Justin Trudeau hints at boosting Canada’s military spending

I'll believe it when I see it.

 

[lenaitch]

Canada literally came out of a world war 3 years prior. 10% of the population served, and far more had family/friends who served. They just detonated 2 atomic bombs in anger.

It would have been easy to convince Canadians to spend a large % of GDP to make sure the last few years didn’t happen again.

And had a sizable portion of the population with WWI in their living memory.

 

[daftandbarmy]

And had a sizable portion of the population with WWI in their living memory.

And the Great Depression was even more top of mind in many ways. Trying to avoid another period of time where 30% unemployment was the norm can focus the mind...


The worldwide Great Depression of the early 1930s was a social and economic shock that left millions of Canadians unemployed, hungry and often homeless. Few countries were affected as severely as Canada during what became known as the "Dirty Thirties", due to Canada's heavy dependence on raw material and farm exports, combined with a crippling Prairies drought known as the Dust Bowl. Widespread losses of jobs and savings ultimately transformed the country by triggering the birth of social welfare, a variety of populist political movements, and a more activist role for government in the economy.

Great Depression in Canada - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[FJAG]

But Rumsfeld...

I'm not generally a fan of Rumsfeld because he pulled some major boner moves in his time. However,

"You go to war with the army you have" and "Known knowns, known unknowns.... unknown unknowns"

should both be principles of national security / war.

Let me stipulate that the army we have is designed to cover the known knowns

I wouldn't go anywhere near that far considering the extent of the know knowns these days and our lack of capabilities to deal with any of those.

and, with a bit of luck can be adapted to manage the known unknowns. Is that the 80% solution?

While I agree that some adaption is possible, I put the percentage of the solution far lower.

How do we manage the unknown unknowns? Can we adapt to them quickly? And is that going to be covered by 20% of the existing budget? Or are we going to have to invest 100%, or even 200%, or more, of the current budget in countering whatever it is the enemy has decided to throw at us?

As always, unknown unknowns (and even many knowns unknowns) should managed through a military and industrial reserve providing mobilizable depth and breadth to those elements that are already dedicated to managing both the known knowns and some of the known unknowns.

An interesting aspect of that definition is that it’s in line with how the CA defines readiness; it’s basically effort based readiness.
Key issue is that effort based readiness has almost no anchor in comparison to threat based readiness.

I agree with everything that you say, but my model was purely as an example. My view is that the readiness model has to be an effort based one which is frequently reviewed and tailored to respond to an analysis of the threat.

I appreciate the several time and space issues that you raise. With respect to duration, I think we have gone too far with the sustained and short term operation idea. The presumption should always be that the duration is unknown and that the commanders must have a plan for sustainment (including deployment tours that greatly exceed six months and raising battalions through recruiting [like we did for Korea]). I think the current SSE concept is another shell game.

Similarly, the other timing are ones that apply to the capability efforts that, say the Navy, Air Force and logistics system, have to meet in order to sustain those army activities.

I fully agree that a threat analysis is needed at all levels across all forces in order to specify the effort based readiness standard the various elements of the force need to meet. But in the end, we need to give simple, straightforward tasks and standards or we end up with a schizophrenic CAF.

 

[Edward Campbell]

And the Great Depression was even more top of mind in many ways. Trying to avoid another period of time where 30% unemployment was the norm can focus the mind...


The worldwide Great Depression of the early 1930s was a social and economic shock that left millions of Canadians unemployed, hungry and often homeless. Few countries were affected as severely as Canada during what became known as the "Dirty Thirties", due to Canada's heavy dependence on raw material and farm exports, combined with a crippling Prairies drought known as the Dust Bowl. Widespread losses of jobs and savings ultimately transformed the country by triggering the birth of social welfare, a variety of populist political movements, and a more activist role for government in the economy.

Great Depression in Canada - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Very, very true. The Great Depression had a far greater and longer lasting impact on Canadian society than did the war.

But, it is also important to remember that in 1939 Canada was a small, weak agrarian nation. In 1945 Canada was a major military and industrial power.

In 1946 Europe and most of Asia lay in ruins. Only a handful of countries came out out of the war as real "winners" - and amongst them Canada was, probably, the most changed. Part of this was based on Mackenzie-King's timidity (urged upon him by OD Skelton) - he desperately wanted to avoid combat because he feared, correctly, that he might face recruitment crises. He preferred to "contribute" to the war effort by supplying agricultural, and natural resource products and finished goods - everything from wool socks to warships - to Britain.

But the biggest change was in the industry/manufacturing field. In 1924-18 Canada had been the "breadbasket of the Empire" and in 1942-'45 the USA proclaimed itself to be the "arsenal of democracy" but, in1940-42 Canada as the lead supplier of almost everything to Britain (and by 1944 Canada was paying Britain's bills, too*). In fact in1940-41 several forms set up branch plants in to supply the British with military equipment that was embargo's byan isolationist US Congress.

As Asia and Europe recovered - the Marshall Plan and the largely Canadian funded Colombo Plan - Canada's relative "strength" declined but we remained industry "winners" thanks to the Send Word War.

-----
* It is interesting to note that, circa 1948, Canada 'forgave' Britain's war debt but the brits eventually, in the 9180s, I believe, paid it all off, with (modest) interest.

