This is one of the results of the down-sizing trend.
As the forces got smaller, there were fewer people available to take on certain tasks. At the same time, certain political flavours were emphasizing the ratio of support troops to bayonets. This desire to protect their own in a time of down-sizing amplified the effect on troops doing headquarters-type tasks. On of those tasks is the selection of new equipment. Kind of hard to do when you don‘t have enough people to run project offices, maintain test establishments, etc.
We are now at the point where we may have to rely on allies to do the selection and testing for us. Our policy could be simply to adopt the same kit as the U.S., or the Brits, etc., and foregoing any Canadianization.
Another problem in this area is purely financial -- with such limited funds available, the military has been forced to pick and choose its projects. The government won‘t make major purchases since these are announced as a "big number" projects, even when the maintenance funds that would be saved over the years would reduce that number significantly. The result is that few new purchases are authorised even though they are clearly needed.
Nonetheless, I can see slow progress -- when I left the military 6 years ago (at the end of a year long PK mission), troops were deploying in monocoloured, faded, threadbare combats. Only those going to Yugo had the new helmets, while we had the old tin pots. I had a Vietnam-era flak jacket. No optical sight on my C7, etc.
Admittedly, progress is damnably slow - we were talking about tank replacements, Iltis replacements, 5/4 replacements (it has happened, but do they really work?), etc. long before I left. About the only real success seems to be in the area of wheeled AFVs and perhaps new light arty. And that opens up a whole other discussion, doesn‘t it?
As for the Somolia kit being re-issued for Afgahnistan -- it was my understanding that much of that kit had to be destroyed because of it having become dust-impregnated and concerns about bringing the kit back into Canada. Can anyone confirm this?