot complement.

While a well trained and courageous Armed Force can provide some impact leverage for a smaller force, there is a point beyond which insufficient numbers are simply insufficient numbers. All the services within our Armed Forces suffer from insufficient numbers.

The recent mandate letter to our new Minister of Defense Anita Anand did not call on her to seriously expand our Armed Forces numbers. That is neither her fault, nor the fault of the uniformed women and men who serve the defense of Canada. But it is the fault of a government that has not given expansion of our Armed Forces serious consideration since being elected in 2015.

Only two Canadian prime ministers, Louis St. Laurent, a Liberal, and Brian Mulroney, a Progressive Conservative, actually spent at the 2 per cent of GDP level on the military, as called for by the NATO Heads of Government meeting in Wales before our present government was elected.

A country of 36 million people, across the second largest national land mass in the world, with alliance obligations, three oceans to patrol, and a tradition of military operations globally on humanitarian, peacekeeping, and defense combat engagement, needs an Armed Forces large enough to do two or three things at once, in more than one part of the world.

It’s high time Ottawa and all our political parties stopped looking the other way.

Those who profit from war and weapons sales want us to believe our security is dependent on increased military spending. But, for most Canadians, the opposite is true. In addition to a pandemic, our security threats are ecological, social and economic and expanding the largest federal government ministry cannot protect us from these crises.

Canada’s armed forces have 125,000 soldiers, reservists and other staff. The military manages the “largest infrastructure portfolio in the federal government ”covering a land mass equal to half of Switzerland.

From chemical waste to bomb ordnance, its operations have scarred landscapes across the country. While little discussed, the Department of National Defense is also responsible for a staggering 59 per cent of federal government greenhouse gas emissions.

The environmentally damaging armed forces receive 15 times the public resources allocated to Environment and Climate Change Canada. On the world stage, Canada accounts for 1.1 per cent of international military spending, despite having less than 0.5 per cent of the global population. There are only 12 countries that spend more on their militaries than Canada.

In the two largest-ever federal government procurements, Ottawa plans to spend a combined $ 100 billion – $ 350 billion over their life cycle – on 88 new fighter jets and 15 surface combatant vessels. The warplanes will carry 18,000 pounds of destructive ordnance. The warships, with state-of-the-art radars, will allow US officials to launch “Canadian” missiles, including Tomahawk cruise missiles capable of hitting targets 1,700 kilometers away.

Canada’s naval vessels are militarizing the seas. Last week, a Canadian naval vessel was dispatched to the Black Sea, which borders Russia. Provocatively, Canadian frigates have recently joined US warships passing through the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait. Canadian warships regularly patrol the North Sea, Mediterranean and Caribbean.

To assist Canada’s global maritime force, small bases have been established in Kuwait, Jamaica and Senegal. Ottawa has also been negotiating to set up four more “lily pads” in Singapore, Germany, Tanzania and South Korea as part of an effort toproject combat power ”under the Pentagon’s direction.

While not formally at war, Canadian forces are currently participating in some two dozen international missions. Hundreds of Canadian troops are in Iraq as well as in Latvia and Ukraine, both of which border Russia. Smaller numbers assist a Palestinian security force that helps enforce Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and others are part of a mission dating back to the early 1950s Korean War.

Let’s not forget that over the past three decades tens of thousands of Canadians were deployed to fight in Iraq, Serbia, Afghanistan and Libya. What good came of those wars? Thirty years later fighting continues in Iraq, while ethnic tensions continue in Kosovo. The 2011 NATO bombing of Libya led to slave markets and an ongoing civil war. In Afghanistan, the newly dominant Taliban appears moderate compared to ISIS-K.

Canadian forces have also caused major harm in places while barely firing a shot. In 2004, for instance, 30 Canadian JTF 2 commandos “secured” the Port-au-Prince airport the night US Marines exiled Haiti’s elected leftist president Jean-Bertrand Aristide to the Central African Republic. Following this, 500 Canadian troops protected Haiti’s foreign-installed government for six months as it suppressed the democracy movement.

Six years later, when a devastating earthquake killed tens of thousands, Canada did not send its Heavy Urban Search and Rescue Teams. Instead, they dispatched 2,000 troops to Haiti, which largely policed ​​a traumatized population.

Internal government documents examined by The Canadian Press revealed Ottawa feared that a post-earthquake power vacuum could lead to a “popular uprising. ” A “secret” briefing noted, “Political fragility has increased the risks of a popular uprising and has fed the rumor that ex-president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, currently in exile in South Africa, wants to organize a return to power.”

Canada’s military is not designed to defend against a foreign aggressor, let alone protect citizens from pressing security concerns like a life-altering pandemic or ever-worsening climate breakdown. It is structured to aid US military aims.

Few nations possess naval vessels capable of launching missiles 1,700 kilometers. Canada’s Five Eyes counterpart New Zealand, North America trade partner Mexico and European ally Ireland do not have operational fighter jets. Thirty countriesincluding Costa Rica, Panama and Iceland, have no military at all.

Let’s get our priorities straight. We need less, not more, spending on Canada’s military.