The Defence Budget [superthread]

[Edward Campbell]

As the old joke about dead lawyers* says, it, Harper Government Announces 10,980 Public Sector Positions Eliminated in Past Six Months, is a good start.

1,621 were/are to be cut from in (and around) DND, by the end of this round of cuts we should be 'down' by 19,000+ civil servants. In my guesstimation there is room to cut 21,000 more by 2015, making it a nice round cut of 40,000.


-----
* What do you call 5000 dead lawyers at the bottom of the ocean?
  A good start!

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Our new Act is in front of the house right now, regardless of Royal Assent, it may take a year to bring it into force as they laid off the people doing the regulatory work. Not to mention one of the first groups to get hit in our department were the HR people who were supposed to handle the people impacted.

 

[McG]

While this thread is full of ideas to cut fat & tail while protecting muscle & teeth, it doesn't look like there will be much detail publicly available on what is actually getting cut.

Tories stonewall attempts to examine Defence cuts
The Daily Gleaner
Murray Brewster
28 Nov 2012

OTTAWA - Opposition attempts to shed light on spending cuts at National Defence were met by lawyerly objections from Conservative members of the House of Commons committee charged with overseeing the military.

Government MPs, led by junior defence minister Chris Alexander, tried to limit the scope of questions put to Defence Minister Peter MacKay by New Democrats and Liberals to a table of supplementary budget documents.

Both opposition parties were stymied in their efforts to find out precisely what is being cut and how the department will meet its budget targets.

MacKay assured them the budget was shipshape, and that Defence wouldn't be asking for any more cash over and above the $19 billion it expects to spend this year.

The department is holding the line, MacKay said, even though Defence faced increased costs for some equipment projects and payouts to injured soldiers for ending the clawback on their pensions.

"We have identified ways to meet these specific funding needs through decreases in spending in other areas of National Defence and reallocations of previously approved budgetary resources," he said.

But when opposition members tried to probe planned cuts, or ask why certain projects were not being funded, they were told it was outside the field of what the all-party committee met to discuss.

The chairman supported those arguments.

The tactic frustrated both the Liberals and the NDP, who tried to force through a motion that called on Defence to co-operate with parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page, who has demanded to see details from each department of the Harper government's planned cuts.

"It just seems we've got money moving around with no one knowing exactly how much is going where," said NDP defence critic Jack Harris.

"The whole object seems to be to limit the amount of information this committee and parliamentarians get, and hence (what) the public gets. There's something very wrong with that."

Liberal defence critic John McKay described the committee as being lost in "fog."

He pointed to the minister's announcement a few weeks ago that defence would spend $11 million more on the mental health of soldiers.

"So where did that 11 million bucks come from?" McKay asked. "It was reprofiled. Did it come out of trucks? Did it come out of procurement?"

A spokesman for the defence minister said the cash for mental health came from a line item known as the cost move budget - a $408-million fund that has been declared surplus.

A few weeks ago, a leaked letter detailed how Prime Minister Stephen Harper had told MacKay last spring that his initial budget proposals did not cut deep enough on the administrative side of National Defence.

The three-page June 2012 letter, obtained by The Canadian Press, underlined the divide between Harper's office and National Defence, which has become increasingly resolved to protect the budget gains of the last five years.

Harper set out what cuts he was prepared to accept, what wouldn't work, and even suggested National Defence unload some of its surplus property.

Questions about the leaked letter and a major transformation report were considered by the majority Conservative members on the committee to be out of order.

Earlier this fall, a defence researcher analyzed the Harper government's budget statements and concluded that the hit on military would be greater than previously thought, running as deep as $2.5 billion by 2014.

 

[Edward Campbell]

ff topic:

We, Canada, our parliament, haven't quite "got" the role of either committees or the Parliamentary Budget Officer.

I encourage everyone to read this, especially this bit. (They are quite clear and simple: well written and easy to understand.)

