Liberal platform on defence, Part II

Douglas Bland does an analysis:

Maybe we should just stay home

The Liberal Party's "Action Plan," released last week hurried past "defence" in a scant 359 words. In that brief note, Stéphane Dion's party committed to spend some $18 billion on national defence -- the Conservative plan -- without indicating what its policy might be. And this at a time when Canada is involved in a war and a commitment to the Afghan people initiated by the Liberal government in the first place. The logic of his brief statement is strained.

It states: "Canada's ongoing commitment to the military mission in Afghanistan has depleted our ability to deploy the Canadian Forces elsewhere in the world. ... (W)e are severely limited in our ability to offer assistance to (the Vancouver Olympic Games in 2010 and) other international efforts as they arise. By putting a firm end date on the military deployment in Kandahar, we will regain flexibility with respect to our military to respond to emergency situations both domestically and internationally."

Leaving aside for the moment the question of whether the protection of Afghans ought to be subordinated to the Olympics, the assertion that the UN/NATO Afghan mission is the cause of the "inflexibility" in the Canadian Forces seems particularly confused. The Canadian Forces and, therefore, Canadian defence, security, and foreign policies are inflexible because the armed forces lack sufficient capabilities to do the things Mr. Dion might wish them to do. They lack these capabilities -- sufficient and reasonable combat vehicles, naval vessels, transport aircraft, and especially large units of young, well-trained people -- because Liberal governments during Mr. Dion's time as a member of cabinet refused to provide for them even in times of great budget surpluses.

If committing the Canadian Forces to international peace and stability missions creates inflexibility, how can the Liberal party now argue that the Afghan mission ought to be replaced with "other international efforts as they arise." Surely, committing the Canadian Forces to other significant missions will merely recreate somewhere else the inflexibility that Mr. Dion condemns in Afghanistan. The only way to avoid this dilemma would be to keep the armed forces at home, unless, of course, the Liberal party intends to redress the true cause of defence policy inflexibility by dramatically increasing defence spending and revamping at the same time the scandalously inept defence procurement system.

Unfortunately, he plans to do neither of these things. Rather, Mr. Dion will follow the Conservative party's inadequate defence budget plan by "(remaining) committed to the money allocated in the fiscal framework to the Canadian Forces over the coming four years." It is a formula that the Liberal chair of the Senate Committee on Security and National Defence concluded "... will mean reduced military budgets over the coming years once inflation is taken into account" for an armed force that Senator Colin Kenny described as "burned out during years of Liberal cutbacks."

In a recent insider conference call held by John McCallum and revealed by blogger Steve Janke, Mr. McCallum remarked: "I think the defence budget in recent years has gone up at a very dramatic rate and that for us to continue along this path without further ramping up is irresponsible, particularly at a time of shortage of money." Perhaps we now have a hint as to where the money is to come from to support the Liberal Party's Action Plan.

In late 2003 a Queen's University study, "Canada without Armed Forces?" argued that "The next government will be caught up in a cascading policy entanglement initiated by the rapid collapse of Canadian Forces core assets and core capabilities. This problem will (in five to 10 years) inevitably disarm foreign policy as Canada repeatedly backs away from international commitments because it lacks adequate military forces."

Three successive governments considered this gathering crisis and walked away from it. Mr. Dion's Liberal party, however, appears to have resigned itself to accepting as its defence policy this sad, unnecessary situation.

Douglas Bland is a professor and chair of the Defence Management Studies Program at the School of Policy Studies at Queen's University.

Now if he would turn his attention to the NDP's defence platform (will the Conservatives ever release one?).