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Promise could gut military
Ships, jets may be scrapped to fulfill Liberal troop pledge

Chris Wattie; with files from Mike Blanchfield
National Post, with files from CanWest News Service


August 21, 2004


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The Canadian military may be forced to mothball all of its remaining destroyers and ground up to a quarter of its front-line fighter jets in order to fulfill a Liberal election promise to create a new, 5,000-strong "peacekeeping brigade."

Bill Graham, the Defence Minister, is to present options on the proposed new brigade to Cabinet by the end of the month, but Defence sources have told the National Post the military has been told to prepare drastic measures to pay for the idea.

In an article posted yesterday on the Web site of Jane's Defence Weekly, the London-based defence publishing and analysis group said senior Canadian officers have been working in secret on finding a way to pay for the promised influx of new troops.

Under the proposal, the navy is to take all of its Iroquois-class destroyers, the flagship vessels from which commodores or admirals can command a task force of warships, out of service, while the air force is to ground as many as 20 of its CF-18s, a quarter of its entire fighter force. The CF-18 Hornet is in the midst of a $2.3-billion, six-year modernization program.

During the federal election campaign, the Liberals promised to add a new brigade of 5,000 troops to the overstretched and chronically underfunded Canadian military specifically for peacekeeping and "peace support" missions.

The military was caught completely off guard by the pledge, which senior officers believe Paul Martin, the Prime Minister, made hastily in the heat of fighting an early Conservative surge in the campaign.

One senior military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Armed Forces are worried they "are going to be perceived as being in bed with this cockamamie idea."

They also fear the plan could lead to the effective demise of the navy and air force.

Gordon O'Connor, the Conservative defence critic, said the Liberal government wants to make the Forces foot the bill for an election promise he said was made in haste without considering the cost.

"It's outrageous," he said. "They're talking about scavenging the navy and the air force to keep their promises. It's just smoke and mirrors ... they make the promises, but don't want to pay for them."

Analysts have estimated the cost of adding a new brigade at more than $2-billion and have cautioned it would take the military more than a decade to build up its strength from the current 53,000 troops.

Jane's Defence Weekly, the London-based defence publishing and analysis group, estimated the cost at $1.5-billion for equipment, $750-million for infrastructure and approximately $400-million a year to maintain the additional soldiers. Defence officials say the Forces are already running a $1-billion annual deficit to pay for current operations.

Mr. O'Connor, a former brigadier-general in the army, said the army needs the extra troops but the air force and navy also need more resources. By stripping the budget of the other two services, he said the Liberals are "dumbing down the armed forces: They're reducing their ability to defend Canada and Canadian interests."

I think the big problem in Canada is that with the USA covering their southern borders, and much of the North Eastern Borders with Alaska, then they only have the Alantic to worry about, and as most of the countries on this Ocean are friendly then they can get their defence on the cheap.

Tab,

Canada's been doing defence on the cheap ever since 1957, when the last worldly PM Canada had, Louis St Laurent, was defeated.

The only NATO country that spends less of its GDP on defence is Luxembourg.

My prediction is that once the F-18's become obsolete beyond upgrades, Canada will have no longer fly fighter aircraft, like New Zealand today.

Since ships can be used in "peacekeeping," the Navy will still exist, but only as a skeleton.

Why does Canada spend so little? Because it can. Interestingly, the less Canadians wish to spend on defence, the more anti-American we become. Canada's naivete with regards to geopolitics is shocking, we don't even have a foreign intelligence arm, though CSIS personnel do work overseas.

Personally, I hope we get kicked out of NATO and NORAD, its the only way the politicians will listen. Furthermore, the UN should pressure us to commit more resources to peacekeeping, as Canada doesn't even pull its weight there anymore.

Analysts have estimated the cost of adding a new brigade at more than $2-billion and have cautioned it would take the military more than a decade to build up its strength from the current 53,000 troops.

Something most Canadians don't even understand is that 53,000 "troops" includes not only soldiers, but all sailors, airmen and personnel responsible for rear echelon admin common to all three services who may wear three different uniforms throughout their career since the demise of the common uniform in 1986. There are estimated to be around 1500 personnel who have passed basic but have no instructors to teach them trades and thus cannot be committed to active service.

Canada had no DPM battledress until 2002, having gone with Vietnam era olive greens since 1964, perhaps the most visible reminder to the rest of the world that defence was not on Canada's radar screen.

Imagine living in a country where your entire national identity consists of ice hockey, peacekeeping, a national health service, and not being American. For a country with nearly 500 years of recorded history, we have had the most prolonged adolescence of all nations in the "new world."

Expect more Canadian nationals in the British forces within a couple of years.

Your talking to one!

Despite all the British moaning about their armed forces, for me its like a dream come true.

Tab,

Alot of Canadians use the excuse that they have no threat so they don't need a military. It has got to be the most blinkered and juvenile approach to national defense ever recorded. I don't say that lightly either, i really can't think of ANY country that feels it doesn't need an effective armed force, anywhere at anytime in history.

The oldest rule in the book is that a nation needs an efficient military to ensure sovereignty. (sp?)