We need to fit the legitimate needs of parliamentarians (who, after all, serve us) in their committees, to examine and comment on the estimates, into the estimates process, and we need to fit the PBO and his boss, the Librarian of Parliament, into that process, too - in support of committee members. Unfortunately, in Canada, the government and the opposition parties and the PBO himself, have all conspired, albeit not together, to frustrate one another and, in the process, to deny us - taxpayers - the information which we ought to have.

The process of budget, estimates (main and supplementary) and expenditure review (audit) needs to flow smoothly but there needs to be "room" for parliament, mainly in committe, aided by the PBO, to review and comment on all three.

:sorry:

 

[GAP]

A spokesman for the defence minister said the cash for mental health came from a line item known as the cost move budget - a $408-million fund that has been declared surplus.

Really? I thought, through reading some other threads, that it was reduced, but the impression I got was it was definitely NOT surplus as a whole....

 

[dapaterson]

He either misspoke or is misquoted.

 

[Towards_the_gap]

• Prohibit the use of WSE on deployments (We do not need to pay guys above their rank when there are other sitting at home already collecting pay at that level)

I'm sorry, but I will argue this one. How about not prohibiting tour WSE's, but make the rules for it more stringent...No automatic WSE's for positions before deploying, either promote substantive or just deploy the lower rank person at his rank.

..I say this as someone who was promoted WSE after his section commander was killed. Not every situation is the same.

Everything else is spot on though.

 

[PuckChaser]

The rules are pretty stringent for WSE already, need to be EPZ and qualified in the next rank filling a position that is low ranked above your rank. But if you're going to limit WSEs, why not just stop deploying so many reservists? Its the same thing, why pay an extra $70,000 a year for a Sgt when there's a RegF one sitting at home in Canada. Its a slippery slope. WSEs just as PRes members deploying offer valuable experience. And not quite the same as Towards_the_gap, I speak as someone who was a PRes member deployed and also WSE on another deployment.

 

[dapaterson]

A hard look at the establishment to figure out how many Reg we need for rotos 0 and 1, ramping up to increasing numbers of Res on rotos 3 and following, needs to be done.  The results may not be pleasing to all branches, though.  Maintaining a large Reg F in being is not the correct answer to meet all our capability requirements - that expense is even greater that the incremental cost of inducting Res F pers for operational service (preferably under the Special Force construct or some other method to avoid the current "Injured on ops?  Benefits vary depending on whether you're Reg or Res").

At the same time, we need to study the WSEs that did occur.  Were they because of a shortage at that rank, or because some people never deployed?  If there are 100 people of the right rank and trade, and no one can deploy, maybe the solution isn't to WSE someone, but rather to seat a career board and retire a few of the non-deployables, giving the person deploying the rank permanently.

 

[PuckChaser]

I know for at least Op Attention, the orders indicated the mounting unit was to make maximum use of WSE for positions, and that a minimum of 20% of deployed pers had to be reservists. This last part lead to RegF members spending 2 months on predeployment training, and then being told before Christmas that they'd lost their tour to a reservist who hadn't even been asked if they wanted to deploy yet. That decision was the fastest way to cause animosity between little and big R and jump up the budget for the tour, IMO.

 

[GAP]

No fat to cut in Army overhead; budget cuts affect training of soldiers: general
By: Murray Brewster, The Canadian Press 12/3/2012
Article Link

OTTAWA - The commander of the Canadian Army told a Senate committee Monday there is no administrative fat to cut in his branch and that budget restraint is forcing him to train soldiers to a lower standard than during the Afghan war.

Lt.-Gen. Peter Devlin testified at a Senate committee that 22 per cent of his force's baseline budget has been slashed, and when combined with the loss of a stipend for the Kandahar mission, the cumulative fiscal hit is even bigger.

"As you would expect that has an effect on people, infrastructure and training," he told senators.

Devlin underscored that 74 per cent of the army is the field force, and only four per cent take up a headquarters or administrative role among the 25,500 regular members, 16,000 reservists, and 5,000 rangers.

Earlier this year, Prime Minister Stephen Harper made it clear he believed the National Defence Department could cut more deeply on the administration side as he laid out his thoughts in a letter to Defence Minister Peter MacKay.

