“CAF – Canadian Armed Forces”

In the fall of 2022, a little more than six months into the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, two of Canada’s major ammunition manufacturers submitted proposals to the Liberal government to drastically increase production of artillery shells.

Almost a year and a half later — with Canadian stockpiles drained by donations to dangerously low levels, and with Ukraine running out of ammo — a major agreement to ramp up production in this country still hasn’t been signed.

And there doesn’t appear to be one on the immediate horizon, despite pressure from allies who already have moved to increase their own munitions capacity.

Canadian military police have decided not to charge a sex worker who they alleged had unlawfully used army uniforms.

Police had threatened in December to charge Kingston-area sex worker Christina Lea Gilchrist, who offers discounts to Canadian soldiers for her services. They alleged Gilchrist broke the law with the “unlawful use of military uniforms,” citing photographs on her website in which she was shown wearing what appeared to be Canadian camouflage uniforms known as CADPAT.

In a time of budget constraint that discount is patriotic.

The world is entering an age of tragedy, a cascading series of wars and conflict, an era of permanent crisis, warns Robert Kaplan, the veteran foreign correspondent and author.

Political leaders will be faced, not with an easy choice between good and evil, but between what is acceptable, what can be achieved, and whether one alternative is less evil than another, he says.

Much as the rest of Canada, the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) are broken-down. The chief of defence staff, Gen. Wayne Eyre, is “concerned about our overall readiness.” This spoken by a man used to doing the best he can with the little he is given; what we called in my time in the army a “can-do” attitude.

Canada is still standing in line for equipment it planned to buy 12 years ago

Ottawa is a city of plans. Many plans. Sometimes you find there are plans to have a plan. But as the old Scottish poem says, “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men often go awry.”

More than a decade ago, as Canada’s war in Afghanistan was grinding to its conclusion, a plan was drawn up to rebuild, refresh and re-equip the army for the future.

It withered and died over several years — a victim of changing defence fashions, budgets, inter-service and inter-departmental bureaucratic warfare and political indifference.

“…The problem is Canada is not in a position to come up with the billions of dollars needed to meet the benchmark, and the federal government appears to lack the desire to reach it. Reports suggest that just weeks after reaffirming its pledge, the federal government looked to cut defence spending by $1 billion (Brewster, 2023). Without significant adjustments to planned spending, Canada is stuck in a lose-lose situation: accumulate billions more in debt to reach the target or further disappoint its allies by failing to uphold the renewed pledge.”

The Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) is experiencing a near 20 percent decline in its ranks due to attrition, with recent data indicating a loss of thousands of volunteers.

According to information presented in an Inquiry of Ministry in the House of Commons, the attrition rate over the past three years reached 19 percent, with 15,176 members leaving compared to 12,793 new recruits joining the force, as first covered by Blacklock’s Reporter.

Over the past decade, the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) have lost 10 veterans for every nine new recruits they have added. Over the past three years, the decline has accelerated to 10 lost for every eight added.

No wonder our core troop strength should be 72,000, but we are currently limping by with fewer than 62,000, one of the lowest per capita rates in NATO.

“To dream the impossible dream.” These words, sung by Don Quixote in Man of LaMancha, reflect a sentiment often felt about the state of Canada’s national security. For decades, our positions on foreign policy, defence and security could only be evaluated as weak. And this is not a partisan perspective: since at least the end of the Cold War, successive federal governments have done as little as possible in these policy areas. Why does a G7 country – one of the richest in the world – systematically prioritize these sectors below virtually all others? We continue to do this while Canada benefits from the international order, which is now clearly at risk.