If an insurrection ever hit Canada we would be done.

Isn't Canada currently carrying out a massive military exercise somewhere up north, with an even bigger one planned for 2006? There are a lot of resources knocking about the Arctic bits and apparently the world and it's mother are ignoring Canada's protestations that they own the waters there (a dubious claim).

Mince wrote:Isn't Canada currently carrying out a massive military exercise somewhere up north, with an even bigger one planned for 2006? There are a lot of resources knocking about the Arctic bits and apparently the world and it's mother are ignoring Canada's protestations that they own the waters there (a dubious claim).

Don't go there Mince, it turned out to be a fiasco. but I am sure they will eventually get it right once they get the proper equipment. The massive exercise consisted of HMCS Montreal, some RCAF helicopters and army personnel. A total of 600 people. As there is a possibility of gas and oil in the north, every man and his dog is claiming a chunk. The US via Alaska and Denmark via Greenland.

Aye - Andy.

Defense of the Realm

John Horvath 14.04.2004
Already countries are positioning themselves in a new world brought about by climatic change

Recently Canada has taken an unprecedented move of sending one of its largest warships, a squadron of helicopters and 200 ground troops to the high Arctic this summer in an exercise to show a little military muscle in the great white north. For Canada this is quite a sizable force. To put it in proper perspective, the entire Canadian army is around a quarter of million troops; for a major overseas operation, such as in Haiti, 450 troops were sent, which was considered large and even stretching the capacity of the Canadian Armed forces (at first the Canadian government wanted to send only sixty, but bowed to political pressure).

Such a relatively large military exercise, naturally, raises a question: what is going on in the arctic? Is this an extension of the war on terror? Maybe the Canadians know where Osama bin Laden is; after all, that sneaky terrorist had everyone looking for him somewhere in the warmth of the Middle East, and all along he has been hiding in an igloo somewhere up north! No wonder the Yanks could never find him.

Yet the idea of Osama bin Laden hiding in the Arctic is stretching the imagination a little too far, even for the most rabid conspiracy theorist. No, the real reason for Canada's military presence in the north is to send a clear message to other countries: "we are here."

The logistics of transporting and supporting many soldiers, sailors and airmen to such an isolated area will be formidable. Code-named "Narwhal", this military exercise will cost an estimated 5 million dollars, take three weeks, and will be the "cap stone" in a series of military moves in the North designed to bolster Canada's claim over the vast stretches of the uninhabited Arctic. Canada has launched a five-year plan to increase its military presence throughout its uninhabited Arctic territory, including satellite surveillance and far-reaching patrols of soldiers riding snowmobiles.


Although Narwhal is not specifically aimed at any one country in particular, there is no doubt about for whom the message is intended: that major superpower, which has always represented a threat to world peace -- Denmark. Yes, Canada's next major military adventure after Afghanistan and Haiti has to do with the latest chapter in an ongoing tussle between Canada and Denmark, both of whom lay claim to an island called Hans Island.


"flexing our muscles"


Hans Island is a three kilometer long stretch of rock and ice in the Nares Strait between Ellesmere Island and Greenland. It's so small that it doesn't even appear on most maps. Yet it has become a focus of challenges to Canada's sovereignty over the Arctic archipelago, where islands and waterways long claimed as Canadian are facing challenges from foreign governments. One of them is from Denmark. Danish warships showed up off the coast of Hans Island in the summer of 2002. A group of sailors disembarked and reportedly hoisted the Danish flag, actions which Canada considered a violation of its sovereignty.


Although the Canadian military denies Narwhal has anything to do with Denmark's claim to Hans Island, it will nevertheless be the largest Canadian military exercise ever in the Arctic. "This is the first time we'll have a joint naval, air and land force operating this far north," explained Colonel Norris Pettis, commander of the Canadian Forces northern area. "And it's sending a message that this land is important to us [...] that we can put troops, and aircraft and ships, on the ground to respond to whatever we might be called upon to deal with. [...] "It's putting a military presence up here [...] flexing our muscles."

According to the Canadian military, Narwhal will send a message, first of all to the people of the North, secondly to all Canadians and, perhaps most importantly, to whatever other countries out there that Canada owns the area and is paying attention to what happens in the North. "If you're laying claim to a piece of land you have to use it -- you have to show that you can go there, stay there and control it," he said. "The Canadian Forces is a good way to help establish that."


Yet Canada's ability to hold the Arctic if ever it was seriously challenged in the area is questionable. The Canadian navy is limited in what it can do in the North since its front-line warships can't venture into even loosely packed ice in Arctic waters. Thus, the Canadian military doesn't even have ships that could go up there year-round.

While Narwhal is without doubt aimed at the Danes, it's not the only country Canada has a dispute with in the north. Presently, Canada has in total four such boundary disputes in the Arctic.

Public reaction to the Canadian government's policy of muscle-flexing in the Arctic has been overwhelmingly positive. In an on-line poll conducted at the end of March, which asked the question of whether the Canadian government should bother expressing sovereignty in the Arctic, three quarters of respondents said that they should. Only 7% said no while almost a fifth didn't care.


