CAF Procurement

[Kirkhill]

March Madness is well known to the government supply community.

It occurs when there is more money but no more year.

At that point vendors dump inventory on excited government employees that want to:

A protect next year's budget by ensuring that they spend all of this years

B buy toys.

...

Fly in the ointment this year.
Ukraine and Russia have eaten up a lot of everybody's inventory.

Unless we want to buy some old stock from Uncle Sam.

Pretty sure we could buy a bunch of factory Dodge Rams.

 

[Czech_pivo]

March Madness is well known to the government supply community.

It occurs when there is more money but no more year.

At that point vendors dump inventory on excited government employees that want to:

A protect next year's budget by ensuring that they spend all of this years

B buy toys.

...

Fly in the ointment this year.
Ukraine and Russia have eaten up a lot of everybody's inventory.

Unless we want to buy some old stock from Uncle Sam.

Pretty sure we could buy a bunch of factory Dodge Rams.

Shame that all the dumps in Albania have long been emptied.
I know a way to save on shipping small arm rounds.

 

[DBNSG]

I truly wonder why the Government doesn't just scales up the choices that have already been made.
Confirm the two extra P-8'S. In for 14 already so....
Spikes, Carl G's, and RBS-70's in Army wide quantity. Not an American in the bunch.
Go ahead , finally, with General Eyre's ammunition plan
PARTS, PARTS, PARTS.
Send the Navistars to Ukraine and replicate the Mack fleet.
Top up the ERC buy and get another 35 to complete the fleet
Talk to the Swiss about buying some of their stored Leo's and really really promise to send them to Alberta
If the Yanks really divest the 30 MM Dragoon Strykers then bring them home
MORE ACSV's.
Let every Artillery and Infantry Battalion buy some drones , lots of drones and get playing. Organic experimentation

 

[McG]

I truly wonder why the Government doesn't just scales up the choices that have already been made.

If there is no option space in existing contracts, then the bureaucracy does not have a mechanism to “scale up”

If government wants to spend faster, it needs to reduce process and it needs a culture that accepts directed purchases (particularly in the case of buying more of fleets we already have).

But, at this stage in the FY, industry will have a hard time delivering major end items. Nobody is selling used tanks anymore. If we want more tanks, we need to plan to buy new.

 

[DBNSG]

If there is no option space in existing contracts, then the bureaucracy does not have a mechanism to “scale up”

If government wants to spend faster, it needs to reduce process and it needs a culture that accepts directed purchases (particularly in the case of buying more of fleets we already have).

But, at this stage in the FY, industry will have a hard time delivering major end items. Nobody is selling used tanks anymore. If we want more tanks, we need to plan to buy new.

So I imagine a PM could rewrite what ever contract he wants to. Carny should work some DND Friday's and just get stuff done.

 

[Furniture]

So I imagine a PM could rewrite what ever contract he wants to. Carny should work some DND Friday's and just get stuff done.

Except, there is little political will to do that.

There is an obvious need to get more serious about defence, but burning that sort of political capital on defence is beyond reasonable at this stage. Let's not forget the LPC is a minority government, and any major swing in opinion could see the opposition parties work to bring them down.

If PMMC is serious about defence spending, lets see him bring the system around the "right" way, not the expedient way.

 

[Kirkhill]

Except, there is little political will to do that.

There is an obvious need to get more serious about defence, but burning that sort of political capital on defence is beyond reasonable at this stage. Let's not forget the LPC is a minority government, and any major swing in opinion could see the opposition parties work to bring them down.

If PMMC is serious about defence spending, lets see him bring the system around the "right" way, not the expedient way.

I think he needs to do both things concurrently. He doesn't have the time to rewrite the rule book first. Nobody trusts Canada.

We have to be seen to be acting now to regain some of that trust.

 

[Halifax Tar]

Won't even be close to spending the $9B, but buying 60,000 sets of DICE gear so everyone gets it, actually funding the new rain/field gear that just finished trials and immediately purchasing C8A4 would put a dent in $1B of it and drastically increase morale of a huge chunk of the CAF.

Immediate 20% pay raise ?

 

[OldSolduer]

Nobody trusts Canada.

We were going down that road in the 90s where the CANBATs in the FRY were known as CAN'TBATS.

 

[YZT580]

So I imagine a PM could rewrite what ever contract he wants to. Carny should work some DND Friday's and just get stuff done.

If he really wants to! I put reaching 2% in the same category as the 20% raise and the no layoff promise for civil servants. So far, the only difference between him and Justin is their choice of words. And yes, you can colour me cynical.

 

[Navy_Pete]

Nothing that Carney mentioned had much to do with the 'bayonet end' of defence spending...

Militarism without militarization​

What makes this moment particularly complex is that Carney’s militarism does not carry the traditional baggage of military nationalism. This is militarism without spectacle, without the boots-and-flags theatre often associated with defence expansion in larger powers. There are no sweeping declarations of global posture, no hints of expeditionary ambition. Instead, the language is resolutely domestic, even intimate: “protecting Canadians,” “resilience,” “strategic autonomy.”

It is in this quiet reframing that the ideological breakthrough occurs. Defence is no longer a siloed ministry of war; it has now been recast as a lever of economic security, a form of insurance against both kinetic threats and systemic shocks.

This discursive shift mirrors what scholars like Karl Polanyi might call a re-embedding of the economy into the social fabric. In the post-COVID landscape, where global supply chains fractured and state capacity was tested, Canadians have become more amenable to state-led investments in national capability.

Carney is leveraging this disposition, reframing military expenditure not as an exception to welfare economics but as an extension of it. In this narrative the state’s coercive arm is reconciled with its redistributive one — a subtle but profound shift in Canada’s economic self-conception.

Canada’s defence spending reimagined as economic renewal under Carney

Mark Carney reframes defence spending as a tool for economic resilience, introducing a new political economy rooted in strategic autonomy.

policyoptions.irpp.org

This actually is less of a big deal, as we have billions of dollars in infra repairs needed, to unsexy things like underground water mains on bases and improving the power supply right from the source to the base, but a lot of maintenance is needed just to keep things from going really pear shaped while all that gets going, and calling it 'minor capitol' instead of 'critical repairs' is just because that's the type of money available, even if it comes with extra lead time and bureaucracy.

 

[YZT580]

Except, there is little political will to do that.

There is an obvious need to get more serious about defence, but burning that sort of political capital on defence is beyond reasonable at this stage. Let's not forget the LPC is a minority government, and any major swing in opinion could see the opposition parties work to bring them down.

If PMMC is serious about defence spending, lets see him bring the system around the "right" way, not the expedient way.

I doubt if the NDP is ever going to agree with either the cons. or the Bloc. Carney is safe for 4 years. (sigh)

 

[Furniture]

I doubt if the NDP is ever going to agree with either the cons. or the Bloc. Carney is safe for 4 years. (sigh)

Unless they elect a new leader and see a way to steal more seats from the LPC... Carney can't stay popular forever, and the more he rocks the boat the faster he becomes unpopular.