The Defence Budget [superthread]

[George Wallace]

........ and Canadians hate both deficits and taxes.

I would tend to agree with you, but I live in Ontario and it seems that the people of Ontario are being contrary and seem to love deficits and more taxes.  ;D

 

[MilEME09]

Perhaps then we need to do the hard choice and get a new model in regards to defense spending. Jobs in Canada are great, but if we can make our shrinking dollars go much further just by looking to our allies then we should.

 

[Edward Campbell]

And, now, in this editorial which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Toronto Sun, Sun media weighs in on the defence budget:

http://www.torontosun.com/2015/05/24/do-more-on-defence

EDITORIAL
Do more on defence

POSTMEDIA NETWORK

FIRST POSTED: SUNDAY, MAY 24, 2015

In last week’s papers columnist David Akin pointed out that the federal government's “spending on defence, as measured by a percentage of the size of Canada’s economy or gross domestic product (GDP), will bottom in a few years under the Conservatives at 0.89%, the lowest level of defence spending by any federal government since the 1930s.”

NATO currently wants its members to spend 2% of GDP on defence. If everyone slacks off on this, NATO's defences are down. Literally.

A couple of days later Defence Minister Jason Kenney penned a guest column in our papers responding to Akin.

He pointed out that the Conservatives have increased spending dollars by 38% since 2006 and that the Parliamentary Budget Officer reported “the most significant cuts” to defence were during the last Liberal era.

Kenney’s main point, though, was that results matter more than raw dollars spent. Great point. We agree.

But while NATO’s 2% figure wasn’t arrived at by an exact science, it’s still wrong for us to be less than halfway there.

“Canadians know that we cannot 'opt-out' of the world,” Prime Minister Stephen Harper rightly said at a foreign policy speech in Montreal Thursday night.

But for us to keep two feet firmly planted in the world as we go after the Islamic State, among other challenges, we need the budget to do it.

Our defence challenges run the gamut: Equipment in dire need of replacement. Sexual assault in the military. The lacking treatment of veterans (albeit under a different cabinet portfolio).

The Conservatives should sing their accomplishments but also need to recognize there’s work to be done.

It’s doubly important that the Harper government acknowledge there’s room for improvements because they’re the only ones we trust to make them.

The Liberals? Pfft. As Akin’s column notes: “I asked Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau last week what we might expect from his party’s platform on military spending, but his answer was vague and unhelpful.”

As for the NDP: Why would they want to spend more money on the military when they seem to oppose so many things the military does?

Still, the Conservatives must prove they’re ready to do more.

I'm sorry these editorials and articles are coming out so early ... we want to hold politicians' feet to the fire during the election campaign.

 

[The Bread Guy]

And, now, in this editorial which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Toronto Sun, Sun media weighs in on the defence budget:
( .... )
I'm sorry these editorials and articles are coming out so early ... we want to hold politicians' feet to the fire during the election campaign.

If they truly believe this is something worth pressing, not to worry - it'l be pressed.

 

[Underway]

......
I'll go easy on the NDP because their policy will be even deeper cuts
......

This never made sense to me.  NDP are supposed to be socialist correct?  Isn't the first goal of any socialist government the protection of the state as the state is more important than the individual?  So why are the Canadian version of socialists so opposed to defence spending, or are they?  We don't actually know yet as federally NDP have never been in power and had to make those decisions.  Seems to me that NDP would be completely onside for spending tax dollars on new equipment from General Dynamics, Bombardier, Irving etc.... as those are manufacturing unionized jobs.

And unlike the conservatives the NDP might actually want to keep a tax base large enough (raise GST 2%) that you don't have to cut military spending to meet the budget, just raise taxes.  Many European countries have left wing gov'ts that are very pro-military.

