Justin Trudeau hints at boosting Canada’s military spending

I'll believe it when I see it.

 

[Underway]

Third - DM and DND ADM Pol (currently Peter Hammerschmidt) will be required to come up with a new White Paper that puts the emphasis on -

• Defending Canada, proper,
• Defending North America in partnership with the USA,
• Assisting in the defence of democratic allies in Asia and Europe in cooperation with Asia-Pacific allies and as a member of NATO, and
• Supporting veterans in a fair but cost effective manner.

So basically the exact same white paper/defence policy we have had since forever:

Harpers policy
Canada First Defense Strategy - Defend Canada, Defend North America, Defend our allies

Trudeau's policy
Strong Secure Engaged - Strong in Canada, Secure in North America, Engaged with NATO and allies

Canada's strategic needs don't change. The only thing that changes is the shopping list.

A new white paper is basically a waste of time and a way to dither on important decisions/expendatures. They have multi-party support on the same friggin defence policy, they just refuse to acknowledge that.

Also a white paper on defence that mentions veterans I would call an omnibus paper. Veterans are not the CAF nor a defence problem. They are a social program problem run by Veterans Affairs.

 

[Navy_Pete]

@Edward Campbell I suspect you are right, and there will also be further real cuts to the in service side, along with some kind of DRAP 2.0 to whittle down the public service side (which fundamentally undercuts CAF ability to support itself when the various SMEs retire)

The LOE required to push projects now is insane, and even what should be straight forward buys of replacement widgets has a number of extra reviews. All that needs people and expertise, which we already don't have enough of. It's increased significantly during my career, and only getting worse.

It's really frustrating as both a CAF member trying to put parts on shelves and support units, as well as a Canadian taxpayer for how much time/work it takes to do anything and the cost of that, where a huge amount of 'oversight' and 'approval' seems to serve no useful purpose other than to add delays to spending approval.

 

[ytz]

Here is the CAF List of GOFOs:

General Officers and Flag Officers - Canada.ca

General and Flag Officers of the Canadian Armed Forces work closely with senior Defence Team executives to ensure Canada is strong at home, secure in North America, and engaged in the world.

www.canada.ca

Look at the job titles and then decide who should be lower ranked. Not as easy as you would think without substantially rethinking the institution.

I will say that maybe places like CJOC don't need to have generals leading staff functions. And maybe some DGs don't need to be MGens.

But a lot of these appointments are driven by the reality that their civilian and/or NATO equivalents have similar ranks.

 

[Edward Campbell]

OK, if I'm MND for a day, the following stay at the ranks they currently hold; you will note a certain commonality in most of the appointments:

• Vice Chief of the Defence Staff - LGen/VAdm
• Deputy Commander Allied Joint Force Command Naples - LGen
• Deputy Commander North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) - LGen
• Deputy Commander of United Nations Command in Korea - LGen
• Military Representative of Canada to NATO - LGen
• Deputy Commander Continental United States NORAD Region - MGen/RAdm
• Defence Attaché, Canadian Defence Liaison Staff (Washington) - MGen
• J3 North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) - MGen
• Vice Commander United States 2nd Fleet - MGen
• National Military Representative to Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe - BGen/Cmdre
• Deputy Director of Strategy, Policy and Plans NORAD and United States Northern Command - BGen
• Assistant Chief of Staff J4, Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers - BGen
• Assistant Chief of Staff J5, Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe - BGen
• Alaskan NORAD Region Deputy Commander - BGen
• Director Training (J7), Strategic Advisory Group - Ukraine - BGen
• Chief of the Defence Staff Liaison Officer to the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff - BGen
• Vice J5 United States Cyber Command - BGen
• Deputy Commanding General – Operations, (United States) XVIII Airborne Corps - BGen
• Multinational Division North, Deputy Commander Maneuvre - BGen
• Deputy Commanding General-Transformation, United States Space Force - BGen
• Chief of Staff I Corps (United States) - BGen
• Deputy Commanding General, Operations, 11th Airborne Division (United States) - BGen
• Defence Attaché, Canadian Defence Liaison Staff (London) - BGen
• United States Central Command (CENTCOM) Deputy J3 - BGen
• Deputy J3 US Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM) - BGen
• Commander Standing NATO Maritime Group 2 - BGen
• Maritime Component Command, Deputy Chief of Staff - Plans - BGen

The following will be deleted and any tasks that are useful (and there are most certainly some for each and every position) will be reassigned to 'survivors:'

