While it may come as a surprise to some other branches of the government, it has been decided that defending Canada and protecting Canadians is the Government’s most fundamental responsibility.
To meet this responsibility
the Department of National Defence has announced that it is launching
public consultations in the development of a new defence policy for Canada. This
includes a Defence Policy Review
public consultation paper, a website
and even an e-workbook to be
filled in.
The department argues that
the strategic context in which the CAF operates has shifted in the last decade,
in some ways significantly. They believe that Canada is facing a range of new
challenges, from the rise of terrorism in ungoverned spaces, to the expanded
use of hybrid tactics in conflict, to new opportunities and vulnerabilities
associated with the space and cyber domains.
The
Department, and by extension the Liberal government, has decided that they
will be trying to engage Canadians as well as “key stakeholders” in an attempt
to discuss three fundamental areas:
·
The main
challenges to Canada’s
security
·
The role of the
Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) in addressing current threats and challenges
·
The resources and
capabilities needed to carry out the CAF mandate
Given their belief that important
choices will have to be made to ensure that DND and the CAF have what they need
to confront these new threats and challenges in the years ahead, and that a
credible, realistic, and evidence-based review of defence policy is needed to ensure
that DND and the CAF are able to deliver results for Canadians, it is
interesting to note that they think that all this can be accomplished between
now and July 31st.
The public consultation paper
outlines 10 key questions;
KEY CONSULTATION QUESTIONS
1. Are there any threats to Canada’s
security that are not being addressed adequately?
2. What roles should the
Canadian Armed Forces play domestically, including in support of civilian
authorities?
3. How should Canada-United
States cooperation on defence of North America
evolve in the coming years?
4. What form should the CAF
contribution to peace support operations take?
Is there a role for the CAF in helping to prevent conflict before it
occurs?
5. Should the size,
structure, and composition for the Canadian Armed Forces change from what they
are today?
6. How can DND and the CAF
improve the way they support the health and wellness of military members? In
what areas should more be done?
7. Should Canada strive
to maintain military capability across the full spectrum of operations? Are
there specific niche areas of capability in which Canada should specialize?
8. What type of investments
should Canada
make in space, cyber, and unmanned systems? To what extent should Canada strive
to keep pace and be interoperable with key allies in these domains?
9. What additional measures
could the DND undertake, along with partner departments, to improve defence
procurement?
10. What resources will the
CAF require to meet Canada’s
defence needs?
Starting with the first
question and working our way through in order Canadian Defence Matters will
attempt to provide some answers to all these questions and, as well as sharing
our wisdom with the DND, the results will be posted here.
Are there any threats to Canada’s
security that are not being addressed adequately?
In an interview with Tom
Clark on the Global program “The West Block” the former Chief of Defence Staff,
General Tom Lawson, suggested
that the biggest threats to Canada that he envisaged were natural disasters and
“probably some sort of cyber threat to
our systems, our energy systems, our computer systems, things that we bank on
that would change our way of life very, very quickly”
That analysis has been backed
up in recent interviews with former CSIS head and national security advisor
Richard Fadden who has suggested that cyber attacks and/or terrorist attacks
were his main concern.
One of the things these
threats have in common is that they are not, strictly speaking, military
threats. As it stands, obviously, the Canadian Armed Forces have an important
role to play in addressing these dangers, but that does not make them military
threats.
The argument can be made that even if Canada’s cyber capabilities were
to be “weaponized” as Richard Fadden
has suggested could happen, the choice to use such a weapon would still be a
political rather then a military one, taking it out of the sphere of Defence.
So the question becomes not
“Are there any threats to Canada’s
security that are not being addressed adequately” but rather, “Are there any
threats to Canada’s
military security that are not being addressed adequately?”
The military problems of
Canada were neatly addressed in a still relevant book by the doyen of Canadian military
history, C. P. Stacey, in his appropriately titled book “The Military Problems of Canada”, first published by The
Ryerson Press in 1940. That some of the
basics covered in that book are still germane is illustrated by Gen. Lawson’s
comment that “We’ve got big wide tank
ditches between us and any other continents called the Atlantic
and the Pacific and another one to the north.”
It is a mistake to class all
our security threats as military threats. The appeal of this route is the
mistaken belief that it means more resources for the military. What it means is
more resources for non-military activities and less focus on the discrete role
of armed forces.
That is why the distinction
between security threats in general and military threats in particular is
important. Our armed forces can do a lot of things well but that does not mean
we should fall into the trap of training and equiping them for tasks that can be done better by other
organizations. While soldiers can act as police and fire fighters, they can’t
do those jobs as well as the appropriate organizations, and if they can, then
they probably aren’t going to be much use as soldiers when we need soldiers.
Defence Policy Review
Have your say: Defence Policy
Review 2016
Plane Talk’ with Canada’s
top soldier, on the biggest threat to Canada
Former CSIS head Richard
Fadden says Canada
could someday carry out cyber attacks
The Military Problems of Canada a Survey
of Defence Policies and Strategic Conditions Past and Present
