Cutting the CAF to the bone

OTTAWA—Following the recent NATO Summit in Washington, D.C., Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Defence Minister Bill Blair sheepishly returned to Ottawa after being thoroughly chastised by their allied counterparts. Despite the Trudeau Liberals increasing Canada's defence budget by more than 54 per cent since they were elected in 2015, the NATO honchos want even more money spent on military hardware. Thus, Blair and Trudeau have pledged that, by 2032, Canada will spend that magical NATO target figure of two per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) on the defence budget. Of course, that promise is not worth the paper upon which it is not written, as there is little-to-no chance that Trudeau and Blair will still be steering the government eight years from now. To be fair, there are a lot of major purchases underway which will indeed spend a lot of money, but most of those projects will not see deliveries until well into the future. For the Royal Canadian Air Force, the Liberals announced they would purchase 88 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters at a purchase price of $19-billion. Keep in mind, this is the one aircraft that the Trudeau Liberals vowed to never buy during the election campaign of 2015. While two of these F-35s flew over Ottawa on Canada Day in the RCAF’s 100th anniversary flypast, those aircraft were flown by the Vermont Air National Guard. That was because Canada will not receive its first F-35 until 2026, and the final delivery of the 88th fighter is due in 2032. The full life-cycle cost of the F-35 is now estimated at a whopping $74-billion. Last month, there was a lot of hype announcing the fact that Irving Shipbuilding is starting the construction of a fleet of 15 new River-class destroyers. This is not a new project by any means as it is the product of the 2010 National Shipbuilding Strategy launched by the Harper Conservatives. Until last month, these warships were designated the Canadian Surface Combatants, and the design is based upon the British Type 26 frigate. Nevertheless, the Royal Canadian Navy does not expect to commission the first of the River-class destroyers until 2030, with the 15th and final warship entering service in the early 2040s. The cost for this acquisition project is now estimated to top $100-billion. Not factored into that equation is what the Canadian government will need to spend to keep the current fleet of 12 Halifax-class frigates serviceable until that date. The City-class frigates entered service in the early 1990s, and although they have all gone through a thorough mid-life refit and modernization, the maintenance costs will only balloon as these vessels age out. Another big spending announcement made coincidentally while Trudeau and Blair were at the NATO summit is the proposed acquisition of 12 modern diesel-electric submarines. This project is in its infancy, and there is no timeline for when Canada's submariners can expect the new fleet. Of course, for anyone familiar with Canada's current submarine capability—or, more accurately, our lack thereof—the question begs just who the hell is going to operate these 12 new submarines? At present, the RCN possesses four used British diesel-electric submarines that were built in the 1980s. Canada took possession in 2004. However, the log books show that since 2021, only one of these submarines—HMCS Windsor—has even put to sea. In two brief patrols in 2022 and 2023, HMCS Windsor logged a grand total of 57 days at sea. The RCN admits that the reason for this is a shortage of qualified personnel. This amounts to a true conundrum wherein you cannot qualify submariners without going to sea, and you cannot go to sea without qualified submariners. This, of course, is not the only instance of the Liberal government putting the cart before the horse to solve a defence problem. Shortly after they were elected in 2015, the Liberals announced that the RCAF had a capability gap in that they did not have enough pilots and qualified ground crew to meet both Canada's NORAD and NATO commitments. The solution was to announce the sole-source purchase of 18 Super Hornets from Boeing. When Boeing took Bombardier to the international trade tribunal over an unrelated civilian contract, the Trudeau Liberal government voiced their displeasure, and declared that Boeing was no longer a “trusted” supplier. The Super Hornet deal was scuppered, and to address the capability gap, Canada instead purchased 18 legacy F-18s that had been mothballed by the Australian Air Force. As a result of the lengthy refurbishment of these aircraft, not all have actually entered service with the RCAF to date. This past March, the RCAF suspended its advanced fighter training due to the advanced age of its CT-155 training aircraft fleet. For the record the 24-year-old CT-155s are considerably newer than the RCAF's fleet of CF-18 fighters. As the RCAF awaits the 88 new F-35s, would-be fighter pilots are awaiting slots on training courses of allied air forces. All of that to say that the Liberals' heady promises of shiny new equipment in the distant future may be a case of too little, too late. Scott Taylor is the editor and publisher of Esprit de Corps magazine. The Hill Times

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Cutting the CAF to the bone

The Liberals' heady promises of shiny new equipment in the distant future may be a case of too little, too late.

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