Juno News - June 02, 2024


Trudeau’s defence policy fails to impress Americans


Episode Stats

Length

8 minutes

Words per Minute

178.54384

Word Count

1,464

Sentence Count

78

Misogynist Sentences

1


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Well, I said we talk about the big and the small here. Let's go to one of the bigger ones
00:00:12.400 because Canada's back. Do you remember that? It was Justin Trudeau's bold proclamation when he
00:00:17.360 was elected that Canada's place in the world was going to be secured. Well, now we are being
00:00:23.160 chided by our allies for not spending enough on defense. A letter from 23 senators was urging
00:00:30.040 Canada to meet its NATO benchmark of spending 2% of GDP on defense. Canada has still at this point
00:00:37.000 not made significant moves towards that. Richard Shamuka is a senior fellow with the
00:00:42.240 Macdonald-Laurier Institute and joins me now. Richard, good to talk to you. Thanks for coming
00:00:46.460 on today. Thanks for having me. So first off, explain why this target matters because
00:00:51.940 this is Canada is not alone in falling short in some countries well below that target.
00:00:58.100 Well, we're certainly in the bottom area and even our ambassador from the United States has just
00:01:02.260 recently said that in a public statement. But it's important for a bunch of reasons. The actual
00:01:09.340 target number may not be as relevant. It's really a benchmark that has been agreed to by all NATO states
00:01:15.800 to sort of have a threshold by which, you know, states kind of reach that number. And
00:01:21.460 when you hit 2%, what generally happens is that you start having enough funding that to sort of cover
00:01:29.180 all the major bases of defense. So you're talking about the equipment purchases, the operations and
00:01:35.800 sustainment numbers, and also your personnel. And it allows for basically a sustainable level of
00:01:43.780 defense output within a country. And for Canada, we've really missed that for several decades, I should
00:01:51.600 say. And especially in the last 10 years, at the very bottom, we hit about 1% just as the Harper
00:01:59.580 era ended. And we've seen a ramp up of the funding since. But a lot of that money has not really gone
00:02:04.900 towards basically capital purchases. So rehabilitating the equipment by which the military
00:02:11.920 utilizes. And had we hit 2%, we generally start seeing the numbers sort of come to alignment where
00:02:17.480 you start seeing a regular replacement schedule for equipment that would allow for the military to
00:02:22.600 have a newer, more sort of less expensive operation and management costs that are associated with
00:02:29.020 actually operating defense. Yeah, it's certainly how the money is spent matters. I mean, theoretically,
00:02:33.940 you could, you know, blow your billions of dollars on, you know, DEI consultants and, you know,
00:02:38.960 workplace training and, you know, technically spend 2% of your GDP on the defense, but you're not talking
00:02:43.360 about substantive investment there. And in Canada, I feel Canada must have one of the worst track records
00:02:48.620 in NATO for defense procurement, just in terms of how long it takes and how insanely convoluted a
00:02:54.700 process it is. And that can't be helping us. Certainly, it's among the worst. And one of the big sort of
00:03:00.400 factors that if you look at is that there's a there's another threshold, the 20% threshold for actual
00:03:05.960 capital purchases. And in the last defense policy update, they actually did say that they're going to
00:03:11.260 hit the 20% threshold. The reality is that if you look at some of the more serious members of NATO, they will
00:03:16.240 actually hit around 30%. So that's the United Kingdom, France and the United States. And that's where you
00:03:22.500 start seeing actually actually become more operational relevant, you have newer equipment,
00:03:26.580 equipment that isn't around 2020, 20 to 30 years of age, you're looking at equipment that's starting
00:03:31.980 to come around 10, 10 years, maybe 15 years. And so if you but our system, as you sort of point out,
00:03:38.600 it's been really not been able to sort of deliver systems within reasonable timeframes, right? So if you
00:03:45.400 think about, we've just recently announced that we're going to purchase a new drone system, the MQ9,
00:03:50.940 design, it's taken basically 17 years for the government to go from initial conception of the
00:03:56.260 project, to deciding and announcing a purchase, and it's going to take another four some years to
00:04:01.720 actually get it into service or initial operating capability. Most countries have done that in under
