Canadian military: surely ministers must make the decisions
The new Clerk of the Privy Council may be the main threat to Conservative plans to strengthen the military.
A battle of titans is about to begin in Ottawa's corridors of power. It will be a fight between two giants operating within the non-partisan, permanent side of the government of Canada. General Rick Hillier, the most visionary, charismatic and highest profile Chief of the Defence Staff in decades, will be up against the economist Kevin Lynch, the newly minted Clerk of the Privy Council, one of the most skilled public servants of his generation.
The battle will be over billions of dollars. And it will showcase starkly different world views about Canada's military.
Gen. Hillier will be pushing hard for the Conservatives to quickly deliver on their election commitment to increase funding to the Canadian Forces by $5-billion over five years. But he will go much further than that. In the view of the military leadership, notwithstanding the $13-billion increase in defence funding provided in last year's budget, defence remains underfunded by $3-billion a year. That is regarded as the bare minimum required to transform the Canadian Forces into a more nimble, deployable, operationally structured force, something Gen. Hillier has been pushing for a year now...
Kevin Lynch lore...exists within the corridors of National Defence headquarters. There, he is remembered with equal parts disdain and fear as the architect of the Mulroney government's cuts to the defence budget in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when he was at Finance Canada and in charge of wrestling the deficit to the ground...
...Judging by past experience, and given his world view, the defence funding issue will not feature at all in Mr. Lynch's priorities. Now, as then, it will be regarded as a "fiscal pressure" to be driven to its lowest level. The fact that Mr. Harper's defence commitments are not among his top five priorities will give Mr. Lynch the mandate he needs to keep a lid on this pressure.
For Gen. Hillier, this is a nightmare scenario...
Mr. Lynch will be loath to give anything but the bare minimum to the military, especially given the large increase in funding provided last year...
Talk about a democratic deficit in the case of Mr Lynch. Is the top federal bureaucrat single-handedly to derail a major part of the Conservatives' election platform (however much one may disagree with details of that platform)?
Gen. Hillier is certainly earning his pay as Chief of Defence Staff (loved him on "Mike Duffy Live" and "Politics" yesterday in cammos); will Mr O'Connor earn his as Minister of National Defence?
Cross-posted to Daimnation!
A battle of titans is about to begin in Ottawa's corridors of power. It will be a fight between two giants operating within the non-partisan, permanent side of the government of Canada. General Rick Hillier, the most visionary, charismatic and highest profile Chief of the Defence Staff in decades, will be up against the economist Kevin Lynch, the newly minted Clerk of the Privy Council, one of the most skilled public servants of his generation.
The battle will be over billions of dollars. And it will showcase starkly different world views about Canada's military.
Gen. Hillier will be pushing hard for the Conservatives to quickly deliver on their election commitment to increase funding to the Canadian Forces by $5-billion over five years. But he will go much further than that. In the view of the military leadership, notwithstanding the $13-billion increase in defence funding provided in last year's budget, defence remains underfunded by $3-billion a year. That is regarded as the bare minimum required to transform the Canadian Forces into a more nimble, deployable, operationally structured force, something Gen. Hillier has been pushing for a year now...
Kevin Lynch lore...exists within the corridors of National Defence headquarters. There, he is remembered with equal parts disdain and fear as the architect of the Mulroney government's cuts to the defence budget in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when he was at Finance Canada and in charge of wrestling the deficit to the ground...
...Judging by past experience, and given his world view, the defence funding issue will not feature at all in Mr. Lynch's priorities. Now, as then, it will be regarded as a "fiscal pressure" to be driven to its lowest level. The fact that Mr. Harper's defence commitments are not among his top five priorities will give Mr. Lynch the mandate he needs to keep a lid on this pressure.
For Gen. Hillier, this is a nightmare scenario...
Mr. Lynch will be loath to give anything but the bare minimum to the military, especially given the large increase in funding provided last year...
Talk about a democratic deficit in the case of Mr Lynch. Is the top federal bureaucrat single-handedly to derail a major part of the Conservatives' election platform (however much one may disagree with details of that platform)?
Gen. Hillier is certainly earning his pay as Chief of Defence Staff (loved him on "Mike Duffy Live" and "Politics" yesterday in cammos); will Mr O'Connor earn his as Minister of National Defence?
Cross-posted to Daimnation!
posted by Mark, Ottawa at 9:05 a.m.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home