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Capability Analysis, Strategic Outlook

Prospects and Pitfalls for National Defence: Turning the Liberal Party Election Platform into Policy

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The following piece is cross-posted from our partners at the CDA Institute. You can read the article in its original form here. 

CDA Institute Research Fellow Chuck Davies examines some of the challenges facing the new Canadian Liberal government in turning its election platform on defence into government policy.

The Liberal Party election platform outlines a number of policy intents that will clearly shape the new government’s approach over the coming four years. In the section called “Renewing Canada’s Place in the World and Strengthening our Security,” the Liberal platform contains a mix of defence policy, foreign policy, and, to a lesser degree, national security policy promises. It’s an eclectic offering spanning what are actually three very different policy areas that require different approaches to formulating a way ahead.

Defence Policy

Defence policy has a long-​term horizon and defines what defence capabilities the nation intends to acquire, maintain, or divest, and aligns these ends with the necessary ways and means. Decisions taken by past governments have already largely delimited the military options of the new Liberal government, and its decisions will in turn define the military options available to future governments. Consequently, maintaining reasonable stability in defence policy through successive administrations is very much in the nation’s interest.

How a government uses Canada’s military capabilities is not a question of defence policy but rather foreign or national security policy. It is not evident from the Liberal platform that its framers fully understand the differences between them, given the degree of intermixing of commitments across all three policy areas. This illuminates the new government’s first challenge: avoiding policy incoherence, or even contradiction, that may hinder its ability to act confidently and competently on the international stage, or to establish durable national policy directions.

The most obvious example is the commitment to undertake “an open and transparent review process of existing defence capabilities, with the goal of delivering a more effective, better-​equipped military.” While a very laudable and welcome commitment to strategic defence policy renewal, it is unfortunately undermined by other commitments that effectively set arbitrary boundaries, which could make it much less “open and transparent” and may render it un-​strategic.

A mock up of he Canadian variant of Lockheed Martin's F-35 Lightning II.
A mock up of he Canadian variant of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Lightning II.

Issues include a funding envelope that is predetermined (and unchanged from the previous government’s plan) alongside promises of substantive improvements to the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF). These are to be achieved by freeing up resources through, among other measures, efficiency improvements inside the Department of National Defence and exiting the F-​35 program. However, the chances that adequate financial flexibility can be created in this way are very low. Expectations for substantial savings from an alternative fighter platform are unrealistic, as noted by Richard Shimooka and Jeff Collins – a conclusion supported by Auditor General and Parliamentary Budget Office reviews. It is unfortunate that the Liberal Party did not apply the same costing discipline underpinning these studies when developing its cost-​savings estimate.

Similarly, as I have previously shown, digging measurable savings from the defence budget through internal transformation is a difficult, long-​term, dollar-​by-​dollar process. It won’t generate large sums quickly. Savings can be extracted by the more usual expedient of fiat, but only at the cost of further eroding the ability of National Defence to do its job of generating and sustaining military forces.

A viable answer to the funding-​capability gap does not lie in picking a different fighter aircraft or lopping perceived “tail” off National Defence. It can only be found in a combination of: (a) improving the efficiency with which the government translates “bucks” into “bang” and (b) bringing the government’s appetite for maintaining CAF capabilities into line with the level of stable funding it is prepared to commit.

To the Party’s credit, the Liberal platform does recognize the need to make strategic changes in both areas by committing to a defence policy review and improving defence procurement, but it pins too much hope on quickly finding economies within the existing defence budget to resource new investments. A more realistic approach would involve examining and reforming the Government of Canada’s business model for managing defence capabilities over their full life cycles, including the procurement function,

File Photo Credit: Department of National Defence.

faster” and to have “vigorous Parliamentary oversight” needs a much more concrete action plan if measurable improvements are to be made in defence capability and resource management. Real change will require serious reform of the business fundamentals within the Government of Canada, which can only be done within a sustained, non-​partisan effort by Parliament and, probably, several successive governments.

Conclusion

The Liberal Party platform is, naturally, a political document aimed at marketing the Party to the electorate. It is not a policy document, so it would be unrealistic to expect it to present a clear, well-​defined, strategic framework on these key issues. Nevertheless, it does tell us a lot about how the new government is likely to proceed, and suggests where it may run into some of the same pitfalls its predecessors have encountered.

The platform presumes what are likely unrealistic prospects for quickly finding substantive savings from defence transformation and exiting the F-​35 program. The government will soon run into this reality, and its response promises to reveal a great deal. If it simply extracts savings from other areas of National Defence by fiat, it will be following the traditional practices of most previous governments and Canada’s defence capabilities will continue their steady, slow, largely hidden erosion. If they face the realities and launch a serious defence policy review that results in a more sustainable alignment between defence funding and CAF defence capabilities, they will place the nation on a much improved footing for the future.

A refocus from “hard power” to “soft power” will also need to be carefully watched over time in order to gauge whether it enhances, diminishes, or simply changes Canada’s ability to influence global events. The impact on the CAF will also need to be observed. Mounting and sustaining a larger range of very diverse but smaller non-​combat missions could be either good or bad, or perhaps both or neither, from the point of view of preserving the core capabilities of the nation’s force of last resort.

Finally, the commitment to be better than the Conservatives at managing defence procurement and the wider defence business are unlikely to be realized without a major renewal of key parts of the basic machinery of government. There are no indications that the new Liberal government understands this fact any better than its predecessors. Also, any such renewal is unlikely to be implemented within the mandate of any one government, leaving little incentive to undertake it. Perhaps the best that can be hoped for is that new government starts to set the conditions for Parliament to finally work on the problem.