"It is important that we reduce the current overhead in regular force military and civilian personnel, and in those activities that do not directly contribute to operational readiness," Harper wrote on June 15, 2012. A copy of his letter was obtained last month by The Canadian Press.

Yet Devlin's testimony Monday provided a stark contrast to Harper's assertions, with the general stating that the army has already "streamlined army command and control, reducing the size of national and regional headquarters, and restructured our approach to support."

But it was on training, the bedrock of army readiness, that Devlin received many questions.

"We are training to a lower level than we trained, when we were training for combat operations," he said.

According to figures released earlier this year, at the height of the Afghan war in 2009-10, the army spent $123 million on training, including a special $79 million cash injection specifically for Afghanistan.

That figure fell to $57 million last year and is down to an estimated $46 million this year.

Devlin says he's focused his dollars on what's known as Level 5 training, which is live fire exercises meant to keep soldiers sharp for combat, but even still the army would require 60 days notice to deploy on another overseas mission.

He says he's even held back on a portion of his infrastructure budget in order to preserve training.

Conservative Senator Don Plett seemed skeptical with some of what he heard on Monday, suggesting that with the war in south Asia all-but-over for Canada, there were savings to be had.

"As we're moving out of Afghanistan, it only seems logical to me, sir, that we would be scaling back on some of this training," he said. "If you're saying it takes 60 days for you to get up to a certain level that should the need arise, I would think this government or any other government would step up to the plate and give you the resources that you need."

His comments were reinforced by a spokesman for MacKay late Monday.

"The Canadian Armed Forces are no longer in a combat mission in Afghanistan, they are no longer securing the skies over Libya, they no longer have 2,000 members in Haiti," said Jay Paxton in an email.

"For these reasons training is necessarily slowed to a more normal tempo so as to ensure the best use of taxpayer money, but Canada still has the best trained and most respected military personnel in the world. They stand ready to respond whenever Canadians need them."

Devlin noted that during the Kandahar mission, up to 3,000 soldiers, aircrew and staff officers would be trained per overseas rotation. That figure has now dropped to about 300.

The overall defence budget is expected to shrink by as much as $2.5 billion by 2014, according to independent research. As late as the end of October, when the new chief of defence staff was installed, the prime minister insisted that most of the cuts could be made in administration.
end

 

[George Wallace]

I would like to submit the following to our esteemed Members of Parliament:

No fat to cut in Army Fire Department overhead; budget cuts affect training of soldiers Firefighters: general Chief
By: Murray Brewster, The Canadian Press 12/3/2012
Article Link

OTTAWA - The commander of the Canadian Army Fire Chief told a Senate committee Monday there is no administrative fat to cut in his branch and that budget restraint is forcing him to train soldiers Firefightersto a lower standard than during the Afghan war since the last major fire.

Lt.-Gen. Chief Peter Devlin testified at a Senate committee that 22 per cent of his force's baseline budget has been slashed, and when combined with the loss of a stipend for the Kandahar mission past year, the cumulative fiscal hit is even bigger.

"As you would expect that has an effect on people, infrastructure and training," he told senators.

Devlin underscored that 74 per cent of the army Fire Department is the field force firefighters, and only four per cent take up a headquarters or administrative role among the 25,500 regular members, 16,000 reservists auxilary, and 5,000 rangers volunteer firefigters.

Earlier this year, Prime Minister Stephen Harper made it clear he believed the National Defence Fire Department could cut more deeply on the administration side as he laid out his thoughts in a letter to Defence Minister Fire Commissionaire Peter MacKay.

"It is important that we reduce the current overhead in regular force military full-time firefighers and civilian personnel, and in those activities that do not directly contribute to operational readiness," Harper wrote on June 15, 2012. A copy of his letter was obtained last month by The Canadian Press.

Yet Devlin's testimony Monday provided a stark contrast to Harper's assertions, with the generalChief stating that the army Fire Dept has already "streamlined army command and control, reducing the size of national and regional headquarters, and restructured our approach to support."

But it was on training, the bedrock of army firefighting readiness, that Devlin received many questions.

