Canada moves to 2% GDP end of FY25/26 - PMMC

[Blackadder1916]

I guess I was looking at the question in terms of if it has to be an RCN job or it could be a CCG job.

In terms of whether or not we would get NATO brownie points if we transferred it to the CCG then can the CCG, or at least an element of them be "trained in military tactics, ... equipped as a military force, ... operate under direct military authority in deployed operations, and ..., realistically, be deployed outside national territory in support of a military force".

With or without RCNR support.

I'll respond by referring to one of the vessels you gave as example of an auxiliary performing a military function.

RFA Stirling Castle to be transferred from Royal Fleet Auxiliary to Royal Navy | Navy Lookout

www.navylookout.com

RFA Stirling Castle was acquired to operate as a mothership for autonomous mine-hunting boats. Mainly due to personnel issues, she will shortly be transferred from the civilian RFA and commission into the navy as HMS Stirling Castle.

If a civilian auxillary organization (RFA) that has a long history of supporting a navy is finding it just as difficult finding the personnel to do an expanded role as its parent organization, then what challenges do you expect a revamped CCG would have in finding personnel to do those same new tasks (which our navy doesn't do now)? And that would be on top of changing the culture of an organization whose current employees do not have a history of providing support to the navy.

 

[Rainbow1910]

Does this suggest the possible transfer of the Arctic/Northwest Passage and all 8 of the AOPS to the CCG from the RCN?

Freeing up budget and people for Corvettes and Subs?

RCN folks are going to absolutely loathe having the modern and comfortable AOPS platforms hauled out from under them, while they get crammed back into the cold war sardine cans until their replacements arrive. You'd just be shifting the personnel burden of an unwanted class of ships to an organization that already has funding problems.

 

[MilEME09]

RCN folks are going to absolutely loathe having the modern and comfortable AOPS platforms hauled out from under them, while they get crammed back into the cold war sardine cans until their replacements arrive. You'd just be shifting the personnel burden of an unwanted class of ships to an organization that already has funding problems.

Now if they accelerated the timeline for the rivers and got us a ship sooner than 2032...maybe

 

[Kirkhill]

RCN folks are going to absolutely loathe having the modern and comfortable AOPS platforms hauled out from under them, while they get crammed back into the cold war sardine cans until their replacements arrive. You'd just be shifting the personnel burden of an unwanted class of ships to an organization that already has funding problems.

Some of the published commentary in the media suggests to me that "The Institutions" are already planning on asserting themselves.

Just because the PM said it ....

 

[Kirkhill]

If the government intends to respect the NATIO spending guidelines, they life within the CCG will have to change. From the NATO document:



Nobody can be guaranteed that their job will never change, but 'militarizing' the CCG would be a significant alteration of term of employment. I'm no labour lawyer but suspect this has the potential to be mired arbitration and/or court by those who don't want to play Navy.

Internally, we can call anything we want to be 'defence spending' but it seems 'NATO spending comes with rules.

I don't know if anyone else posted this, from John Ivison.

The total defence spending that will be submitted to NATO will increase from $53.4 billion to $62.7 billion for 2025/26.

The Main Estimates that came out less than two weeks ago pegged the Department of National Defence spending for the year at $35.7 billion.

Additional planned spending over the year was expected to take that to $39 billion.

The other $14 billion to reach $53.4 billion

comes from 13 other departments,

including 60 per cent of the Canadian Coast Guard’s budget for items such as new polar icebreakers.

Officials said that an average of $10 billion of the total defence spending package comes from other departments in any given year.

But when NATO’s accountants pore over the additional $14 billion, they are likely to find that some curious, and distinctly non-lethal, line items have been conscripted in defence of the realm.

John Ivison: Carney’s new defence plan takes seriously the darker world we're now living in

For years, there was no political payback in increased defence spending, so governments didn’t bother. Much has changed.

nationalpost.com

 

[Kilted]

I guess we should also ask, why isn't the Coast Guard already part of the CAF. Given the size of our coastline, they should at the very least have a secondary military role either as a separate branch, or as a sub-commpont of the Navy.

 

[quadrapiper]

I guess we should also ask, why isn't the Coast Guard already part of the CAF. Given the size of our coastline, they should at the very least have a secondary military role either as a separate branch, or as a sub-commpont of the Navy.

I think reframing it as "why don't we have a maritime gendarmerie" makes more sense. The current CCG isn't a defence or enforcement organization, and none of its major roles belong anywhere near the Navy, except for the Any/Any Canadian Ship stuff.

There's a variety of former organizations (especially: RCMP's larger-vessel marine branch) that could/should have remained as the stepping-stone between constables in a RHIB and a multi-billion-dollar destroyer.

 

[McG]

I guess we should also ask, why isn't the Coast Guard already part of the CAF. Given the size of our coastline, they should at the very least have a secondary military role either as a separate branch, or as a sub-commpont of the Navy.

