Is it time to trim the CAF’s senior officer fat?

OTTAWA—On Nov. 25, the Trudeau government put its best spin on a very delicate situation by officially announcing that General Wayne Eyre is Canada’s new chief of the defence staff. Eyre had been the acting-CDS since Admiral Art McDonald temporarily stepped aside from the job last March to allow for a police investigation into alleged sexual misconduct. That investigation was concluded in August with the military police stating there was insufficient evidence to lay criminal or service charges against McDonald. Armed with this outcome, McDonald announced that given his vindication, he was prepared to resume his duties as Canada’s top commander. The Trudeau government rationalized that a “lack of evidence” does not equate to the accused being “innocent,” and, in the interim, left Eyre as the acting CDS and McDonald in limbo. Any doubt as to who was going to lead the Canadian Armed Forces forward out of this sexual misconduct crisis was put to rest with the Governor General signing the order to terminate McDonald’s contract on Nov. 25. Contrary to many misleading headlines, McDonald was not fired from his job. The CDS and all generals and flag officers serve at the discretion of the federal government. Which brings us to a question which was raised in another news item last week: why does Canada have so many generals and admirals? The Ottawa Citizen reported that over the past several decades, the CAF’s rank and file has shrunk while the ratio of generals to soldiers has steadily increased. Documents obtained under the Access to Information Act revealed that as of March 31, 2021, the regular force had dropped to 65,644 and was commanded by 129 generals and admirals. By contrast, in 1991 there were a total of 85,977 personnel in uniform commanded by 127 generals and admirals. In rough terms, that means that 30 years ago there were approximately 677 personnel for every officer of general rank. Today, that ratio is down to just shy of 510 per general. There was a concerted effort in the mid-1990s to reduce the rank creep within the CAF and the Liberal government vowed to bring that ratio down to one general per 1,000 personnel. At that juncture, it would have meant reducing the serving 99 generals through attrition to roughly 70 generals and admirals. Somewhere along the way that goal was abandoned and slowly but surely the numbers have crept back to the current top-heavy bloated state. In comparison to other military formations, The Citizen pointed out that the U.S. Marine Corps has a firm cap of 62 generals for a force that numbers more than 180,000 active personnel. That is an impressive ratio of 3,000 marines per general. Even looking at Canadian military history, we used to have a far better “teeth to tail” composition of our Armed Forces. At its zenith in the Second World War, the First Canadian Army numbered 251,000 personnel. This was broken down into two corps, consisting of five divisions and two independent brigades. This force was commanded by a total of 72 generals. Admittedly, those 72 were major-generals, lieutenant-generals, and generals as brigadiers were not counted as generals during the Second World War. However, even if you factor brigadiers into the mix, it is at least five times the current ratio and they were actually fighting a war. Unlike many civilian titles and positions, military rank is normally commensurate with a formation. For instance, a lieutenant-general (three-star) would be a corps commander. A major-general (two stars) would be divisional commander, and a brigadier-general (one star) would command you guessed it, a brigade. However, in the relatively tiny Canadian military we have no such thing as a corps formation—we have notional divisions and our actual brigades are commanded by colonels. Our allies are not fooled by the amount of maple leaves on our generals’ shoulders. They care about the military competency that we can bring to the alliance. In fact, having fewer generals would increase the esteem of those senior officers. Creating more of them is equivalent to simply printing more money in that it will only devalue the currency. Scott Taylor is the editor and publisher of Esprit de Corps magazine. The Hill Times