Lobby Group Seeks Support For Military Spending

[the patriot]

Lobby group seeks public support for military spending

Canadian Press
Monday, February 2, 1998

OTTAWA -- One of the most powerful lobby groups rooting for Canada‘s military wants you.

In an effort to drum up support for the Canadian Forces, the Conference of Defence Associations is banking on a new plan that seeks the ear of average citizens at the community level.

"What we‘ve done in the past is issue publications, studies, talk to the press, but we never made direct contact with Mr. and Mrs. Joe Average," said retired brigidier-general Jerry Silva, who presented the new plan to conference members at their annual meeting, Saturday.

"The idea is not to persuade them or change them," Mr. Silva said. "Instead, give them the information and they will have the wisdom to see what is there and what is necessary."

The Conference of Defence Associations, comprising 25 organizations representing more than 500,000 individuals across Canada, has had limited success lobbying government.

The ultimate objective of the "citizens‘ defence forum" campaign is to stop Canada‘s military from "continuing its downward spiral" because of budget cuts and demilitarization.

That can be rectified, say conference executives, by creating a pro-defence constituency among the public who would turn the state of Canadian defence into a hot political issue.

The plan will see community groups and individuals establish direct communication lines to the conference for up-to-date information they can share with other average Canadians to drum up support for military spending.

Mr. Silva said Canadians in such places as Quebec and Manitoba, where the military lent a much-appreciated hand during this winter‘s ice storm and last spring‘s flooding, are likely to lend a sympathetic ear.

"There‘s a great deal of others out there who, if only asked, would certainly support the military," he said.

The Forces are in dire need of more funding for equipment and training if it is to regain combat-ready status, the defence conference says.

Military funding has suffered several deep budget slashes in the past few years, including a $1.9 billion cut between 1994-1997.

"I don‘t have to tell you that our forces are in trouble," said conference director Victor Coroy, a retired lieutenant-colonel.

The Somalia inquiry also left an unsavoury image in the minds of Canadians, Mr. Silva said. "That [image] is a very unfair portrayal of the SARTEC (search and rescue technician) who risks his life to jump out of airplanes, the soldier at Oka standing nose-to-nose with a masked man."
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-the patriot-

 

[George Wallace]

A new twist and quite relevent to this same theme.  Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act:

Articles found February 28, 2010

Defence spending freeze 'big mistake,' analysts say
CTV.ca News

Article Link

Chris Wattie

The years of big spending hikes are likely over for Canada's long-suffering military, but analysts believe Thursday's federal budget probably will not slash the defence budget.

The Canadian Forces will instead be asked to make do with what it has already gotten as the Harper government struggles to trim a growing deficit and keep its promise not to raise taxes.

The government has been coy about its plans for the military's base budget, but public projections for 2011-12 so far have not included the 2.7-per-cent annual increase that the Harper government promised in its 2008 defence strategy.

The influential C.D. Howe Institute, in its pre-budget study of the government's spending and cutting options, recommended that Ottawa maintain defence spending at current levels.

The economic think tank noted that over the past decade the Department of National Defence has seen budget increases of 8 per cent a year on average.

"These rapid increases were necessary to arrest the decline in Canada's military capability, and to better equip our armed forces for their role in an unstable world," said the study, entitled "Back to Balance."

But the institute suggested that the good fiscal times had come to an end, not just for defence but for all government departments and recommended that the military be asked to hold the line on future spending.

The C.D. Howe study said the military budget should only be increased at "a rate not exceeding inflation plus population growth for the next six years."

John Thompson, of the Mackenzie Institute, believes that the Canadian Forces' will likely have to hold the line on operational spending but argues that is a mistake.

"It's the same mistake we made during the ‘90s and it's going to get a bunch of our soldiers killed," he said. "They'll be freezing the operating budgets at a time when the operational tempo will probably increase -- the world's an increasingly dangerous place, not just in Afghanistan or Haiti."

He said it takes much longer to rebuild an army, navy and air force than it does to cut them and the Canadian Forces still has not fully recovered from the spending cuts of the 1990s.

Damian Brooks, the founder and main contributor to the widely read military blog The Torch, worries about "stealth cuts" -- budget cuts hidden under hundreds of pages of documents and graphs in the federal budget documents.

He says the military has already been asked -- quietly -- to find "cost savings" of nearly $180 million in the current fiscal year.

"And the only reason that those numbers came out was because (army commander Lt.-Gen.) Andy Leslie stood up and publicly complained about it," he said. "Otherwise, we would never have heard of them."

Those cuts hit the Canadian Forces just as it was beginning to recover and Brooks says it's unfair to say that some cuts are justified after the large spending increases since Sept. 11, 2001.

"The increases to date have been the least that we could do to rebuild the Forces," he said. "They're not rolling in dough -- the Canadian defence budget is still only a miniscule percentage of our GDP."

He fears that the defence budget will be cut where it is least visible, in the Canadian Forces special forces command, including the secretive JTF-2 commando unit, the Canadian Special Operations Regiment and other specialized units.

"The easiest cuts for the Canadian Forces to make are the ones that no one can see," he said, "and special operations are invisible because they don't tell the public what they do. They can't: it's all top secret."

Yet special forces have been one of Canada's most valuable contributions to missions abroad and at home, Brooks said.

The Canadian Forces may be spared the necessity of cutting budgets by savings from ending the mission to Afghanistan in 2011, pegged at between $1 billion and $1.5 billion.

Retired colonel Brian MacDonald, in a paper for the Conference of Defence Associations, argued that at least some of that Afghan spending is needed to replace outdated equipment, like the navy's supply ships and the air force's maritime patrol planes, or vehicles that have been driven almost literally into the ground during the eight year Afghan mission.