"We are training to a lower level than we trained, when we were training for combat operations worse case scenarios," he said.


......................and so on.

So, if we haven't had any major fires in town for the last decade or so, we can close down some of our firehalls and sell of some of our pumper trucks.  Brilliant.

 

[mariomike]

So, if we haven't had any major fires in town for the last decade or so, we can close down some of our firehalls and sell of some of our pumper trucks.  Brilliant.

In the news this week.

"One of the largest areas where they ( sic ) city has found savings is the fire department."

"Ed Kennedy, president of the Toronto Professional Fire Fighters’ Association, told Torstar News Service the lost manpower would mean taking five of 128 fire trucks out of service and an increase in some response times.":
http://metronews.ca/news/toronto/458898/city-proposes-1-95-per-cent-property-tax-hike/

 

[George Wallace]

Security comes at a cost.  People are employed to keep you secure and safe, and to do so without you even knowing it, so you can go merrily on with your life's prosuites without concerns.  When they are no longer there, and your life is threatened in any manner, it becomes another Rudyard Kipling "Tommy" situation.


"You talk o' better food for us, an' schools, an' fires, an' all:
We'll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.
Don't mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face
The Widow's Uniform is not the soldier-man's disgrace.
For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Chuck him out, the brute!"
But it's "Saviour of 'is country" when the guns begin to shoot;
An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please;
An' Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool -- you bet that Tommy sees! "


Rudyard Kipling's poem: Tommy



Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool -- you bet that Tommy sees!

 

[Towards_the_gap]

I'd say this is more apt:


Yes, makin' mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than them uniforms, an' they're starvation cheap;

 

[Rick Goebel]

Calgary’s Fire Department caught flak in 2010:

“Calgary's top-heavy fire department has too many chiefs, critics are charging.
With 17 members of the management team wearing the stripes of either chief or deputy chief, two council hopefuls and the firefighters' union are turning up the heat on the department, decrying the command structure that dwarfs those of Toronto, Vancouver and Edmonton.
Mark Faires, president of the Calgary Firefighters Association, said the spike in management positions has been particularly vexing due to lagging standards for front-line workers and equipment.
"In a similarly-sized department like Edmonton or Vancouver, you'd find only about four or five," he said.” Quoted from the Calgary Sun http://www.calgarysun.com/news/calgaryvotes/2010/10/07/15621661.html

Like fire departments, the military tends to say it has to cut front-line services when told to make cuts.

I frankly find it a little hard to believe that only 1020 regulars (4% of 25,500) “take up a headquarters or administrative role” in LFHQ, LFTDS, 1 Cdn Div, 4 x Area HQs, 3 x Regular Bde HQs, 10 x Reserve Bde HQs, 4 x ASGs, 4 x ATCs, and 7 x bases.  In the specific case of the CBG HQs, I’m willing to bet big bucks that the total cost of the current CBG HQs is more than the cost of the 21 Dist HQs they replaced.  I suspect that the difference is big and, I suspect, unjustifiable by any identifiable improvement in the performance of the reserve force DUE TO the increase in HQ cost.  Perhaps the Army Comd might want to start there and work his way through the rest of the system.

Rick Goebel

 

[McG]

I suspect the Army Commander is correct.  The administrative structures of the Army are pretty lean ... which is not to say that the administrative structures of the CF are lean.  There are certainly other L1s that are purely or mostly administrative in their nature (ie. most of the ADMs and CMP) and likely there is some fat within these organizations. 

And, while the Army's administrative structures are generally lean, there are pockets of fat to be found.  Many of these require looking deeper in the weeds than the Army Commander should be looking, but his staff and subordinate staffs should be finding these.