• Chief Professional Conduct and Culture - LGen/VAdm
• Chief of Fighter Capability - MGen/RAdm
• Chief of Staff Chief Professional Conduct and Culture - MGen
• Director General Miltary Personnel - Strategic - MGen
• Commander Canadian Forces Intelligence Command - MGen
• Chief of Staff, Digital Transformation Office - MGen
• Director General Culture - MGen
• Director General Future Ship Capability - MGen
• Director General Issues - BGen/Cmdre
• Commander Military Personnel Generation Group - BGen
• Commander 1st Canadian Division Headquarters - BGen
• Chief of Staff Canadian Forces Intelligence Command - BGen
• Commander National Cadets and Junior Canadian Rangers Support Group - BGen
• Director General Intelligence Enterprise - BGen
• Deputy Director General Military Personnel Strategic and Director Strategic Development - BGen
• Deputy Chief of Staff, Chief Professional Conduct and Culture - BGen
• Director General Reserve Force Strategic Initiatives - BGen
• Commander Canadian Armed Forces Transition Group - BGen
• Director General Professional Conduct and Development - BGen
• Reserve Special Advisor to the Royal Canadian Navy - BGen

Every other position, including the Chief of the Defence Staff will be reduced by one rank. A few, like the Provost Marshal will be reduced by two ranks from MGen/RAdm to Col/Capt(N). Almost all directors generals will be Cols/Capts(N) and almost all directors will be LCols/Cdrs. (When the forces were 'unified' (1960s) it was decided that military ranks should be tied to the civil service. In the civil service a director is the frst level 'executive' level. Anyone who thinks that a ship's captain, regiment or battalion commander or RCAF squadron commander is not the first level of military executive doesn't understand either the military or executive, most likely neither.)

 

[Navy_Pete]

Honestly think downgrading the rank of GOFOs is somewhat of a dog and pony show effort; what is more relevant is whether or not we need the various commands or organisations anyway. And you are right, some of the ranks (espcially for the deputies at places like ADM(Mat) is driven by the equivalent rank of the civilian they work for as well as the rank of DGs etc below them. From what I can tell, GOFOs are slightly underpaid compared to equivalent EXs already.

Busting down the rank of a MGen position won't magically fill any Sgt or MCpl positions or stop empire building, and does nothing for the bloat. Where it seems to be more prevalent is on all these reporting tools, dashboards etc that are all over the place, and largely pulled from DRMIS data which is full of holes, errors, and in some cases outright lies. DRMIS has turned into a digital circle jerk that everyone has a hardon to 'operationalize', but it's so user unfriendly and laborious to use (with MI project breaking the supply managmenet functions) that it's a lot of garbage data. We would have been better off in a lot of cases with manually filling in the same data (which happens anyway because the pulls are BS)., but would kill a huge swath of DRMIS policy wonks and CoEs.

 

[Quirky]

Busting down the rank of a MGen position won't magically fill any Sgt or MCpl positions or stop empire building

Too bad none of those General Positions are called Director General of Strategic Middle Management, or something to that effect. Our unit is under 30% manning in the MCpl - WO rank after this APS. No time to get ahead of things, the entire operation is a day to day struggle to keep the lights on. I'd imagine most of the RCAF/CAF is like that now.

 

[Navy_Pete]

Too bad none of those General Positions are called Director General of Strategic Middle Management, or something to that effect. Our unit is under 30% manning in the MCpl - WO rank after this APS. No time to get ahead of things, the entire operation is a day to day struggle to keep the lights on. I'd imagine most of the RCAF/CAF is like that now.

Yeah, same at our end. Personnally wish they would screw off with the dashboard reports, policy wonks, 'process improvments' etc until we can get our head above water generally. Adding extra steps onto a complicated process doesn't help, and I've yet to see anything 'streamlined' that has actually reduced the workload or made it easier in a long time.

 

[Edward Campbell]

My post above is probably not really helpful, BUT, I believe, very firmly, that having too many HQs with too many too highly ranked officers sends a message to the officers and men and women in our ships and units that the military (and bureaucratic/civilian) 'leadership' is more interested in feathering their own nests than in making the Canadian Armed Forces into the tough, superbly disciplined, well trained and adequately equipped force in which almost every man and woman in uniform really wants to serve.

I am convinced that we can have a better force if we have considerable fewer admirals and generals in a better organization.

I, personally, think that Minister Paul Hellyer was right about 60 years ago when he proposed a joint (unified) force with joint, functional commands. I believe either joint geographic commands or joint functional commands are superior, for Canada, than is the current mish-mash. I think I understand the force generation <> force employment concept well enough but I'm not sure that our current C2 structure achieves the right mix. However, I've been wrong before and I may still be wrong about this.