But MacDonald notes that the government has already signalled it expects to lop $765 million in 2011-12 from the $943 million in special funds allocated this year to the military for the Afghan mission.

The Conference Board of Canada argues that the withdrawal from Afghanistan is an opportunity to slow increases in military spending or even reverse them.

Recent increases have allowed the military to rebuild its capacity, but that growth cannot be maintained when cost cuts are needed to combat the deficit, said Conference Board economist Alexandre Laurin.

"We've done most of the catch-up. ... We should be able to at least maintain our (defence) capacity, but we don't need to increase it further," he said. "We need to find some areas for spending reductions, and that would be one of them."

"What's the alternative? To keep it growing at such a high rate," Mr. Laurin said.

 

[old medic]

Defence spending freeze 'big mistake,' analysts say
By Chris Wattie
CTV News
28 Feb 2010

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20100225/military_budget_100228/20100228?hub=TopStoriesV2

The years of big spending hikes are likely over for Canada's long-suffering military, but analysts believe Thursday's federal budget probably will not slash the defence budget.

The Canadian Forces will instead be asked to make do with what it has already gotten as the Harper government struggles to trim a growing deficit and keep its promise not to raise taxes.

The government has been coy about its plans for the military's base budget, but public projections for 2011-12 so far have not included the 2.7-per-cent annual increase that the Harper government promised in its 2008 defence strategy.

The influential C.D. Howe Institute, in its pre-budget study of the government's spending and cutting options, recommended that Ottawa maintain defence spending at current levels.

The economic think tank noted that over the past decade the Department of National Defence has seen budget increases of 8 per cent a year on average.

"These rapid increases were necessary to arrest the decline in Canada's military capability, and to better equip our armed forces for their role in an unstable world," said the study, entitled "Back to Balance."

But the institute suggested that the good fiscal times had come to an end, not just for defence but for all government departments and recommended that the military be asked to hold the line on future spending.

The C.D. Howe study said the military budget should only be increased at "a rate not exceeding inflation plus population growth for the next six years."

John Thompson, of the Mackenzie Institute, believes that the Canadian Forces' will likely have to hold the line on operational spending but argues that is a mistake.

"It's the same mistake we made during the '90s and it's going to get a bunch of our soldiers killed," he said. "They'll be freezing the operating budgets at a time when the operational tempo will probably increase -- the world's an increasingly dangerous place, not just in Afghanistan or Haiti."

He said it takes much longer to rebuild an army, navy and air force than it does to cut them and the Canadian Forces still has not fully recovered from the spending cuts of the 1990s.

Damian Brooks, the founder and main contributor to the widely read military blog The Torch, worries about "stealth cuts" -- budget cuts hidden under hundreds of pages of documents and graphs in the federal budget documents.

He says the military has already been asked -- quietly -- to find "cost savings" of nearly $180 million in the current fiscal year.

"And the only reason that those numbers came out was because (army commander Lt.-Gen.) Andy Leslie stood up and publicly complained about it," he said. "Otherwise, we would never have heard of them."

Those cuts hit the Canadian Forces just as it was beginning to recover and Brooks says it's unfair to say that some cuts are justified after the large spending increases since Sept. 11, 2001.

"The increases to date have been the least that we could do to rebuild the Forces," he said. "They're not rolling in dough -- the Canadian defence budget is still only a miniscule percentage of our GDP."

He fears that the defence budget will be cut where it is least visible, in the Canadian Forces special forces command, including the secretive JTF-2 commando unit, the Canadian Special Operations Regiment and other specialized units.

"The easiest cuts for the Canadian Forces to make are the ones that no one can see," he said, "and special operations are invisible because they don't tell the public what they do. They can't: it's all top secret."

Yet special forces have been one of Canada's most valuable contributions to missions abroad and at home, Brooks said.

The Canadian Forces may be spared the necessity of cutting budgets by savings from ending the mission to Afghanistan in 2011, pegged at between $1 billion and $1.5 billion.

Retired colonel Brian MacDonald, in a paper for the Conference of Defence Associations, argued that at least some of that Afghan spending is needed to replace outdated equipment, like the navy's supply ships and the air force's maritime patrol planes, or vehicles that have been driven almost literally into the ground during the eight year Afghan mission.

But MacDonald notes that the government has already signalled it expects to lop $765 million in 2011-12 from the $943 million in special funds allocated this year to the military for the Afghan mission.

The Conference Board of Canada argues that the withdrawal from Afghanistan is an opportunity to slow increases in military spending or even reverse them.

Recent increases have allowed the military to rebuild its capacity, but that growth cannot be maintained when cost cuts are needed to combat the deficit, said Conference Board economist Alexandre Laurin.

"We've done most of the catch-up. ... We should be able to at least maintain our (defence) capacity, but we don't need to increase it further," he said. "We need to find some areas for spending reductions, and that would be one of them."

"What's the alternative? To keep it growing at such a high rate," Mr. Laurin said.

 

[54/102 CEF]

Hallway conversations with Beancounters suggest what we get this year was planned before the Financial Market Meltdown

 

[HavocSteve]

Hallway conversations with Beancounters suggest what we get this year was planned before the Financial Market Meltdown

So what your saying is that the CF will indeed get budget cuts.

 

[dapaterson]

So what your saying is that the CF will indeed get budget cuts.

Not at all.  The $180M discussed earlier was internal reallocations - moving funds from one place to another inside DND.  While one part of the organization may see this as "cuts", overall, the funds stay inside the organization.

Any large organization does that - moves money to different areas to address priorities.  The internal communications of the changes leaves (perhaps) something to be desired, and anyone impacted by the changes may feel that they are hard done by, but the overall budget envelope for DND did not change.


(Indeed, look through the Supps and you'll see that there have been signficant in-year increases to DND's funding)