This story in Embassy Magazine cites a report by the Conference of Defence Associations that opines that there will have to be cuts to CF headquarters outside Ottawa to achieve the levels of savings envisaged. The story is generally well argued until, in the last paragraph, it allows Stephen Staples to demand cuts to the capital programme. The piece is reproduced under the Fair Dealings provision of the Copyright Act.
March, 14, 2012
Defence cuts will be felt outside Ottawa: Analysts
Consolidating North American and overseas command HQs won't go far in achieving the savings the department is said to be hunting for.
By Carl Meyer
Published March 14, 2012 View story Email Comments To the Editor
A new report on cuts to the Canadian Forces argues that if the Harper government is serious about saving money through cutting or reorganizing senior defence department personnel, it won't be able to do it with staff in Ottawa alone.
In a forthcoming study published by the Conference of Defence Associations Institute, analyst Dave Perry argues that this was a largely-overlooked conclusion reached by Lt.-Gen. (ret'd) Andrew Leslie and his team in a controversial paper on how to transform the Department of National Defence.
Much of the coverage of the Leslie report focused on its assertion that DND's Ottawa offices had become too bloated with senior staff. But Mr. Perry argues that one file associated with the report, Annex M—which was not attached to the version of the report posted online—demonstrates that any attempt to reorganize regular force, reserve force, and civilian staff in headquarters organizations will require bean counters to look outside Canada's capital for efficiencies.
The military has several of these headquarters offices; some of them are operational and oversee geographic areas, and others focus on the three service branches—the Royal Canadian Air Force, the Royal Canadian Navy, and the Canadian Army. Still others are regional headquarters for larger offices.
The Leslie report counted 18,511 military and civilian staff working for different headquarters organizations within DND. Experts say some of these are very Ottawa-focused.
But in one case, the headquarters of the chief of maritime staff, the annex explicitly shows that staff are scattered in greater numbers across the country. Out of the 1,226 people the annex identified as working for the chief of maritime staff, only 306 work in Ottawa, while 920 work in the Halifax, Victoria, and Quebec City areas.
If the department has looked to free up personnel by reorganizing this headquarters office, said Mr. Perry, it will have needed to address these 920 people.
Mr. Perry acknowledges that the annex doesn't show whether this breakdown is representative of how the other headquarters are structured geographically. But he does point to other evidence that also gives indications of how spread out headquarters staff are.
For example, when the Leslie team calculated which jobs it could reroute to create a new headquarters office as part of its proposed reorganization of DND, it envisioned pulling not only staff in Ottawa, but also thousands of individuals in other headquarters jobs in Kingston, Edmonton, Halifax, Petawawa, Borden, North Bay, and St-Jean-sur-Richelieu.
And while many critics focused on Lt.-Gen. Leslie's suggestion to consolidate the two headquarters in charge of North American and overseas deployments, called Canada Command and Canadian Expeditionary Force Command, the annex shows that 365 and 246 people work for those headquarters, respectively—compared to the land, marine, and air chiefs who oversee over a thousand people each.
In other words, consolidating them wouldn't go very far in achieving the savings the department is reportedly being demanded to find, said Mr. Perry.
He is arguing that all this demonstrates how the department's hands are tied. Assuming that the department is being requested to cut in a big way, as media reports have suggested; that it won't significantly cut spending in other areas, like operations or equipment; and that it wants to free up money and personnel to funnel into new dilemmas like how to integrate all the lessons learned from the combat mission in Afghanistan—the department will need to address non-Ottawa senior staff.
Defence Minister Peter MacKay issued a statement to Embassy in response to questions about the report and the issue of having to cut or reorganize non-Ottawa headquarters personnel.
"This government has made unprecedented investments in the Canadian Forces. Since 2006, the defence budget has grown by more than $6 billion, an average of over $1 billion a year," reads Mr. MacKay's statement.
"However, with the end of the combat mission in Afghanistan and a transition to a more normal operational tempo there is an effect on how the department plans and ultimately allocates its funding. These plans will be communicated following Budget 2012."
Other cuts are being reported as Canada-wide. For example, the Ottawa Citizen suggested March 12 that the Canadian army is expected to lose 697 civilian support jobs. It noted that these cuts would come down not just in Ontario and Quebec, but also the Atlantic area, and the West.
Philippe Lagassé, an assistant professor of public and international affairs at the University of Ottawa who focuses on defence, said he agreed with the fundamental assertion that the department would need to look beyond Ottawa to find cuts.
"I think you need to go outside of Ottawa in terms of just looking at the larger CF footprint across the country. I don't just mean in terms of personnel, I mean in terms of bases, in terms of infrastructure," he said.
"Any serious discussion about trying to maintain the current capital program under the existing budget will require that some money move into that capital budget in a significant fashion. The distribution just doesn't make sense."
But he also pointed out that changing the structure of environmental commands "could really have a good deal of impact on readiness," and in that sense, the department will likely push back on any decision in this regard.
Another observer, Rideau Institute president Steven Staples, said he felt Canada was already overspending on national defence in the first place. "There is certainly a problem with the tooth-to-tail ratio as Leslie pointed out. However, the enormous capital spending cannot be left untouched," he wrote in an email.
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