I believe the simplest organization is probably four joint geographic commands; Pacific, Western, Eastern and Atlantic: Pacific and Atlantic Commands would be mainly joint Navy/Air commands, while most of the Army and the largest share of the RCAF would be found in Western and Eastern commands. Western Command could have a subordinate Northern Region and Eastern Command could have a subordinate Special Operations Group.

But, Mr Hellyer's joint functional commands could have worked well if he had gotten them right in the first place. His decision to make Air Defence and Air Transport into two lower ranked (than Maritime and Mobile) Commands led to the organizational vandalism of 1975 that created Air Command. But he was also aided by admirals and generals who didn't want to be joint and, when push came to shove, always made ships or army regiments a higher priority than their air units. The joint Materiel and Communications Commands worked very well in the 1960s and beyond. Proper joint functional commands: Maritime (joint Navy/Air), Mobile (joint Army/Air), Air and Materiel Commands could work today. Communications doesn't need its own command but there's no harm in it if it is not over-ranked.

 

[PrairieFella]

My post above is probably not really helpful, BUT, I believe, very firmly, that having too many HQs with too many too highly ranked officers sends a message to the officers and men and women in our ships and units that the military (and bureaucratic/civilian) 'leadership' is more interested in feathering their own nests than in making the Canadian Armed Forces into the tough, superbly disciplined, well trained and adequately equipped force in which almost every man and woman in uniform really wants to serve.

I am convinced that we can have a better force if we have considerable fewer admirals and generals in a better organization.

I, personally, think that Minister Paul Hellyer was right about 60 years ago when he proposed a joint (unified) force with joint, functional commands. I believe either joint geographic commands or joint functional commands are superior, for Canada, than is the current mish-mash. I think I understand the force generation <> force employment concept well enough but I'm not sure that our current C2 structure achieves the right mix. However, I've been wrong before and I may still be wrong about this.

I believe the simplest organization is probably four joint geographic commands; Pacific, Western, Eastern and Atlantic: Pacific and Atlantic Commands would be mainly joint Navy/Air commands, while most of the Army and the largest share of the RCAF would be found in Western and Eastern commands. Western Command could have a subordinate Northern Region and Eastern Command could have a subordinate Special Operations Group.

But, Mr Hellyer's joint functional commands could have worked well if he had gotten them right in the first place. His decision to make Air Defence and Air Transport into two lower ranked (than Maritime and Mobile) Commands led to the organizational vandalism of 1975 that created Air Command. But he was also aided by admirals and generals who didn't want to be joint and, when push came to shove, always made ships or army regiments a higher priority than their air units. The joint Materiel and Communications Commands worked very well in the 1960s and beyond. Proper joint functional commands: Maritime (joint Navy/Air), Mobile (joint Army/Air), Air and Materiel Commands could work today. Communications doesn't need its own command but there's no harm in it if it is not over-ranked.

Hellyer's unification was a disaster for the CAF. Never again.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Hellyer's unification was a disaster for the CAF. Never again.

I disagree!

Unification, the creation of joint forces was the right idea; all our allies were doing it.​

​

Integration, the attempt to create a single service wearing the "jolly green jumper" was silly and destructive.​

But it's important to keep the two very different things separate in your minds.

 

[dimsum]

I disagree!

Unification, the creation of joint forces was the right idea; all our allies were doing it.​

​

Integration, the attempt to create a single service wearing the "jolly green jumper" was silly and destructive.​

But it's important to keep the two very different things separate in your minds.

Something in between may have benefits.

If you’re training trades that are common (say clerks), a combined school like we have now is preferable to 3 separate schools like most of our allies.

 

[Furniture]

Something in between may have benefits.

If you’re training trades that are common (say clerks), a combined school like we have now is preferable to 3 separate schools like most of our allies.

Agreed, speaking to American Met folks showed me that pretty quickly. The USAF, USMC, and USN all have their own Met training... They learn the same things, just in slightly different ways. It's a waste of resources, when it could easily be combined into a single school teaching all three branches.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Something in between may have benefits.

If you’re training trades that are common (say clerks), a combined school like we have now is preferable to 3 separate schools like most of our allies.

Agreed: Training Command was a joint command; it was highly imperfect because the command staff overlapped the NDHQ individual training bureaucracy which was, in turn, a mish-mash of single service, 'stove-pipe' vested (but often powerful/high ranked) interests and a small, and ineffective, as I recall, joint individual training staff buried somewhere in the personnel staff.

I remember ranting about training to my boss in the '80s and he quipped that promotion boards made mistakes (not he and I, of course ) and Training Command (and RMC and the Staff College) was good place to bury some of them.

 

[Halifax Tar]

Something in between may have benefits.

