The CF's budget--and missions--after Afstan

The subject got quite a bit of media attention Friday, Feb. 19. First a Globe and Mail story:

Afghan pullout sets budget quandary for Harper
Should expected savings of up to $1.5-billion after troop repatriation be used trim the deficit or to keep priming the military?
...
This spring, the government will update its defence spending projections for the next three years.

Two new think-tank papers put the estimate of savings when troops return at $1-billion to $1.5-billion.

“It may be that during this year's budget speech, which will concentrate on the way in which the government plans to deal with the massive budget deficit, the government may mention that the planned withdrawal from Afghanistan will result in savings of approximately $1-billion annually,” wrote retired colonel Brian MacDonald in a paper released Thursday by the Conference of Defence Associations [text here].

Mr. MacDonald notes that the government has already signalled it expects to lop $765-million in 2011-12 from the $943-million in special funds allocated this year to the military for the Afghan mission.

But he argues the government has yet to really clarify the plans for the military's base budget.

The current public projections for 2011-12 show the main budget declining slightly and don't even include the 2.7-per-cent annual increase that the Harper government promised in its 2008 defence strategy. An update to that figure this spring, and new spending projections for the following year, will indicate whether the military's multiyear spending plans will include big-ticket items, or restraint...

The Conference Board of Canada argues [text here, see p. 8] that the withdrawal from Afghanistan provides an opportunity to slow increases in military spending that have averaged 8 per cent per year since 2000...

Then a column by Canwest News' Don Martin, of the old-school, hard-nosed, seen it all, no guff but jovial, poseur persona:

Budgetary battle looms for our Armed Forces

...a military which enjoyed a 57 per cent surge in funding over five years is suddenly preparing to fight against restraint as the government's $56-billion deficit elimination project moves onto the Conservative agenda.

Internal documents show the Forces are banking on a $2 billion increase in next month's budget to bring national defence spending to $21.1 billion. But the good times stop rolling after this year and military planners are already scrambling for ammunition to take a shot at new funding ideas.

Their timing is lousy. The Forces will be shifting from full tilt to full stop on the battlefield at the precise moment when the Conservative government takes aim at easy cost-cutting targets...

The question looms large: What next? It takes a very shiny object to catch a finance minister's favourable eye, particularly when he's been ordered into the era of spending cuts, and running, flying or sailing troops around domestic bases is not exactly an attention-grabber. This means the must-seize military moment has arrived for Canadian Forces to create a blueprint for continued funding with causes that have mass voter appeal. Be it stamping out Somalian pirating, fortifying our Arctic boundary, bolstering our search and rescue capabilities or some fresh brainstorm developing inside DND headquarters, the Forces need a post-Afghanistan reason-to-exist recalibration.

When deadly force gives way to peacekeeping with brass waiting around for new equipment to arrive years late and over budget, soldiers could again disappear from the government's priority radar.

Then, sadly, Canada's Armed Forces are vulnerable to an attack which hurts them the most -- a direct hit on their bottom line.

Note what Mr Martin writes:

...the must-seize military moment has arrived for Canadian Forces to create a blueprint for continued funding with causes that have mass voter appeal...

Good flippin' grief. It is not for the military to identify specific missions that may require funding. It the function of the civilian government, from time-to-time, to call on the CF to carry out specific missions that the government decides are in the national interest (the military clearly should be allowed to give their best professional advice in advance, especially when there are competing possibilities). That is the essence of civilian control of the military. Mr Martin would be loud amongst those screaming bloody murder were the CF to be perceived as challenging that control by telling the government what the CF should be doing. What a hypocrite despite the "sadly" thrown into his last sentence above.

More broadly, it is the function of the government to identify for the military the general types of missions that they may be required to perform. It is then up to the military to tell the government what numbers and types of forces and equipments are required and roughly what they may cost. The government finally should make the decision about what capabilities it is ultimately willing to pay for.

But our recent governments, Liberal and Conservative, have been both unwilling and (more important) incapable to engage in the sort of serious, and politically fraught (some traditional missions may have to be ditched and there may be job losses somewhere), analytic thinking that is required for such an exercise. Sadly, the CF themselves have done little or nothing to encourage such thinking, each service being afraid that it may be gored in the process. For more along these lines see the end of this post:

British defence budget woes--a lesson for Canada too?

The key thing to watch for future budgets is the 2.7% promised ongoing annual increase--and even that is hardly what it seems. From a 2009 CDA piece by Col. MacDonald:

...
The Canada First Defence Strategy Budget

2008 also saw the tabling of the Canada First Defence Strategy (CFDS). An unusual aspect of the CFDS was the inclusion of a long-range funding formula which had three key elements. First, was a promise of 2.7% “Nominal” growth, which includes an expected inflation factor of 2.1%, and therefore 0.6% “Real” growth in the defence budget...

More on our government's future, meagre, defence budget plans here, here, here and here. Remember that our defence spending is only some 1.2% of GDP--and is likely to go quite a bit lower as a percentage. Crunch, crunch, crunch.