There is also plenty of fat to be cut from places outside of administrative structures.  We can find fat in superfluous command structures.  We can cut fat from wasteful processes, unnecessary activities, duplication of efforts, redundant establishments, etc.  Administrative structures are not the only place to find fat.  There is plenty of fat to cut, and a lot of ideas were pointed out on the previous page.
[quote author=MCG]
Here are a few ways that I see to immediately cut costs while protecting capability:

• Reduce/Stop the use of “tactical infrastructure” in field exercises
• Do not bring kitchen appliances to the field (with the exception of in field kitchens)
• Maximize the use of local training areas before traveling
• Teleconference to avoid TD for meetings and working groups
• Prohibit the use of WSE on deployments (We do not need to pay guys above their rank when there are other sitting at home already collecting pay at that level)  - exceptions only for late tour battlefield promotions for casualty replacement
• Deploy the next Op ATTENTION as 100% Reg F (again, Reg F pay is a sunk cost while a year of Class C pay for a Sr NCO of Jr Offr to train & deploy could instead added another training day for a Class A unit)
• No new “buttons & bows” announcements
• Do not rebadged any more units for the sake of resurrecting old regiments
• Stop any unannounced plans to rebrand/rebadged/rename any branches, corps or organization for the purposes of historical sentimentalism
• Stop using rented civilian vehicles when military patter vehicles are available and serve the purpose
• Tie pay incentives for all ranks to performance and conduct.  If you are on a remedial measure (IC through to C&P) then the pay incentive is delayed by the duration of that remedial measure.  If you receive an unsatisfactory PER, then the pay incentive is delayed by a full year.
• Rebalance officer enrollment paths to reduce the number of ROTP entrants by increasing the number of DEO entrants

And here are some options options for long-term savings (though most will cost money up-front prior to the savings being achieved later):

• Consolidate all of NDHQ and appropriate other NCR units on the Nortel Campus
• Move CFC from Toronto to Ottawa (Nortel Campus) or Kingston (RMC or the closing prison)
• Divest unnecessary niche vehicle micro-fleets (if required, increase size of standard fleets to maintain platform numbers)
• Smash LFDTS & CTC into a single layer of HQ, transfer capability development functions from LFDTS to COS Land Strat
• Re-close CMR and consolidate ROTP back into RMC
• Consolidate all of 1 CMBG in Edmonton to reduce future steady-state cost moves
• Procure more training simulators for diesel guzzling equipment (like aircraft, Engr Hy Eqpt and MBT)
• Re-evaluate rank levels in HQ establishments

In the current climate, we need to look at more than just where to cut.  We also need to look at where to get better mileage from the same resources.  Here are a few thoughts to that end:

• Replace SDA, LDA, dive pay and parachute allowance with enhanced casual allowances – the current systems reward posting messages as opposed to rewarding/compensating for the behaviour that we want: going to sea, going to the field, diving, and jumping out of aircraft.
• Reduce the number of PRes unit HQs in the Army.  Individual sub-units can retain unique regimental identities, but they will be grouped under a single stronger battalion HQ.
• Revisit the requirement for Reg F bands.  There are 71 musicians from Sgt to CWO on Army Ref F establishments alone.  That is a lot of PYs that could be put to better purpose (especially when we have been cutting from operational units to put PYs in new capabilities)

[/quote][quote author=dapaterson]
A few more contentious suggestions:

* Top to bottom compensation and benefits review to eliminate duplication and overlap
* Revisit posting policy to reduce annual move requirement (excluding off-BTL)
* Revisit IPR move policy to eliminate same-location moves (eg a paid move from Orleans to Kanata on release)
* Replace CANEX with private suppliers (who will pay market rents for CF facilities)
  * Retain small deployed NPF expertise to surge for deployments if required (hint: this does not include a Tim Hortons trailer)
* Return to annual TOS boards, particularly at ranks of LCol and above and MWO and above, to determine whether continued service meets a military requirement
* Enforce limits on GOFOs as ordered in the 1997 MND report (roughly a 1/3 reduction)
* Return to performance pay for GOFO and Capt(N)/Cols
  * Make PMAs and performance info per above public
* Make PMAs and performance information for all Public Servants public
* Restructure establishment to differentiate between Lt and Capt
* Return to competitive promotion to Capt
* Revisit Degreed Officer Corps decision
  * Permit short engagements with no promotion beyond Capt without a degree
* Eliminate full-time second language training
  * Individuals may elect to pursue SLT on their own time; a decision not to get a language profile will limit future promotion possibilities

