A Little More Spending and an Unnecessary Defence Review

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A Little More Spending and an Unnecessary Defence Review

1 Apr 2022

Table of Contents A Little More Spending and an Unnecessary Defence Review About the Author Canadian Global Affairs Institute A Little More Spending and an Unnecessary Defence Review The April 2022 budget promised some modest increases in defence spending over the next five years. Some action on defence expenditures was inevitable given the Ukraine war, especially the rapid depletion of our defence inventory of weapons to send to Ukraine’s aid. There was also pressure on Canada to up its game in NATO, and the need to get cracking on NORAD modernization. While defence issues feature prominently in Chapter 5 of the budget, there is no sign that Canada will be able to meet a NATO target of two per cent expenditure of GDP any time soon, and to get cracking on NORAD modernization seems to involve more study of options to fulfil this commitment. The requirements for NORAD modernization are clear, including new space-based platforms for surveillance and intelligence, and command and control, but the price tag is daunting and that weakens political will. This is a system whose original architecture in the DEW line chain of radar stations dates to the 1950s. The DEW line was partially modernized and rebranded as the North Warning System in the mid-1980s. The most concrete defence proposals in the budget include a further commitment of $500 million in the current fiscal year to provide military aid to Ukraine. The government has followed a U.S. lead and recently announced that it would supply heavy artillery to Ukraine, likely to be drawn from existing CAF stocks. For the rest of the promised armaments support, Canada will have to go shopping on the open market, which will be time-consuming. Or, it will have to use the money to assist Eastern European NATO partners to provide armaments to Ukraine out of their inventories of Soviet-era weapons familiar to the Ukrainian defence forces. Hopefully, there will be money for the ongoing provision of satellite imagery for Ukraine, a vital intelligence tool for the hard-pressed Ukrainian military and a key element of war crimes investigations. The initial $1 million promised by the Canadian government for Ukraine to purchase commercial satellite imagery had no specific upgrade in the budget, but $1 million does not buy a lot of pictures from space or expert assessment of them. The Communications Security Establishment gets a substantial chunk of money ($875 million) to enhance its cyber offensive and defensive capabilities. Some of that capability could also be deployed in assistance to Ukraine to help it ward off Russian cyber-threats. Sadly, there appears to be no special funding package for the announced plan to conduct war crimes investigations within Canada, drawing on Ukrainian refugees, and to assist the International Criminal Court in The Hague with its investigations. Military lawyers in the DND’s Office of the Judge Advocate General (JAG) could make an important contribution here. The most puzzling proposal in the budget concerns a defence policy review. This is couched as an update of the 2017 defence policy, Strong, Secure, Engaged, which is less than five years old and was designed to contemplate defence needs over a 20-year horizon. The argument is that a review of equipment and technology for the Canadian Armed Forces is needed “in a world that has fundamentally changed in the face of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.” The extent to which the world has fundamentally changed is debatable; certainly, the sense of the menace posed by Vladimir Putin’s Russia has been vastly heightened, but maybe that should have seized us long ago. The real news is that the government, at least for so long as the Ukraine crisis persists, is more willing to speed up the repair of Canada’s debilitated military. Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland promised a “swift review.” The concept of a swift review is an oxymoron, not because the Department of Defence is incapable of swift action, but more because a real review cannot be swift if it is going to be serious, substantive and willing to address new perspectives on Canada’s defence needs. The concept of a swift review virtually rules out external stakeholder engagement and public input. A swift review is really just a confirmatory review – and who needs that
covid-19 health security ukraine pandemic canada russia nato defence policy defence policy perspective environment & energy wesley wark

Authors

Wesley Wark

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Canada

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