Canada at the defence crossroads: The challenges of thinking long-term
Witnessing the ongoing public debate about fighter jets and submarines this fall has felt a lot like watching people argue over baseball, hockey or some other team sport.Naturally, it has been particularly uncompromising online where the characteristics and quirks of each aircraft and boat have been analyzed to the nth degree with the kind of fan worship usually reserved for pro franchises.Those who love the F-35, love it a lot. The same can be said for the Gripen. The mania is dialled back somewhat in the debate over whether to choose the South Korean KS-III submarine or Germany’s Type 12CD, but it’s still present.Lost in all of the noise surrounding the minutia — as well as the debate around jobs and economic benefits — have been some fundamental questions of national security and industrial policy that the federal government has been unwilling or unable to answer to this point. Prime Minister Mark Carney has this year launched the Defence Investment Agency and committed to ramp up military spending in a way not seen in generations. (Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press)The two most pertinent questions facing the country, which is about to dump $81.8 billion into rebuilding the military and the defence industrial base, can be distilled to this: What precisely do we expect the Canadian military to do in this new arguably more dangerous world? And what are the key pieces of military hardware that should be built at home as a guarantee of our sovereignty?The federal government would argue that it addresses the first question in its Trudeau-era defence policy (Our North, Strong and Free) and the second one will be answered in its long-awaited defence industrial strategy, due sometime in the next few weeks.But this is Ottawa, which — over the last two decades — has been a wasteland of pretty policies with good intentions that have struggled to become reality because of an absence of political will, money or both. It has been particularly thus in the realm of defence since the end of the Cold War where successive federal governments sought to balance their budgets using the largest single discretionary line item in the federal balance sheet: the Department of National Defence.Rarely have the policy debates started from the strategic perspective of where is Canada's place in the world? What do we want to do? What do we need to safeguard our sovereignty? And what do we need to do in order to do that?There was a flash of that thinking in the Trudeau government’s 2017 return to peacekeeping plan, which — with the exception of one mission to Mali — withered and died a quiet death for the want of both political and fiscal support. Wesley Wark, one the country’s leading experts on national security, said there has been an absence of long-term strategic thinking at the federal level and many in the defence and foreign policy community are still mired in the fiscal and political limitations of the post-Cold War era, which is now inarguably over. “I don't think people have really thought about some of the breadth and latitude of choice that has opened up,” said Wark.“What they have, of course, are many, many shopping lists, whether it's army shopping lists, navy shopping lists, space shopping lists, air force shopping lists.”In the broader sense, the notion that we can do big things, he said, he’s “not sure they've quite grasped it.”Wrapping our heads around what’s needed to properly secure and defend the Arctic, Wark said, will be an excellent starting point for institutions that have been inwardly focused for the last several years.WATCH | More on the fighter jet debate:Canada has reopened debate over its planned F-35 purchase as trade tensions with the United States intensify. Newly obtained defence figures show the Swedish Gripen, the main alternative under consideration, received a significantly lower capability rating in Canada’s 2021 assessment.“It's going to be a major defence commitment for Canada, and is going to impose all kinds of new ways of thinking about the equipment that the Canadian Armed Forces needs, the training it needs, infrastructure it needs, the planning it needs, the intelligence it needs,” said Wark, who believes the crisis in Eastern Europe over Ukraine will also force more strategic consideration.“I think that's going to impose a lot of discipline that otherwise wasn't there.”Viewed through the lens of what makes sense for defending the country — rather than what we can afford to do or what our favourite plane might be — potentially puts the debate over a mixed fighter fleet into a whole new light.The same can be said about industrial policy and the notion of whether fighter jets — or even submarines — could, or should, be built in Canada. If the navy gets 12 submarines, as proposed, the boats would make up one-third, possibly one-half of the fleet. Surface combat ships, including the new destroyers and possibly corvettes, are being built by Canadian shipyards. Why not submarines?At the moment, Defence Minister David McGuinty is focused on getting a deal with either South Korea’s Hanwha Ocean or Germany’s ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems (TKMS) over the line and not on the long-term sovereignty implications. “We're well on the way right now in terms of conducting this procurement with two established manufacturers, one in Germany and one here in Korea. And having visited both of their facilities, I can say this, standing up a manufacturing site for submarines is not an uncomplicated thing,” McGuinty recently said at the end of the prime minister’s visit to South Korea. Canada, he said, clearly “needs submarines in short order, not in 35 years. And it takes time to stand up that kind of facility.”He finds a kindred spirit in the commander of the navy, Vice-Admiral Angus Topshee.“Right now we don't have any shipyards in Canada that are capable of building submarines and our experience with the National Shipbuilding Strategy over the last 15 years is it takes some time to build those skills,” Topshee said during the same trip in October, noting that a decision on whether to establish submarine-building capacity is up to the government.Hanwha Ocean's submarine, pictured here, is one of two boats Canada is considering to purchase to upgrade its fleet. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)“The challenge that we see is that to maintain a submarine industry requires a consistent production line. And to be able to build enough submarines in Canada to sustain a production line will be a real challenge because our requirement in the Canadian Navy is 12 submarines. To maintain a recurring submarine construction capability, Japan has a fleet of 22 boats that they cycle through. So, it's a lot of submarines to be able to sustain submarine production.”For his part, Wark said he’s not convinced Canada needs a submarine-construction capacity, but acknowledged a discussion about sovereign industrial capacity is needed.It was TKMS that initially floated the idea of partnering with a Canadian shipyard to construct some of the fleet in Canada. The German shipbuilder did the same thing for South Korea more than two decades ago and helped build a domestic submarine industry in that country.South Korea’s former deputy minister of military capabilities, Hyunki Cho, told CBC News in an interview last spring that his country realized in the late 1970s that it had to stand on its own two feet from a defence industry perspective. Like Canada today, South Korea was dependent on buying U.S. weapons. That was until former U.S. president Jimmy Carter floated the idea of withdrawing American troops from the peninsula — and the country started thinking long-term about its sovereign defence needs. “Inevitably, we had to increase our defence capabilities, in order for us to respond against the military threats from the north, and in order for us to establish a readiness posture,” he said. “So we advanced our defence industry capabilities through legislation, as well as putting in resources from the government side.”It’s not like Canada is a stranger to that kind of thinking.During the Second World War, the country started from scratch and produced over 800,000 military transport vehicles (trucks, troop carriers, ambulances, fuel tankers and mobile workshops), almost 200 Grizzly tanks (an improved version of the U.S. M4A1 Sherman) and 2,150 mobile self-propelled guns.Canada's aircraft industry delivered over 16,000 aircraft, including front-line fighters and bombers.And, also within a five-year space, the country’s shipyards built over 400 naval vessels and 348 large merchant ships (10,000 tonnes) to protect transatlantic supply lines and transport war materials.