The largest difference with the NDP at the helm would probably be how the Canadian Forces are deployed with an open debate in parliment as the dippers just can't stop themselves of being holier than thou.  Also a generous benifits package for veterans would come out as well.  I don't see it as absolute doom and gloom.  Caring for people is their weakness and strength, so repackaging equipment and benifits requirements as necessary for the CAF could work to our advantage.

That beings said we should all vote Green.  I mean really GREEN is the name of the party.  Its all about supporting the army obviously... (though an end to subsidization of big oil and refocus that money on the CAF wouldn't be a bad start....)

 

[George Wallace]

This never made sense to me.  NDP are supposed to be socialist correct?  Isn't the first goal of any socialist government the protection of the state as the state is more important than the individual?  So why are the Canadian version of socialists so opposed to defence spending, or are they? 

Perhaps because they don't want to be closely identified with or associated to the National Socialist Party......and we know what kind of history they wrote.    >

 

[The Bread Guy]

Perhaps because they don't want to be closely identified with or associated to the National Socialist Party......and we know what kind of history they wrote.    >

Not to mention those OTHER socialists, and their own less-than-glowing history. 

 

[OldSolduer]

The NDP doesn't like DND and the CAF because that party is full of the descendants of Uncle Joe Stalin's "useful fools".

 

[George Wallace]

The NDP doesn't like DND and the CAF because that party is full of the descendants of Uncle Joe Stalin's "useful fools".

Not sure what you are alluding to.  Do you mean the 'survivors' who managed to avoid all the 'accidents' that occurred during Stalin's reign?  There seemed to be quite a rash of people accidentally falling out of windows, having brake failures, drowning, etc. while Stalin held office.

 

[OldSolduer]

Uncle Joe,  IIRC through agents of influence, managed to convert a number of people not to Communism, but to socialism. One of the themes was "the USSR is our friend.....we don't need to spend money of defence".

I distinctly remember Pauline Jewett saying we should cut defence spending to show the USSR we were only interested in peace. This was in 1983 or 84.

A useful fool, da Comrade?

 

[TCBF]

Perhaps because they don't want to be closely identified with or associated to the National Socialist Party......and we know what kind of history they wrote.    >

- They didn't. We did.

 

[Edward Campbell]

More, here[/ur] and below, from David Akin's blog:

http://blogs.canoe.com/davidakin/defence-2/we-got-a-defence-spending-debate-me-kenney-murray-the-prime-minister/

We got a defence spending debate: Me, Kenney, Murray & the Prime Minister

David Akin - May 26th, 2015



Earlier this month, I wrote a column for our papers in which I argued that Canada has done a lousy job of living up to the commitment we made t4o our NATO allies to spend at least 2 per cent of our GDP on defence. I put together the chart above drawing on data published by the Department of Finance.  Some excerpts from that column:

    But do you know when Canada last spent 2% of its GDP on defence? You might be surprised: It was the government of Pierre Trudeau in 1971-72. We’ve never been above 2% since and the trend line now, under the Conservatives,
    is going in the wrong direction.

    Defence spending in Harper’s first budget in the spring of 2006 totalled 1.1% of GDP. For the fiscal year that ended in March 2014, defence spending was 1% of GDP. Heck, even in the worst years of the Jean Chretien era, when
    Chretien was struggling with mountains of red ink, defence spending was 0.9% of GDP.

    But unfortunately for those who are rightly concerned that we are starving the Canadian Forces of the personnel and materiel they need to protect our vast country, it’s not clear if the Liberals are ready to step up and increase
    spending on the Canadian Forces.

    …

    Canada now ranks 22nd among NATO’s 28 countries when it comes to military spending. Our peers are Latvia, Belgium and Spain.

    Our southern neighbour, the U.S., will spend 3.8% of its GDP on defence. Our northern neighbour, Russia, will spend 4.2%.

    This election season, let’s make this an issue. We need a plan to boost defence spending. Which party will take our defence needs seriously?

