More military money helps overcome `demotion'
Bill Graham says he loved being foreign affairs minister
But now he's relishing his role in crucial defence portfolio
BRUCE CAMPION-SMITH
OTTAWA BUREAU
OTTAWAâ â€At the time, it was called a slap in the face, a demotion.
Despite a strong showing as minister of foreign affairs, Bill Graham found himself bumped last summer from the globe-spanning world of diplomacy to defence, a department with big ambitions but hobbled by chronic underfunding.
"I certainly didn't seek to leave foreign affairs. I loved being minister of foreign affairs," Graham says.
But he adds that he was consoled by Prime Minister Paul Martin's pledge of more cash for the armed forces.
"He did say it to me ... that the fundamental thing that we're going to have to do here is reinvest in the military. That is a huge and important task. It is the primary tool of our foreign policy," he says.
"He wanted me to be the defence minister to help achieve that. Perhaps that softened the blow somewhat."
Within days of taking the helm, Graham announced action on an issue that had become an embarrassment: a replacement for the aging Sea King helicopters. The groundwork had been long laid for the announcement but in light of what was to come, the move was symbolic. After years of budget cuts and political inattention, new days were coming for the armed forces.
Eight months later, Graham's "demotion" is looking pretty good.
With a new top general promising big changes, a budget that promised big bucks and a pending defence review that will lay out higher-profile roles for the military at home and abroad, Graham is riding what some are calling the renaissance of the armed forces.
Along the way, he's had to stickhandle the day-to-day challenges that go with defence.
The fatal fire onboard the submarine HMCS Chicoutimi in October renewed questions about military underfunding.
Over the holidays, Graham was Ottawa's front man during the tsunami crisis, covering for cabinet colleagues away on vacation. Ironically, one of them, Pierre Pettigrew, who replaced Graham in the foreign affairs portfolio, has been left in the shadow of a globe-trotting Prime Minister who sees himself as Canada's representative on the world stage.
Even Graham, the 66-year-old MP for Toronto Centre, seems a little surprised at how the new job has turned out.
"Whatever disappointment I might have had back then has been totally overshadowed by the experience I've had by being defence minister. It's a remarkably interesting job," he says in an interview in his Parliament Hill office.
"Getting the new money in the budget helped because I think we're on the cusp of doing something really important with the military."
In Graham, the defence department got a minister well-schooled in global issues â †a former professor of international law, former chair of the Commons' foreign affairs committee and minister of foreign affairs for 2 1/2 years.
Ottawa sources say that's exactly the perspective that Martin, who envisages the military as the cornerstone of an activist foreign agenda, wanted to bring to defence when he shuffled his cabinet.
Knowing that the long-awaited international policy review would include a significant defence component, "we wanted that matched with political leadership that was equally adept and equally knowledgeable," one senior government source says.
"The logic behind the change was not that we didn't need him in foreign affairs but that we most certainly needed him in defence."
But just as important for the department, Graham was well-versed in the politics of Parliament Hill â †and the art of arm-twisting for money.
Graham says it was no accident that the Feb. 23 budget contained the biggest funding hike for defence in 20 years â †$12.8 billion in new spending over five years, although critics complain that just $500 million of that money will be spent this year.
The defence minister says the new cash was a result of a concerted campaign that began in November to reach decision-makers in the Prime Minister's Office, the Privy Council and finance department, a strategy that included "who we're going to have dinner with, who we're going to talk to.
"We made sure we got all those players and we worked with them to make our case. You've got to do that. You don't get it by just sitting there and saying you're worthy," Graham says.
Step one was getting the money. Step two, he says, is transforming the defence department, starting with the defence review expected within the coming weeks. Graham, unhappy with the tepid vision of the initial drafts, ordered it rewritten.
The revised review is now complete but Graham refuses to talk specifics. But he says the new vision will spell out a greater role for the military at home, especially to exercise Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic, and new roles for the air force, navy and reserves. One key priority will be closer co-operation with the United States to keep tabs on the hundreds of ships plying the waters off both coasts.
"It is clear that since 9/11, we are going to have to put a greater focus on Canada and North America," he says. "Our armed forces in Canada today are here to protect Canada."
On the international stage, the focus is preparing the military for the so-called "three-block war" â †fighting a battle in one part of a city, performing peacekeeping operations in another neighbourhood and providing humanitarian assistance in yet another.
"The object in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Haiti has been to defeat whomever is there to destroy stability ... but it's not defeating an enemy in a traditional sense. And you have to do it a way that creates civil society," Graham says.
And Canadian troops in Afghanistan, he says, have proven themselves as an effective way to deliver development aid.
"There are those who would say that's not the warrior ethic. But I think that's exactly what the modern world needs. That's what these operations require and Canadians are damned good at these."
To lead the transformation, Graham set his sights on a plain-spoken army general, Rick Hillier, to take over as chief of the defence staff.
Martin reportedly had another candidate in mind for the top military job. But one Saturday before Christmas, Graham took Hillier to 24 Sussex Dr. so Martin could hear the general's ideas for reshaping Canada's fighting forces.
"He was able to explain to the Prime Minister what he wanted to do, how he would transform the forces," Graham says.
The sales pitch worked â †Hillier got the job and has quietly begun to lay the groundwork for the changes to come.
"If the forces are to be changed, it must be done by the forces themselves. A defence minister can't wander in and say `I've got a nice theory about how to run your shop,'" Graham says.
"The navy, the air force and the army are all really different cultures and Gen. Hillier is talking about them working together in ways they haven't done before."
Hillier is quick to return the praise and jokingly refers to Graham as a "PGM" â †a precision-guided minister.
"When you're on the receiving end of that precision-guided minister, there is an effect that does take place," Hillier told an Ottawa audience recently.
"We have a minister that is involved, that is energetic, that is focused and that understands, and is trying to move the Canadian Forces and the Department of Defence to be more effective, to be exactly what Canada will need in the future," Hillier said.
But Graham, who had won his department billions of dollars, wasn't so lucky at convincing his cabinet colleagues to sign on to the controversial U.S.-led missile defence scheme, despite his arguments that Canada should join to avoid upsetting relations with Washington.
He took that decision in stride.
"I lost the war. What the heck, you can't win them all," he said at the recent Liberal party convention.
Graham denies that the extra military funding in the budget was meant to take the sting out of the missile defence decision that followed the next day.
"The work to get this money in this budget was done and was already on its way down the pipe before any decision had been made about ballistic missile defence," Graham says.
"While I don't think it's linked to (missile defence), I do think reinvesting in the forces is intimately linked to having a more credible posture with the United States."
Graham's performance hasn't won over all his critics.
"Still no fan," military historian Jack Granatstein says bluntly. He says the forces have made little progress in tackling systemic problems.
"What I look at is the inability to deploy anyone on short notice for tsunami relief, the fact we are ... less relevant in the world today than we were when he took over as defence minister," Granatstein says.
And he says Canadians should be "more than a bit wary" about the extra cash pledged to fund the revamp of the forces.
"I suppose I should be grateful for the budget but I'm not. Barely 10 per cent of the money will be delivered over the next two years. Does anybody really believe that a commitment for 2010 is going to stay intact?
"This is, to my mind, the continuation of the ruination of the armed forces," he says, adding that if the Liberals were serious about their commitment to the forces, "they would have put more money in now."
With files from Graham Fraser
.