For IM/IT

* Migrate from MS Office to Open Office to reduce IM/IT licensing costs
* Migrate from Outlook to open-source web-based DWAN email to reduce IM/IT licensing costs
* Dissolve ADM(IM), putting IM/IT support into CANOSCOM, IM/IT procurement into ADM(Mat), and comms and ISTAR systems under CJOC[/quote]
Adding to these ideas we could cut more fat/waste by with the following:

• Stop the practice of sending new CF buttons & fasteners with all new DEU coats ordered on the Logistik Unicorps site (these buttons typically go straight to the garbage as most soldiers already have the buttons which are removable from the old coat, and most soldiers wear branch/regimental buttons) - is someone needs buttons they can spend more points to get them.
• Remove the recently introduced Army DEU parka from Logistik Unicorps issue - it duplicates a function already provided by the gaberdine.
• Allow only one IPR move per service couple.  If mbrs do not retire at the same time, they may be entitled to a re-unification move depending on which mbr takes IPR and where each mbr is located relative to the other at the time of the first retirement.
• Delay CCV by at least two years and revisit the requirement ... The requirement either does not actually exist or we have currently got it wrong.
• Replace military ID cards and military driver's licences with a single universal military identification

 

[Edward Campbell]

John Ivison has some harsh words for DND's bean counters in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the National Post:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/12/05/john-ivison-canadian-military-struggling-to-slash-budget-in-new-post-afghanistan-post-libya-reality/

Canadian military struggling to slash budget in new post-Afghanistan, post-Libya reality

John Ivison

Dec 5, 2012

The British military is a bit strapped for cash these days, so it has ordered its personnel to “work from home” over the holidays to save on gas and electricity bills.

“Army shuts down for Christmas,” ran the headline in the Sunday Times.

The Canadian Forces have their own money troubles. Budget 2012 called for $2-billion in savings from its budget over three years.

But according to testimony at the Senate Finance committee this week, the brass at National Defence have a much more subtle solution than sending the entire armed forces on block leave. Rather, they have just moved a few decimal points around, shifted some numbers from one column to another and voila, money has appeared as if by magic.

Maj.-Gen. Robert Bertrand, acting chief financial officer at DND, gave the good news that no new funding is required from Parliament. But that is only because money is being “re-profiled” from the capital spending budget into the operations budget.

The supplementary spending estimates being examined by the Senate committee show that $162-million is being transferred from the capital budget to offset the spending cuts on the operations side.

“We had a capital re-profile as a result of changes in payments and contract schedules for our capital program in the order of $280-million … Again there is no requirement for additional budget appropriations through these supplementary estimates,” said Maj.-Gen. Bertrand.

It was good of him to tell us, since, remarkable as it may seem, no department is required to seek parliamentary approval unless they are looking for more money.

But it was presented as if this were an entirely logical course for the military – there was $280-million lying around, so we decided to spend it on salaries.

This may be acceptable if it didn’t deplete DND’s capital assets at a time when tens of billions of spending on new equipment is going to fall due before too long – for new fighter jets and new ships, to name but $40-billion worth of capital expenditure.

Maj.-Gen. Bertrand attempted to explain to the senators, a number of whom have had distinguished business careers, how he could spend part of his capital budget and yet still have the money available for new equipment when it was required. The senators didn’t grasp the intricacies of the process and asked him to put it in writing.

“It is a tricky concept to understand,” said Maj.-Gen. Bertrand.

“I should say so,” said Senator Irving Gerstein.

The real story here is DND’s struggle to bring its budgets into line with the new reality, post Afghanistan, post-Haiti, post-Libya and post-Winter Olympics. We have just gone through a seven year period of heightened Canadian security activity, which saw the operating budget rise from around $12-billion to over $15-billion in 2010/11.

DND’s attempts to make cuts clearly did not impress the Prime Minister, who wrote to Defence Minister Peter MacKay last spring, saying his initial proposals did not cut deeply enough into the department’s administration.