Colonel Charles Davies (Ret’d) is a CDA Institute Research Fellow and a former Logistics officer who served for four years as the strategic planning director for the Material Group of the Department of National Defence and three years as the senior director responsible for material acquisition and support policy in the department.

North America

Navies, Narratives, and Canada’s Submarine Fleet

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The following piece is cross-posted from our partners at the CDA Institute as part of an ongoing content sharing relationship. You can read the article in its original form here. 

CDA Institute guest contributor Paul Mitchell, a professor at Canadian Forces College, explores the question of narratives as it relates to Canada’s submarine fleet.

As HMCS Chicoutimi slipped silently into the depths of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, I reflected on what many friends and family remarked when I told them of my opportunity to spend a day underwater on her: “are you crazy?” Indeed, this particular submarine made their concern all the more poignant. Chicoutimi, after all, is arguably the most infamous submarine in the fleet given the fire on its maiden voyage to Canada, an incident that cost the life of Lt. (N) Chris Saunders, repairs costing millions of dollars, and a long delayed re-​entry into operational service. The fire established a story that we had bought lemons from a used car lot.

Since the fire, the navy has had to fight against this very well established narrative. Along with the usual references to the West Edmonton Mall, such derision extends even into the intellectual realm. Professor Michael Byers regularly publishes critiques of the program under snappy titles like That Sinking Feeling. If you Google “Canadian submarine” and “boondoggle,” you will get the picture very quickly.

I shared neither of the qualms of my family, nor the derision of the critics. The dedication and professionalism of those who work beneath the waves is remarkable. The cramped quarters would challenge most of us. Passageways are similar to airplane aisles, requiring passing people to turn sideways and get closely acquainted with their physical features. The “racks” in which one sleeps are roughly the size of a coffin, with just as much headspace. Three toilets are shared by 48 crew men and women (four women proudly serve aboard Chicoutimi), and the mess, a space measuring roughly ten by ten feet, is the only spot where one might escape the demands of the work environment. The biggest space aboard her is the operations room, smaller than most people’s living room, in which a team of 15 to 20 people work. The stink of diesel fuel embeds itself into hair and clothing. Finally, the secrecy of submarine movements means that no one may reveal when they will be leaving or returning to port, thus complicating any sort of social or family life.

The constraints of life are dominated by rigid safety protocols followed religiously. Failure results in death. Once the hatches were locked down, a rapid roll call raced through the vessel to ensure that no one had been left outside: early in the last decade, such a procedure was not standard in another navy, and two submariners, forgotten in the conning tower, paid for it with their lives. Once underwater, a constant drone of contacts, distances, and bearings, as well as depth soundings echoed within the operations room to ensure that Chicoutimi neither hit the bottom, nor vessels sailing above. When you can’t look out a window and see where you are, your reliance on technical systems becomes paramount.

Telling the real submarine story is inherently difficult. To begin with, Canadians have a certain “sea blinded-​ness” and the navy is an “unseen service”: most live far from the coasts and the demands of protecting them does not resonate. Submarines’ inherent stealthiness and secrecy compounds this further. Last, while the navy has good public relations programmes that enable ordinary Canadians to visit its ships and even sail aboard them for a lucky few, similar opportunities with submarines are rare. For my day aboard Chicoutimi, I lobbied the navy relentlessly for about a year, and then had to wait a further 18 months for an opening to occur.

Still, the basic problem affecting the navy’s submarine story is its plot. The navy likes to focus on technical details of the submarines.

Compared with surface vessels, submarines are relatively cost effective in conducting surveillance given the enormous ranges that their sensors are able to surveil together with the small size of their crews. Furthermore, this surveillance can be done very discreetly, allowing submarines to operate undetected in sensitive areas. Canadian submarines have performed very useful roles in the Caribbean Sea monitoring the transit of drug shipments, passing along such information to surface vessels and aircraft for their physical interdiction. Submarines also were able to monitor illegal fishing by American vessels in Canadian waters, surprising a few with a radio transmission noting their activities. It promotes the notion of the “balanced fleet”: waterspace control requires operating in all three dimensions – above, on, and below sea level.

Such arguments ring cold for ordinary Canadians given the lack of connection these success stories have for day to day life. The durability of the narrative of dysfunction is frustrating. Thus, no sub news is good news for the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN). That may satisfy admirals running the day to day operation of the fleet, but it is short sighted when it comes to justifying and replacing these vessels.

In order to drive out the narrative of dysfunction, the navy needs to address the emotive angle: when Canadians call our submarines lemons, they do so not because they know this to be a fact, but rather they feel it to be so. The metaphor of the used car is an easy one to understand and resonates strongly. But our submarines, used though they may be, are so much more than that. A trip on a submarine is like going into outer space. The safety culture of space engineering share much in common with submarines: the environment of outer space is every bit as unforgiving as the undersea environment.

Similarly, there is a “cool” factor that stems from such high technology that has never been exploited by the RCN (although has been by the US Navy – witness films such as The Hunt for Red October and Crimson Tide). If the RCN wishes to change the narrative of its submarines, it must begin to think along these lines. Only then may ordinary Canadians begin to see these vessels, critical to modern maritime security, as something less dysfunctional, and something more relatable to their day to day lives.

Dr. Paul T. Mitchell is a Professor of Defence Studies at the Canadian Forces College, where he is the Director of Academics and the RMC Associate Dean of Arts (CFC). He is well published on submarine affairs: his very first academic publication in 1991 examined the issue of Strategic ASW and War Termination. (Images courtesy of Paul Mitchell.)