Defence Minister Jason Kenney responded with his own column, arguing that Canada’s military is well-equipped:

    I welcome the recent call from Sun Media’s parliamentary bureau chief, David Akin, for Canada’s defence spending record to become an election issue this fall. As defence minister, I would gladly put the Conservative record up against
    the sad legacy left by the Liberals.

    Our government has made significant investments since 2006, increasing National Defence spending from $14.5 billion in 2005-06 to $20.1 billion in 2014-15 on a cash basis.

    That represents a 38% increase – a far cry from when the Liberals were in power.

The Kenney column prompted one in response from the Liberal Party defence critic Joyce Murray. She wrote “The real Conservative defence record.”

    Since 2012, they axed nearly $5 billion from the defence budget, and let $10 billion of approved funding go unspent since 2007. This includes nearly $7 billion in DND’s capital budget – funds allocated for new equipment like search-and-rescue aircraft, trucks and ships.

    These cuts have driven defence spending below 1% of GDP, the lowest share of GDP since the 1930s, and well below our expected spending commitment as a NATO member. The funding escalator announced in the budget, which Mr. Kenney trumpets,
    in fact does not kick in until 2017. And under the government’s funding plan, the budget will continue to fall to 0.89% of GDP by 2027.

Finally, last week I had a chance to ask Prime MInister Stephen Harper about spending on defence.

Here is that exchange:

    AKIN:  When you talk about the success of your government in controlling debt, you often refer to our debt-to-GDP levels. When you talk about our success versus our G7 partners, you often measure us relative to GDP. I emphasize
    that [relative measurement] in talking about defence spending which, as you know, is well under, and has been well under, the 2% GDP target that NATO countries are asked to spend. Your government, if you’re re-elected this fall,
    could be under 1%. That’s worse than the Liberal government you replaced. Can you give us a sense when you might start talking about restoring defence spending to 2% of GDP.

    HARPER: Well, in fact, in the recent budget, as you know, the government announced some significant increases in defence spending. Since we came to office defence spending has risen almost 30% on national defence. Canada is a
    major contributor to virtually all of NATO’s activities. We’ve enhanced defence in our Arctic and our northern regions. We’ve basically rebuilt the capacity of the Canadian army, made significant investments and upgrades to the air force.
    We’ve also had the largest naval shipbuilding program in Canadian. history. We’ve budgeted in the years ahead the investments to make sure we have the capacity necessary. We don’t measure these things strictly in terms of dollars.
    We measure them in terms of capabilities. In the postwar period, the Canadian military has never been as active and as capable as today,  And we thank them for their work in places like Iraq, Syria and Ukraine.

It's all "fun with numbers" ~ in fact GDP means the wealth the "common wealth," so measuring spending as a percentage of GDP says something about how much the people are willing or prepared to pay for their own security.

I think we have a "friend" in David Akin: he's someone who will help hold politicians' (of all stripes) feet to the fire on this issue.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

I wonder if those figures account for the funds returned unspent?

 

[The Bread Guy]

I wonder if those figures account for the funds returned unspent?

Funny you should mention that - this take from The Canadian Press's "Baloney Meter" on defence spending ....

.... Kenney had his facts right when he cited the numbers around increased defence spending, but he omitted some important details that give a much fuller picture.  With the October federal election in the offing, the Conservatives will be positioning themselves as champions of the military. But as (experts interviewed) point out, all that increased spending hasn't translated into important new equipment, such as ships and planes.  For that reason, Kenney's statement earns a rating of "a little baloney." ....

 

[McG]

Funny you should mention that - this take from The Canadian Press's "Baloney Meter" on defence spending ....

The cited "experts" did not have much good to say in that article:

...

David Perry, the senior analyst at the Conference of Defence Associations, has been crunching Canada's defence spending numbers for years, and he took issue with Kenney's assertion.

He said there's no accounting for inflation in Kenney's 38 per cent assertion. When the final estimates come out on what the Canadian Forces actually spends this year, "I don't believe for a minute they'll reflect $20.1 billion in defence expenditure," he said.

