I'm not so hard on Paul Hellyer as I used to be.
While you are at the library and looking up Unification, pick up Douglas Bland's Chiefs of Defence - excellent survey of Unification and its subsequent evolution; the book is strongly helped by the fact that Bland was able to interview almost every Minister, Deputy Minister, and CDS that served since the early '60's.
I think Hellyer was right in some aspects for ramming home unification in that prior to a Single National Command Element, the Canadian Government was unable to get a single cohesive piece of advice from its military - rather it got Army, Navy, and Air Force empires competing to give advice based along "Service-Based" ideas of National Defence. This tended to be uncoherent and extremely demanding (Big Army! No Big Fleet!! NO, AIR POWER!!!) - what Hellyer wanted was a National Command element that he could turn to for unbiased advice based upon the requirements of Defence. Unfortunately, I feel that Turdeau's "brilliant leadership" (cough - Donald McDonald - cough), combined with some systemic failings when Unification was enacted, allowed Hellyer's ideal to become unglued. I feel that now we have re-gravitated towards a Service Based force which may bring back alot of problems that we should have left behind in the 60's. I think we saw shades of this with the reaction to General Hillier's call to put Army interests ahead of Navy and Air Force ones. Hellyer wanted Commanders to view assets of National Defence as one and the same - building on capabilites that furthered National Security rather then supporting independent goals and plans.
What do I mean by "systemic failings"? I feel that taking traditions, personal structures, and tactical organization that each service possessed and throwing it in the blender was a big mistake. Environmental or Service-based "Tribalism" is a strong force and has many valid and important roles to play in the branches of a Military and attempts to either ignore them or do-away with them completely are bound to end up in failure (or, in our case, with some major headaches). I feel that any attempt to reinforce Hellyer's notion of National Command will have to do a much better job of incorporating and accommodating Service-based requirements into a National Defence Force.
Incidentally, I believe the American's had this same Defence debate in the 1950's. Their approach and solution (in the form of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) was different then ours. You may want to look at that as well.
