The
referenced article in The Walrus is, indeed, worth a read.
I would like to make a few comments – each ‘tied’ to an introductory phrase from the article:
•
” Traditionally, the army, navy, and air force shared cuts and rare budget increases roughly equally. To Hillier, this balance deprived Canada’s military of strategic focus ...”
This was a
tradition that did need to be put aside. Too many people in Ottawa remain, even after 40 years, committed to the 5:5:2 model – which reflects the relative
weight of the three services based upon their regular force strengths
circa 1965. It is a silly, even outlandish concept but, while I served, it was still gospel and I have heard little if anything to tell me that, pre-Hillier, it was not still gospel after I retired.
The fact is that we face a new strategic situation and the height of the Cold War model is not right for 2010.
•
” To some extent, Hillier’s heightened visibility is a consequence of the CF being at war for the first time in decades. Under such circumstances, the military leadership has a duty to keep the public informed ...”
This is the primary, but too often misunderstood,
raison d’être for Hillier’s high public profile. He has a
duty to speak to Canadian military members, heir families and Canadians at large about ongoing combat operations. The change, since Guy Simmonds was CGS during the Korean War, is the nature of the medium, not the nature of the message. Gen Hillier is using the tools available – and using them well and, in the process, he is upsetting the
tradition of quiet, decorous, behind the scenes bureaucratic work.
Successive Chiefs of the Defence Staff will, so long as we have troops in action, need to do something similar. We, all Canadians, including politicians and bureaucrats, must hope that the next CDS will also be an able communicator – able to do his
duty.
•
” Robert Fowler, a former deputy minister of defence, illustrates the challenge of speaking truth to power privately ...”
If senior officials failed to fully and properly inform politicians then they failed, miserably, in their duty and some – admirals, generals and bureaucrats alike should have been tossed out of their comfortable offices.
•
”There is a case where Hillier played a central role in crafting defence policy, but not as a rogue officer who challenged the civilian leadership. Rather, he did so at the request of a prime minister frustrated by the absence of policy ideas ...”
This illustrates a huge problem in Ottawa – a bumbling, second rate civil service.
Fifty years ago the Canadian diplomatic service was admired, albeit not much liked, world-wide because of the near universal
excellence of the people in it. They were a small,
elite and highly cohesive group. Forty years ago they were the same. Thirty-nine years ago that all began to change.
Pierre Trudeau detested the foreign service. He saw it, correctly, as an insular, self preserving
gang of
Oxbridge educated
Anglos who had a distinct anti-Québec bias. He decided to change all that; and so he did; and the foreign service has never recovered.
Today it is a second rate and second tier department. The power resides in another small,
elite and highly cohesive group that is insular, self preserving and if not totally
Oxbridge still predominantly
Anglo and resides in the PCO and the Department of Finance. There’s nothing wrong with e PCO doing the deep thinking for Foreign Affairs but the
Foreign and Defence Policy Secretariat in PCO is
waaaaay too small.
We need a half dozen ‘foreign services” – all
coordinated, to some degree, by PCO. The first amongst equals ought to be the ‘real’ foreign service in DFAIT, but DND needs one of its own as do the Departments of Finance, Industry –
which ought to include Trade and Commerce, Fisheries and Oceans, Transport and even Health.
•
” The balance between civil servants inside DND and military leaders is the fulcrum on which good policy rests. National Defence Headquarters was created in 1972. Over time, its structure and organization have evolved so that today civilians and military officers work side by side ...”
And it is still poorly organized. As Janice Gross Stein and Eugene Lang point out, “the role of the deputy minister and the civilian defence bureaucracy is not outlined precisely in statute, leaving it open to interpretation.” Their roles and responsibilities and
duties need to be spelled out, as they are for the CDS. The civilian bureaucracy is the mechanism through which ministers exercise
civilian control. If ministers want to do that well – as they must in a proper liberal democracy – then they need to tell their
”tools” what to do on their behalf.
•
” Paul Martin has acknowledged that the slashing of the public service during the 1990s contributed directly to the erosion of policy expertise across the government ...”
That’s cold bloody comfort for an ill-served nation. Martin had and Stephen Harper has a duty to undo Trudeau’s policy vandalism and rebuild or foreign and defence policies and our foreign and defence services and forces.
Now!
Edit: sundry typos