That's mainly because of the logjam in National Defence over big procurement projects, such as the stalled — and very controversial — F-35 stealth fighter jet replacement project.

For the last decade, Perry said the military has never been able to spend its full budget, with at least five per cent -- or about $1 billion — going back to the federal treasury each year, a practice known as lapsed funding.

This coming fiscal year, Perry is predicting an even bigger lapse of 10 per cent — closer to $2 billion.

He said the huge program at National Defence didn't have an approved investment plan until the second quarter of the last fiscal year, so they couldn't move on new spending.

"Defence has got this bizarre problem that it never had before 2006 where they can't use all its money," Perry said. "To me the far more meaningful metric is: what are you asking the defence department to deliver and how much money does it have relative to that plan?"

Douglas Bland, professor emeritus and former head of the Queen's University defence studies program, said Kenney's numbers may be accurate, but they don't address a core question: has all that extra money improved Canada's military capability?

Bland's answer is no.

"It's not the amount of money that's put on the table, it's how efficient it is in producing Canada's national defence," he said.

All three branches — army, navy and air force — have seen a decline in their capability.

"The army has a lot of old equipment and fewer numbers," said Bland. The navy, meanwhile, has lost assets, such as its two support ships, HMCS Preserver and Protecteur, while will be taken out of service before their replacements arrive.

"When you look at the state of the navy, for instance, we're not better off. When you look at the air force, many countries are now ordering up or bringing into service the new F-35 from the United States. We're not even on the order paper."

...

 

[Happy Guy]

My Command is still waiting for the comptroller staff to crunch out the numbers for this fiscal year.  We will get our budget sometime this month in June.  Meanwhile we can't finalize our business plans.

Informally we were told that the Government needs to balance the budget and all government departments have been ordered to tighten up again.

 

[Edward Campbell]

My Command is still waiting for the comptroller staff to crunch out the numbers for this fiscal year.  We will get our budget sometime this month in June.  Meanwhile we can't finalize our business plans.

Informally we were told that the Government needs to balance the budget and all government departments have been ordered to tighten up again.

All government departments should always be "ordered to tighten up again," even in the middle of a major war the government should order the defence department and defence related departments to "tighten up" so that the maximum money can be spent on necessary things. There is always "fat" that can be cut ... in 1943/44, when our defence production was going at very nearly 100% capacity C.D. Howe was "ordering" his people to "tighten up again." Anyone who is not, always, "tightening up" should have his (or her) arse fired  out onto the bread line ... "pink slips and running shoes" as Lyin' Brian Mulroney threatened back in the 1980s.

 

[Happy Guy]

Continuous self-improvement or doing more with less is the mantra that I've heard since I've joined years ago.  It gets quickly tiresome when I am given no tools, no support to do this and yet they still demand me to cut positions, reduce my budget without cutting my responsibilities.  Perhaps it was better in the old days, but hey I was there in the old days too and its still the same.
Not whining but I am frustrated.

Cheers

 

[MilEME09]

Continuous self-improvement or doing more with less is the mantra that I've heard since I've joined years ago.  It gets quickly tiresome when I am given no tools, no support to do this and yet they still demand me to cut positions, reduce my budget without cutting my responsibilities.  Perhaps it was better in the old days, but hey I was there in the old days too and its still the same.
Not whining but I am frustrated.

Cheers

I tend to agree, more with less has its breaking point, and I feel like the CF is getting close to that point....again

 

[captloadie]

There will always be waste in a system that fails to plan ahead adequately. There is an L1 that has determined that it will have a $200 million dollar slippage in their current FY budget. Word has gone out to the other L1s, and disseminated to the lowest levels, to submit wish lists of items to be procured with the funding. It is being handled much like MRs. Which means in the end, alot of necessary big ticket items will continue to go unfunded but we'll have lots of little gucci gadgets and new furniture.