The CAF is not the place for a gendarmerie (for land, sea, or air), so why would the coast guard be part of CAF?

 

[Kirkhill]

The CAF is not the place for a gendarmerie (for land, sea, or air), so why would the coast guard be part of CAF?

Maybe not part of the CAF but possibly part of the Ministry and Department of National Defence.

 

[markppcli]

Hate to be that guy ti twist the thread this way.....again


But if we really are going to 2% and beyond. This is a holden moment we're we really need to take a hard look at reserve reform and how to get the ost out of a 2% GDP force. Including training, equipment, and expansion. As FJAG has pointed out multiple times, you can get multiple reserve soldiers for the price of 1 reg force soldier. The dream of a self sufficient reserve will also never happen when its smaller then the reg force.

The dream isn’t a self sufficient reserve force. It’s an army that meets the operational requirements set down by the Govt of Canada. This Us / Them attitude is a root cause of problems frankly.

 

[Kirkhill]

I think reframing it as "why don't we have a maritime gendarmerie" makes more sense. The current CCG isn't a defence or enforcement organization, and none of its major roles belong anywhere near the Navy, except for the Any/Any Canadian Ship stuff.

There's a variety of former organizations (especially: RCMP's larger-vessel marine branch) that could/should have remained as the stepping-stone between constables in a RHIB and a multi-billion-dollar destroyer.

Fisheries and Oceans Canada - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

We did. We didn't. We did. We didn't.....

In the UK we had the Admiralty and Trinity House. Trinity House handled aids to navigation like Lighthouses, buoys and life boats. The Admiralty, through the Royal Navy, patrolled the fishing grounds as a priority. Those patrols ensured nobody was crossing the Channel.

The globe trotting RN, with its own army, developed out of that navy.

There is a reason why the French held on to St-Pierre and Miquelon. Fish was a major contributor to the historical diet.

Canada's 1867 Department of Marine and Fisheries

"responsibilities were described as follows:

Sea-Coast and Inland Fisheries, Trinity Houses, Trinity Boards, Pilots, Decayed Pilots Funds, Beacons, Buoys, Lights and Lighthouses and their maintenance, Harbours, Ports, Piers, Wharves, Steamers and Vessels belonging to the Government of Canada, except gunboats or other vessels of war, harbour commissioners, harbour masters, classification of vessels, examination and granting of certificates of masters and mates, and others in the merchant service, shipping masters and shipping offices, inspection of steamboats and board of steamboat inspection, enquiries into causes of shipwrecks, establishment, regulation and maintenance of marine and seamen hospitals, and care of distressed seamen, and generally such matters as refer to the marine and navigation of Canada."

In its early days, one of the department's most active agencies was the operation of the Marine Service of Canada, which became the forerunner to the Canadian Coast Guard, with vessels dedicated to performing maintenance of buoys and lighthouses. Whereas fisheries management was not as important as it became in the latter part of the 20th century, a major responsibility for the Department of Marine and Fisheries included the provisioning of rescue stations and facilities at the shipwreck sites of Sable Island and St. Paul Island off Nova Scotia.

The department also had responsibility for overseeing the qualification of apprenticing sailors who desired to become mates or shipping masters, as well as several marine police forces, which attempted to combat illegal crimping, the trafficking of sailors in human bondage at major ports.

The foray into enforcement saw the department operate the "Dominion cruisers" which were armed enforcement vessels operating for the Fisheries Protection Service of Canada, a continuation of the Provincial Marine enforcement agencies of the British North American colonies. These ships and other chartered schooners and the like, would cruise the fishing grounds off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, watching for violations within Canada's territorial sea, then only three nautical miles (6 km) from shore.

Fisheries and Oceans Canada - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

So, our navy, like the RN, had is roots in fisheries protection.

 

[FJAG]

The dream isn’t a self sufficient reserve force. It’s an army that meets the operational requirements set down by the Govt of Canada. This Us / Them attitude is a root cause of problems frankly.

I tend to agree that "self-sufficient" is perhaps not the term we ought to be looking for.

We definitely need an army that meets the government's operational requirements. I would argue that these include firstly the day-to-day operational requirements best served by the RegF lightly augmented when appropriate by reservists. Secondly those requirements must also include the foreseeable extraordinary operational requirements which demand a much larger fully equipped hybrid force made up of existing RegF personnel and ARes soldiers in large quantities. Thirdly they must include a system capable of raising even more soldiers and equipment.

Our current army focuses on the first while paying lip service to the second and ignoring the third. That cannot be allowed to continue.

 

[KevinB]

I tend to agree that "self-sufficient" is perhaps not the term we ought to be looking for.

We definitely need an army that meets the government's operational requirements. I would argue that these include firstly the day-to-day operational requirements best served by the RegF lightly augmented when appropriate by reservists. Secondly those requirements must also include the foreseeable extraordinary operational requirements which demand a much larger fully equipped hybrid force made up of existing RegF personnel and ARes soldiers in large quantities. Thirdly they must include a system capable of raising even more soldiers and equipment.