 

[dimsum]

* It is interesting to note that, circa 1948, Canada 'forgave' Britain's war debt but the brits eventually, in the 9180s, I believe, paid it all off, with (modest) interest.

I too would like a 7000+ year term for my mortgage

 

[Kirkhill]

An interesting aspect of that definition is that it’s in line with how the CA defines readiness; it’s basically effort based readiness.
Key issue is that effort based readiness has almost no anchor in comparison to threat based readiness.

A force that is “ready” in an effort based system may be completely unequipped and with insufficient mass to win against various threats. Case in point; our LiBs are “ready” but not for a theatre that involves any significant armoured vehicle threat. Hence why we have issues understanding the “with what” and “for what”parts of readiness.

Effort based systems also don’t really have a solid anchor in terms of time and space, “for when” Ie. what is the duration that the forward deployed forces can hold until they need to be reinforced and/or replaced. That time minus the deployment time from the North America based units is the time we have to get follow on forces ready. That time then drives the equipment scaling and training requirements for those follow on forces.

In the Cdn context why 48hrs, 10 days, 90 days etc. It’s not threat driven, it’s effort driven and it’s generally not tied into readiness across the joint force, just because the Army has units on X days readiness doesn’t mean the other services have the same readiness in the elements that would be needed to deploy and support them.

It seems to me that all wars start with sacrifice. Both sides sacrifice people, some of whom are soldiers, weapons, treasure, space and time. That sacrifice continues until both sides get the measure of each other. Then the killing and the innovating starts.

Some folks will say that the army has failed if the fighting starts because the primary purpose of the army was to deter the fight in the first place.

 

[Kirkhill]

Very, very true. The Great Depression had a far greater and longer lasting impact on Canadian society than did the war.

But, it is also important to remember that in 1939 Canada was a small, weak agrarian nation. In 1945 Canada was a major military and industrial power.

In 1946 Europe and most of Asia lay in ruins. Only a handful of countries came out out of the war as real "winners" - and amongst them Canada was, probably, the most changed. Part of this was based on Mackenzie-King's timidity (urged upon him by OD Skelton) - he desperately wanted to avoid combat because he feared, correctly, that he might face recruitment crises. He preferred to "contribute" to the war effort by supplying agricultural, and natural resource products and finished goods - everything from wool socks to warships - to Britain.

But the biggest change was in the industry/manufacturing field. In 1924-18 Canada had been the "breadbasket of the Empire" and in 1942-'45 the USA proclaimed itself to be the "arsenal of democracy" but, in1940-42 Canada as the lead supplier of almost everything to Britain (and by 1944 Canada was paying Britain's bills, too*). In fact in1940-41 several forms set up branch plants in to supply the British with military equipment that was embargo's byan isolationist US Congress.

As Asia and Europe recovered - the Marshall Plan and the largely Canadian funded Colombo Plan - Canada's relative "strength" declined but we remained industry "winners" thanks to the Send Word War.

-----
* It is interesting to note that, circa 1948, Canada 'forgave' Britain's war debt but the brits eventually, in the 9180s, I believe, paid it all off, with (modest) interest.

And then there was Operation Fish. And little enough of that returned to the UK.

 

[lenaitch]

The CAF job is readiness. Defining the “for what” is the responsibility of the civilian authority under which the CAF is subordinated.

I read that as implicit in what they said.

 

[lenaitch]

To me, the term "readiness" is a word that has real meaning but within DND has become a meaningless buzzword. Have you ever looked at the DND website - this is how "ready forces" are described for the 2022-23 departmental plan.
If that isn't vague enough, look at the bull shit that follows. I won't even comment about the nonsense that the GBA Plus and UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development have to do with anything.

I am convinced that the end goal of a government bureaucracy is to have a mission statement/business plan. Whether it is meaningful or, you know, actually guides the organization, is beside the point. I'll bet DND/CAF has an entire, full-time section devoted solely to write and maintain business plans.

When I was with the OPP, part of my job for a couple of months each year was the assemble my division's input to the annual business plan and submit it to the business planning people (full-time, year-round). The final Force-wide document ran about 80 pages. My brother was fairly high up in the hospitality industry and said if his business plan (prepared by him and his subordinate managers over about a month) was more than three pages, senior management would probably have fired him. Private industry has neither the time nor inclination to read volumes of buzzwords and word salad.

 

[Quirky]

seems like it would be good to know the who, what and why of the process

Stories like this don't help:

https://www.reddit.com/r/caf/comments/1hah88t/yall_were_not_kidding_recruiting_is_so_ass

The examples in that thread are also pretty bad. The wait times are brutal.

 

[daftandbarmy]

Stories like this don't help:

https://www.reddit.com/r/caf/comments/1hah88t/yall_were_not_kidding_recruiting_is_so_ass

The examples in that thread are also pretty bad. The wait times are brutal.

IOW, the CAF is not getting what it's paying for. And the CAF is not alone...

A High Price to Pay: Lengthy Hiring Processes Keeping Top Talent Away​

A High Price to Pay: Lengthy Hiring Processes Keeping Top Talent Away

Today’s hiring processes are dragging out longer than ever before, causing organizations to lose the best candidates to their competitors. According to the research by human capital advisory firm Josh Bersin Company, the recruitment process now

www.pedersongroup.ca