I think now would be a good time to look at how we even come up with defense plans and strategies: It may be time to dust off the excellent book by major John Hasek: The Disarming of Canada (Key Porter Books, 1987) and start thinking about creating a proper "general staff" on the European model. One capable of timely analysis of needs and creation of approaches to deliver on proper defense. through proper military advice to the civilian masters, but one capable of making and supporting the arguments from the military point of view on the needs now and in the future, for the defense of Canada. Many lessons from that book still ring true today.
This is just that old bias of "Soldiers were better when I was in uniform."
Having sat through discussions covering what you're talking about, I will call BS. We aren't lacking for competent staff officers. What we're lacking for, is a competent government that listens. And this drives negative reinforcing behaviour in the CAF.
An example. Did y'all know that we have national level emergency plans? And under those plans Transport Canada is supposed to be able to mobilize the civilian transport sector to enable transport resources in an emergency? When do you think was the last time they genuinely did that? Instead, the CAF has become the easy button. PSEPC needs to move one of the four Urban Search and Rescue Teams in Canada? They'll call CJOC and get a Herc or C-17 tasked. And the government won't say no. This is how we've ended up in a situation where the army has their readiness plans wrecked by fighting fires every summer now. And of course the CAF never says no. So we get caught in an endless doom loop. I've literally heard a Transport Canada exec say, "As long as you guys keep showing up, why should the rest of us even bother?"
There have been discussions with OGDs about them doing the things that they are supposed to do so that the CAF can be freed up for warfighting. Because if a large war actually breaks out and the CAF is stuck doing everything at home, we will not be able to deploy. Every soldier guarding a factory at home because PSPC didn't plan for their mandate to protect industry, is one less we can deploy and employ on defence tasks.
We've been having table top exercises where we assume there's no allied (including American) help as a way to do gap analysis that informs what we need to prioritize as sovereign capabilities going forward. The best thing the Government can do for the OGDs is have an exercise without the CAF as an option and force them all to see how much of their emergency mandates they can deliver without a single uniform.
If we're going to spend 5% on defence, including 1.5% on resiliency, the result is not going to be a military that is just a list of contributions. A ship here, a battle group there, a six pack, etc. It will have to be a military that has all the capabilities in house, and OGDs that can fill all their mandates, so that we can defend our interests in a sovereign manner. No counting on the Americans. Build a military from orbit to seabed that can for example protect our SLOCs to Asia and Europe without American help. And make sure that every other government department can do their own job, so that we are freed up to do ours.
There's elements of this change in mindset. But it requires more than the CAF leadership. We will need to move the rest of government. And that 1.5% is there to bring them along on that journey.
We need all this articulated in a proper defence strategy. Not just the traditional DPS that's an arms market shopping list.