100%

Our current army focuses on the first while paying lip service to the second and ignoring the third. That cannot be allowed to continue.

I’d suggest it pays lip service to the first and totally ignores 2 and 3.

 

[Halifax Tar]

If all you want is full time employment in a static location, that's a Reg F subcomponent.

I disagree. That's a PS job. The CAF should not offer full time static employment to anyone. You sign you name to the King, you serve where he needs you.

I hope, I truly hope, that if all of these announcement's actually become deliverables we can finally start to shed the malingerers and dead weight we have hanging on right now; and fill those positions with fit, interested and motivated people.

 

[Czech_pivo]

I disagree. That's a PS job. The CAF should not offer full time static employment to anyone. You sign you name to the King, you serve where he needs you.

I hope, I truly hope, that if all of these announcement's actually become deliverables we can finally start to shed the malingerers and dead weight we have hanging on right now; and fill those positions with fit, interested and motivated people.

I how so as well for all those who put in the hard work and commitment day in and day out - but to have that option you need the numbers coming in the front door of the building.

 

[Remius]

I disagree. That's a PS job. The CAF should not offer full time static employment to anyone. You sign you name to the King, you serve where he needs you.

Yes. And it is clear that a lot of those jobs could be PS.

I hope, I truly hope, that if all of these announcement's actually become deliverables we can finally start to shed the malingerers and dead weight we have hanging on right now; and fill those positions with fit, interested and motivated people.

Maybe one day if we get to where internally we are competitive enough with ourselves to be able to do that.

 

[brihard]

Some of the published commentary in the media suggests to me that "The Institutions" are already planning on asserting themselves.

Just because the PM said it ....

Have ‘the institutions’ been paying any attention to the new boss? They’re going to be given their roles and arcs, and they’ll be given leadership - existing, or replacement - who can work them hard within those roles and arcs. I don’t believe the PM is super interested in certain institutions’ historical self-conceptions versus the ‘now’ need.

 

[QV]

Extremly comparable in the result. I get smug satisfaction from you admitting that without Trudeau Transmountain wouldn't be the amazing strategically important pipeline that it is. Just like you want the smug satisfaction of me complementing Trump. This is just about you trying to get an I told you so moment. You won't get it without a cost.

Yep, why don't you demonstrate some leadership and admit that Trudeau went against his political base and built a pipeline for oil. And that was a great thing. Thank him for his politica foresight. Show us that you can admit to not being gaslit yourself.

Otherwise you just prove your partisan hypocracy once again for everyone. No accountability when the other side does something good. It's no skin off my teeth to point to DJ doing something positive. I'll still sleep. But I think you are incapable of admiting you're wrong.

Because at your core... you are a partisan troll, and the only reason you are here is to stir crap up.

Here is what I can’t forgive.

See the trend? Your type gets easily lost in the propaganda of the day. Trump bad, elbows up, etc. You’re susceptible to the emotional manipulation and ignore the inputs that matter. The reason Canada is where it’s at right now is because of our own government and the voters that give them a pass. No agency, no accountability.

 

[Underway]

Here is what I can’t forgive.

See the trend? Your type gets easily lost in the propaganda of the day. Trump bad, elbows up, etc. You’re susceptible to the emotional manipulation and ignore the inputs that matter. The reason Canada is where it’s at right now is because of our own government and the voters that give them a pass. No agency, no accountability.

Not related to the conversation we are having. Overall Canadian economic performance isn't the topic here. You're trying to change the channel. We're talking about very specific issues, Trudeau and Trump actions that may or may not have positive reactions.

Your type gets so lost in their own political position that they fail to remember what they were actually talking about, and when they get cornered, try to distract from the actual conversation. Because they know they lost.

Acknowledge that Trudeau built Transmountain and thank him for it. And I'll acknowldge what you wanted that originally started this conversation. If you can't by the next time you return to post here, I'm happy to declare victory and move past this petty argument.

And yes "my type" is self actualized enough that I know when I'm being petty.

 

[Czech_pivo]

Here is what I can’t forgive.

See the trend? Your type gets easily lost in the propaganda of the day. Trump bad, elbows up, etc. You’re susceptible to the emotional manipulation and ignore the inputs that matter. The reason Canada is where it’s at right now is because of our own government and the voters that give them a pass. No agency, no accountability.


View attachment 93798

Yup - those numbers are nothing short of absolute shit - full stop.

Present day, here and now - not looking in the rearview mirror.

Looking at things abjectly, when comparing the backgrounds/capabilities/track record of the current PM vis a vis PP, which individual - individual not party, would any rational, sane person/voter look at and say, 'yup that person has the actual real world tools/skillset needed to guide this Country through the next 4yrs of DT and the rest of the world.

If you try and argue that at an Individual level that PP has the better background that MC, then you'll never see the forest for the trees in your lifetime.