I’m not convinced our system can actually support a bipartisan consensus.
The main mechanism to support that; the parliament and its committees are not influential in any meaningful way nor are they actually given bipartisan information by the defence officials whether uniformed or not.
There are a few examples of this;
Support ships; officials have testified that the two on order is sufficient when the Navy’s own documents state 4 is the minimum.
Fighters; the RCAF stated that the current and future fighter fleet of 65 was GTG, then the Cabinet announced there was a fighter gap and we needed 88.
It’s obvious that the Cabinet and the MND have more influence over what the Defence officials; uniformed and civilian; articulate to Parliament than strategic, operational and tactical assessments as professionals.
A feature of the Canadian system is that the balancing of those professional assessments and political priorities is done behind closed doors, and once cabinet decisions are made the professionals don’t publicly discuss the ramifications good or bad with parliament in a transparent bipartisan manner.
Without the parliamentary committee having more influence and more fulsome bipartisan discussion with the professionals, bipartisan consensus would only be the federal cabinet telling the parliament both government and opposition MPs what they had decided and the MPs agreeing without skepticism or questioning.