00:04:06.480 four years, the whole system and the MQ9, the RPAS system is, you know, it's a bit of an outliner. But
00:04:12.880 if you look at most of our other programs, they tend to take one to two to three years longer
00:04:17.700 than what they should. And as a result, we sort of keep older systems into service for longer. And
00:04:24.440 that, again, increases the operating costs of the military. And that's actually makes this
00:04:29.400 the system much less efficient overall. So let's talk about the America component here. The United
00:04:35.820 States is a country whose military is very well integrated with Canada's on a number of things.
00:04:41.060 We share intelligence, we share air defense, we are obviously allies in NATO. So what does it mean
00:04:47.040 when Canada is getting really notably reprimanded by American politicians?
00:04:53.880 So this has been coming for a while. You've heard, there's been basically a lot of grumblings that the
00:04:59.680 Americans have gone privately to Canada and have said, this is not acceptable. And as you know,
00:05:05.420 Canada's in a really unique position where because we're part of NORAD, we're basically,
00:05:09.980 we have a binational command where our, basically our military forces and their military forces
00:05:16.260 operate shoulder to shoulder in a single unified command system. So the US has a very unique
00:05:23.120 situation where they're able to, they actually spend their money on our defense. 60% of NORAD
00:05:29.220 spending is actually American spending. So they have a real interest to see our security as well as
00:05:36.400 their security properly paid for. And that's why you're seeing, you know, 23 senators, some of some
00:05:41.760 pretty significant names within both caucuses, like Tammy Duckworth, who's a major senator for the
00:05:47.540 Democratic Party, come out and say, this is just, just not acceptable. And you don't see this happen
00:05:51.720 very often. And that's largely because the sort of the complaints that have been stated consistently
00:05:57.120 through wide variety of places is they feel it's just not been heated. And they finally came out
00:06:02.860 and said it in public. So let's talk about where this goes from here. I mean, obviously governments
00:06:10.460 are going to have to spend a lot of money at a time when the Canadian government doesn't have all that
00:06:15.120 money to fix this. And even for a conservative government to come in, there's a, there's a risk
00:06:20.120 attached to saying we're going to spend that much. So politically, where do you see this going?
00:06:24.260 My best guess is that even if you had a new government come in, they're going to look at
00:06:29.860 the system itself and say, as we were just talking about the procurement system, that it needs reform,
00:06:35.160 like serious reform. And the sort of the spending that we pour into this, with some exceptions,
00:06:41.200 will probably not be spent quickly enough or effectively enough. So I don't foresee in the near
00:06:48.300 future, even if there was a new government, that there would be vast changes to how defense is,
00:06:52.700 defense is sort of the money that's allocated defense. And if you look at how the liberal
00:06:58.300 government is sort of allocated spending, a large portion is backloaded past 2028, 2030 or something
00:07:03.520 like that. There are some big purchases coming through the CSE or the new frigates that will
00:07:08.960 replace the Halifax class, which are now at 30 years of age are going to, is going to start wrapping
00:07:13.720 up pretty soon. But there's a whole bunch of other systems. And it's really the sort of
00:07:18.360 unsexy sort of in between stuff that kind of the connectivity that's going to be that's really
00:07:23.980 actually revolutionizing warfare going on. And those systems really require a new way of actually
00:07:28.800 thinking about defense and operating defense. If you look at our allies, like the United States
00:07:32.920 and United Kingdom, they're starting to make major reforms around this. So my guess is that you
00:07:37.760 probably wouldn't see much of a deviation from the white paper. But certainly you would see a spending,
00:07:43.480 you may see some real efforts of trying to reform the system in order to make it better when we
00:07:49.460 actually have to put money into it, that we get better results than what we're getting now.
00:07:54.480 All right. Well, it's a fascinating topic. Let's hope some common sense prevails here. Richard
00:07:59.120 Shamuka, Senior Fellow with the Macdonald-Laurie Institute. Thank you so much, Richard.
00:08:03.180 Thanks for having me.
00:08:04.240 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show. Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.
00:08:11.480 News.