Stephen Harper re-inforced that message at the change of command ceremony for new Chief of Defence Staff, Tom Lawson, where Mr. Harper called for a “modern, general purpose military” with “more teeth and less tail,” echoing the language in the report on the transformation of the Canadian Forces produced by Lt.-Gen. Andrew Leslie.

Its 43 recommendations were not well received by DND, even if it is obliged to continue analyzing the effect of redeploying or eliminating 7,000 regular forces personnel and civil servants; cutting 3,500 reservists and lopping off $1-billion from the contracting budget.

Those kinds of spending cuts would shrink personal fiefdoms and power bases, so the generals are once again attempting to protect their budget gains and do an end run around the government by tapping their capital budget.

Far easier to come back to Parliament, cap in hand, when they do need the money for new equipment and claim that the $162-million slipped down the back of the couch or was exchanged for a handful of magic beans on the way to market.

Either that or they could raid the operations budget and send everyone home for Christmas.

National Post

As Ivison suggests, this is budgetary sleight of hand, robbing Peter to pay Paul and all that ... but that doesn't make it a bad thing. Maybe it is time for Parliament to rethink the artificial "stovepipes" that it imposes - capital, PO&M, grants and contributions, etc. These were vital controls that, as the Peel Royal Commission Cardwell Reforms showed, were necessary in the 19th century. The question is: are the administrative constraints imposed to solve the sorts of problems that surfaced in Crimea in the 1850s and South Africa circa 1900 still appropriate?

 

[GAP]

John Ivison has some harsh words for DND's bean counters in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the National Post:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/12/05/john-ivison-canadian-military-struggling-to-slash-budget-in-new-post-afghanistan-post-libya-reality/

As Ivison suggests, this is budgetary sleight of hand, robbing Peter to pay Paul and all that ... but that doesn't make it a bad thing. Maybe it is time for Parliament to rethink the artificial "stovepipes" that it imposes - capital, PO&M, grants and contributions, etc. These were vital controls that, as the Peel Royal Commission Cardwell Reforms showed, were necessary in the 19th century. The question is: are the administrative constraints imposed to solve the sorts of problems that surfaced in Crimea in the 1850s and South Africa circa 1900 still appropriate?

I dislike articles by Ivison simply on the basis he has an axe to grind and the wheel is anything Conservative. That said, for once he hit the nail on the head. You don't take your capital budget to offset operational costs just so the mini empires can continue.

 

[Edward Campbell]

I disagree with almost everything Jack Granatstein says in this article which is reproduced under the fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Ottawa Citizen:

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/opinion/op-ed/Delays+deficit+fighting+direction/7656792/story.html

Op-Ed: Delays, deficit-fighting and no direction
After a promising start, it is becoming increasingly clear the federal government has no defence policy, J.L. Granatstein writes.

By J.L. Granatstein, Ottawa Citizen

December 5, 2012

No one who has followed the history of Canadian defence has any doubt that for their first four years in power the Harper Conservatives were the best government for the Canadian Forces since the 1950s St. Laurent government. Coming into power at the beginning of 2006, the Tories supported the troops in Afghanistan with the equipment — Leopards, C17s, new C130J Hercules transports, Chinook helicopters, anti-mine vehicles — and personnel they needed, they extended the mission twice, they increased defence spending massively, and they even produced their Canada First Defence Strategy in 2008.

The war in Afghanistan, however, did not go the way the government had hoped. The Canadian Forces did well in the field, but public support gradually turned against the conflict, deciding that it was costly and unwinnable. The Harper government read the tea leaves and pulled out, deciding (under pressure from our allies) to leave only a training cadre to work with the Afghan military and police. Supporting the CF in a war was not necessarily a recipe for votes, or so the prime minister came to understand, at least not so long as Canadian servicemen and women suffered casualties.