If you’re training trades that are common (say clerks), a combined school like we have now is preferable to 3 separate schools like most of our allies.

Schools, yes. Because the same policies and systems can exist across the services. (Force Generation)

The employment, no. Uniforms matter and employment environment matters. (Force Employment)

I also strongly believe the purplness is dying.

 

[FJAG]

I am convinced that we can have a better force if we have considerable fewer admirals and generals in a better organization.

As an aside, I disagree with jointness in force generation entities. It merely leads to another layer of bureaucracy. I do believe firmly in jointness in operational forces including planning headquarters.

I'm fully on board with the idea of eliminating many GOFOs and reducing in rank the position of many more. I'm going to unashamedly quote myself from the first edition of "Unsustainable at Any Price" (I've since deleted this segment for Ed 2)

"When Sir Arthur Harris was appointed Deputy Chief of the Air Staff for the UK in 1940 he found the Air Staff “fantastically bloated” and inefficient. He instituted an across the board 40% reduction in staff which resulted in the “essential work not only still being done, but being done with much more efficiency and speed.”[1]

More recently, Ford Motor Company cut 7,000 white collar jobs, 20% of it’s upper-level managers reducing its organizational layers from 14 to nine because “[t]o succeed in our competitive industry, and position Ford to win in a fast-changing future, we must reduce bureaucracy, empower managers, speed decision making, focus on the most valuable work and cut costs,”[2]

Similarly, the US Department of the Army was recently forced to review its overall active Army strength including the size of its headquarters:

From July 2014 through March 2015, Headquarters, Department of the Army (HQDA) completed an organizational redesign aimed at reducing overall personnel authorizations 25 percent and reducing operating costs by fiscal year (FY) 2019.
...
HQDA had too many echelons in place for clear and effective communication, leaders had low spans of supervisory control, and numerous deputies or senior employees were too deep within the organizations to operate effectively and often reported to each other. The USA and VCSA stated their intent to reduce the number of echelons and redundant management processes, or “de-layer” the headquarters, to reverse these trends. In the long run, de-layering the HQDA could offset some of the impact of the 25 percent personnel authorization reductions, making organizations easier to manage and more efficient in terms of work and information flow, as proven in other large civilian business headquarters.[3]"

---

[1] Marshall of the R.A.F. Sir Arthur Harris, “Bomber Offensive”, 1947, Pen and Sword Military Classics, Barnsley, UK pp. 49-51
[2] Howard, Phobe Wall, “CEO Hacket: Ford Motor Company to lay off 500 US workers this week, more in June” Detroit Free Press, May 20, 2019
CEO Hackett: Ford Motor to lay off 500 US salaried workers this week, more by June
[3] Spoehr, Lt. Gen. Thomas, et al, “Reducing the Size of Headquarters of the Army, An After-Action Report”, Military Review, January-February 2015
Reducing the Size of Headquarters, Department of the Army

The point is not the mere spiteful reduction in ranks and numbers of the GOFOs, but the resultant reduction and adjustment of the bureaucracy that underlies and supports them and the reduction of silos and layers to speed communication and decision making.

It's abundantly clear from the institutional reaction to the 2011 CAF's Transformation initiative that the the bureaucratic (both military and civilian) resistance to an orderly, cooperative processes is strong and deeply entrenched. IMHO, reductions need to be imposed with almost arbitrary target quotas and layers, a la the above examples, leaving what's left of the leadership to sort out how to manage with what is left. It's not just personnel, but process that need streamlining.

 

[dimsum]

Schools, yes. Because the same policies and systems can exist across the services. (Force Generation)

The employment, no. Uniforms matter and employment environment matters. (Force Employment)

I also strongly believe the purplness is dying.

In the tactical sense (ship, field unit) sure, but in the HQs I don’t think it matters as much.

If you’re a clerk in one of the HQs, is it that different whether your beret is blue, green, or black?

Of course, it brings up the question whether those should be military positions or not.

 

[quadrapiper]

In the tactical sense (ship, field unit) sure, but in the HQs I don’t think it matters as much.

If you’re a clerk in one of the HQs, is it that different whether your beret is blue, green, or black?

Of course, it brings up the question whether those should be military positions or not.

Perhaps a layer or two back from the ships and field units? MARPAC's clerks "getting" what ships and sailors do (timelines, comms, how their shipboard peers do their business, pier jumping, whatever) seems like it might be useful.

As far as civvy versus military clerks, beyond providing enough stable not-shipboard or field billets to rotate people and having a layer of admin pers who know what's up, what other drivers actually justify uniformed clerks in (say) Ottawa? Or for that matter, uniformed loggies past a certain point?