On the diplomatic front, meanwhile, Canada is considering an offer from the Danish ambassador to negotiate the future of Hans Island. Svend Roed Nielsen, the Danish government's top representative in Canada, said he is willing to start "negotiations". However, he added that his government is not backing down from its claim that the barren and uninhabited island is in Danish territory. Admitting that Danish warships made repeated "visits" to the barren rock in the Arctic, the Danes also note that they could not rule out further visits in the near future the tip

The tip of a large, more menacing iceberg


The same scene was also played out in Denmark, where Canada's top remaining diplomat (the ambassador was recalled because of a funding scandal in Canada) was called before the Royal Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs to discuss the dispute and, in particular, Ottawa's planned military exercise. It was made clear that Copenhagen would take issue if Canada landed soldiers on the island.

While all this may seem to be another example of petty nationalism, akin to the piece of rock in the Mediterranean that brought Greece and Turkey to the brink of war, the confrontation between Canada and Denmark for a seemingly insignificant piece of rock in the Arctic is actually the tip of a large, more menacing iceberg.


As global warming makes the northwest passage through the Arctic navigable for longer stretches every year, with the possibility that the passage could be open year-round within 10-15 years, it has the potential to become a super-highway for shipping between Europe and east Asia. Thus, this small skirmish between Canada and Denmark could eventually snowball into a major confrontation between North America and the EU.

Precedents exist of international conflicts spurred on by economic interests in the polar regions. The Falklands War in the early 1980s was a case in point. The UK didn't go to war over the Falklands just because of a few thousand sheep. The Falklands is strategically placed, in that whoever lays claim to it also has a share in what goes on in Antarctica. Since many geologists estimate that there are huge oil reserves around Antarctica, a presence on the Falklands guarantees a share of the spoils if and when the Antarctic is exploited.

It's a shame to think that governments are resigned to the fate of climate change and are already looking to what the world will be like after the polar regions succumb to global warming. The future exploitation of the world's polar regions opens a pandora box of problems that will undoubtedly increase international tensions. Perhaps if more time and energy is devoted to minimising and ultimately reversing the effects of climate change, this pandora's box can then remain closed, and thus spare future generations of one more cause for worry.
http://www.heise.de/tp/english/inhalt/co/17186/1.html
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If the Northwest passage melts - and they reckon it'll do that within a decade - the Europe-Asia route will have 4350 miles sliced off it compared with the Panama canal. There's plenty of oil bubbling away in the Beaufort sea and truckloads of diamonds around too. There's a mine north east of Yellowknife somewhere that will soon account for 15% of the world's supply, so they say. So it looks like Canada's going to have to develop a throbbing military muscle or the rest of the world (including Britain, apparently) are going to continue chortling around the ice packs with gay abandon.

To put it in proper perspective, the entire Canadian army is around a quarter of million troops;

This statement is totally inaccurate, who edited this mess?

Although alot of well made points are brought up in that article the most glaringly obvious mistake is the number of troops.

The CF has about 60,000 members in the Regular Force and about 20,000 in the Primary Reserve Force. DND employs about 20,000 Public Servants.

That was taken from the actual DND website.

From those numbers
Regular force would say that Canada has about 12,000 regular force soldiers who are actually combat arms from the reserve component probably simular numbers exist but from those 12,000 reservists how many are actually switched on enough that you would be willing to go into combat with is probably closer to 6,000. So if you stretch the truth abit you might be able to say that canada has about 18,000 actual combat arm troops, now Denmarks population is around 5,500,000 I think while Canada's is 33,000,000 any conflict despite our current level of "suckyness" I'm sure we would win YAY CANADA!

Seriously though even with Canada's low budget it is still 3 times of that of Denmark military wise although to keep a ratio going with them we would have to spend about 6 times on the military populaion wise.

In the mean time I have heard of at least 4 'larger ones' on the go to increase Canada's control over the North. Personally I would sit at least a company up there and have live fire section attacks going on in the direction of the Danes.

Last time I checked landing uniformed troops in someone elses territory without there permission was an act of war. Although it seems silly to do it over a single boat.

I say we go over to this little Island and inform them they are in resticted water and if they do not leave within 24 hours it will be considered an act of stupidity and we arrest them all.

Hell the Mexican police arrest sailers all the time and it costs the gov's big time to get there people back.

Just my 2 cents cheers.

Since the discovery of goodies in the High Arctic, I would suspect that Canada will concentrate more in that area. Prior to the discovery, most people paid lip service to Canada's sovereignty of the High Arctic, with the exception of the odd US submarine passing through. As a point of interest, most western countries spend 2% of their GNP on their military, whereas, Canada only spends 1% of it's GNP. It is time that Canada started to concentrate more on it's military and this latest diplomatic squabble may just push them in that direction.

My own son was supposed to be posted to the Middle East, but that has been cancelled. He has now been told that he will be going to a much colder place.

Aye - Andy

Andy which unit is your son with, cause them lads in 2VP are off to the ukraine for several months I think.