If Afghanistan was one blow to the government’s defence plans, the Canada First Defence Strategy was another. The CFDS, despite its name, was not a strategy so much as a list of promised equipment purchases. It did not try to lay down much of a rationale for the nation’s defence or indicate how the government envisioned the ways in which the Canadian Forces might be employed in the future. Instead it promised guaranteed growth in defence spending, proposed a modest increase in personnel strength, and promised a long list of equipment to be acquired — 15 combat vessels, support ships, the F-35 fighter, and a fleet of land combat vessels. In all, the government pledged to spend almost half a trillion dollars over the next 20 or so years.

And maybe it might have done so, the voters permitting. But the sharp recession of 2008 tossed all plans into the garbage bin, and deficit fighting, not defence spending, soon became the Tories’ driving force. Instead of the promised increases, there are cuts that are already north of 10 per cent of the Department of National Defence budget. The Army has already reduced its training, and there will be more cutbacks everywhere.

Compounding the government’s problems are the never-ending procurement delays in virtually every program in the Department of National Defence. The Chrétien government cuts in the 1990s slashed program managers, and DND has never recovered from this. But too many rules and regulations, too much insistence on domestic suppliers, and sometimes an inability to make decisions (or making the wrong ones) has made a mess of program after program. The F-35 is the best known (and most expensive) debacle, but search and rescue aircraft and helicopters are right up there — and the very expensive (but necessary) combat ship program is all but certain to be a costly mess.

Worst of all, it is becoming increasingly clear that the government has no defence policy. Nowhere has the government stated that it foresees threats or crises that might require Canadian intervention with this or that kind of forces. Granted, in a world in flux, such forecasts are difficult to make in a credible way, but such thinking used to be called strategic planning. Governments and their militaries formed such judgments, and the elected politicians, in consultation with the brass, determined that they needed so many battalions, aircraft, ships and the money to pay for them. Moreover, in a democracy, the public was ordinarily consulted in the preparatory stages and informed, via a White Paper, of the broad outlines of the government’s policy.

Not here, not now, not from the Harper government. We get no indications that there is a policy in the works and nothing so much as the sense that the government wishes that it had never made defence such a large part of its party program. Equipment purchases might still be good job creators — and vote getters — but the Canadian Forces and defence in Tory eyes now seem to constitute a swamp where no one dares to go.

This is unfortunate, to say the least, but it does leave an opening for the opposition parties to lay out defence policies of their own. If the NDP and Liberals can rise above prattling about peacekeeping and determine where the challenges of the next decades may lie and what this nation needs to do to protect itself and its friends, they can serve their own — and Canada’s — interests.

J.L. Granatstein is a distinguished research fellow of the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute.

© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

First paragraph: wrong! While the Conservatives did, indeed, buy much needed new equipment, much of it was already on the books thanks to previous administrations. They did not increase "defence spending massively" - when measured as a percentage of GDP, the only sensible way to do it while taking account of both inflation and national capacity, defence spending stagnated during the Afghanistan mission. The Canada First Defence Strategy, as I have explained again and again, promises to lower defence spending as a percentage of GDP over the next 25 years.

Second paragraph: correct.

Third paragraph: also correct but the dollar figures are meaningless. All they did, and still do, is to provide a target for e.g. Stephen Staples.

Fourth paragraph: wrong! For the reason he got right in the third para, Granatstein should understand that he Canada First Defence Strategy itself, not the Great Recession, sent DND to the fiscal woodshed.

Fifth paragraph: wrong! While the defence procurement system is, indeed, in need of a MASSIVE overhaul, the decision making problems are, in the main, inside DND, not at the cabinet table.

Sixth paragraph: wrong!. The Harper government does, indeed, have a defence policy. It is a linear decendant of the Diefenbaker, Pearson, Trudeau, Mulroney and Chretien defence policies. It asks one question: "how little can we do, how little can we spend, and still a) keep our seats at various international tables, and b) not annoy the Americans?"

Seventh paragraph: same as the sixth.

Eighth paragraph: wrong, again! neither the NDP nor the Liberals have any need to enunciate a coherent defence policy. They understand, as do the Conservatives, that, despite all the red T-shirts and yellow ribbons, Canadians, by and large, may "support the troops" but they do not support anything like an adequate or appropriate level of defence spending.