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NP View: A defence plan that doesn’t prioritize defence 

A defence plan that doesn’t prioritize defence

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On Tuesday, Prime Minister Mark Carney acknowledged that the status quo for supplying Canada’s military won’t do, and unveiled a new $470 billion defence industrial plan. The attitude is welcome after years of defence neglect, but everyone should be questioning his capacity to execute.

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A rough third of this funding, says the Prime Minister’s Office, will support “defence procurement opportunities” with the rest going to “defence-related capital investment opportunities” over the next 10 years. We’re told that defence exports will rise by half, that our own made-in-Canada acquisitions from the sector will grow from 30 to 70 per cent, and that 125,000 jobs will be created in the process.

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Currently, maritime fleet serviceability is 50 per cent, with the land fleet at 56 per cent and aerospace at 44 per cent. The PMO alleges that its plan will bring these figures up to 75, 80, and 85 per cent, respectively.

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Carney’s strategy in making sure this actually gets done is a familiar one: create a new agency (in this case, the Defence Investment Agency) headed by a suit (investment banker Doug Guzman) whose job it will be to streamline processes and deliver results. That’s in addition to the existing entities charged with the work of defence (the Department of National Defence), subsidizing defence (the Department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development) and purchasing the tools necessary for defence (Public Services and Procurement Canada).

In addition to those, columnist Tasha Kheiriddin pointed out earlier this week, within the federal ecosystem are also the Defence Advisory Forum, the Science and Research Defence Advisory Council, BOREALIS (the Bureau of Research, Engineering and Advanced Leadership in Innovation and Science), the Canadian Defence Industry Resilience Program and the Northern Operational Support Hubs Program.

This is close to how Carney has managed energy policy. Look at the existing laws on the books and agencies in the fold and do nothing about those. Create a newer, supposedly better agency to supervise the rest into getting stuff done. Appoint someone from the corporate world to its head. Pat self on back. Shrug months later when little to no progress on approving a new pipeline is made.

Tasha Kheiriddin: Carney's defence strategy is a plan to bloat the bureaucracy

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This was the story of the Major Projects Office, announced in August. The only pipeline-related project in its queue is an Indigenous-led line from northern interior B.C. to its coast, which already has federal and provincial approvals and was referred to the office in November. Meanwhile, the energy business isn’t convinced that it’s safe to invest: on an Enbridge earnings call earlier this month, CEO Gregory Ebel said that the prime minister’s memorandum with Alberta on oil and gas was “very encouraging” but that the company is looking for “concrete actions.”

“We spent $600 million (on Northern Gateway), combo of shareholder money and customer money and the rug was pulled out from underneath,” Ebel told the call. “So that’s not the type of risk that we’re looking to take on at this time. We don’t need to with all the other opportunities.”

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Rug-pulling has defined Canadian defence procurement just as well. A $45 billion plan to purchase 65 F-35 fighter jets from the United States was cancelled in 2012 by the Harper government, citing cost concerns, even though Canadian firms had been participating in the jet development program since the Chrétien years. Prior to his election in 2015, Justin Trudeau promised he would pull out of the program altogether. In 2023, he signed an agreement to buy 88 F-35s for an estimated $19 billion; but by 2025, the Carney government began quietly reconsidering. That said, our first order of 16 F-35s is set for delivery starting at the end of the year, and a second batch of 14 was quietly locked in, according to a CBC report earlier this month.

Uncertainties will remain a concern under the new industrial defence plan. The prime minister’s announcement speaks of “prioritizing Canadian suppliers,” but does not define what counts as a Canadian supplier. Retired vice-admiral Mark Norman has pointed out that the lack of a definition has left firms wondering whether they count.

Then, there’s the question of whether this can actually be pulled off with so many cooks in the kitchen. Guzman’s Defence Investment Agency has been tasked with solving an immense problem that ministers — with ministerial powers — have struggled with for years. He’ll be up against process duplication, unco-operative civil servants, and a bureaucracy bound by inertia and red tape.

On top of that, Guzman will be at the mercy of Industry Minister Mélanie Joly, Defence Minister David McGuinty, Procurement Minister Joël Lightbound and Stephen Fuhr, the secretary of state for defence procurement and anyone else with fingers in the pie; with so many masters comes a greater risk of delay, a tighter bottleneck in bringing about change, and more egos to manage when disagreements arise.

It remains a fact that Canada needs a stronger, more efficient military with better support from government. What’s not certain is whether these funds will deliver results — and unfortunately, Carney can’t point to his work on energy as a proof-of-concept.

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