By Dan Middlemiss, 23 August 2023
Former Vice-Admiral Mark Norman has provided another informed, yet disheartening, assessment of the current state of the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN). (Mark Norman, “Striking the Right Balance,” Canadian Defence Review, Vol. 29, No. 4, August 2023, p. 43.)
Looking briefly at each of the three pillars of readiness – equipment, people and training – Norman paints a fairly gloomy picture of the current combat-readiness of our navy. He puts the blame where it belongs, Canada’s elected leaders and their priorities.
A few excepts:
“The recent cabinet shuffle has clearly signaled, in my opinion, the relative insignificance of defence & security as a priority for this government.”
“The material state of the RCN is at best troubling, arguably near crisis.”
“The reality, however, is that there are insufficient personnel to effectively crew the fleet...”
“...training is often an early victim to budget cuts as it is easily stopped yet the effects won’t normally materialize until long after implementation...”
“Regrettably, I contend that the CAF is severely out of balance at the moment and no amount of cheer-leading or hollow policy proclamations is going to repair the underlying structural imbalances.”
I will not put words in the Admiral’s mouth, but clearly his message is that, somehow, Canadians need to be better informed about the true state of the Canadian Armed Forces, and of the RCN in particular, and they need to elect leaders who demonstrate a real intention to take defence matters more seriously. Alas, I do not see much evidence that such leaders-in-waiting exist at the moment. Neither the Conservatives nor the NDP have said much at all lately about how they might alter Canada’s foreign and defence policy priorities in future.
14 thoughts on “An Admiral’s Take on the State of the RCN”
Nothing but an embarrassment, waiting for an invasion before anything is done.
It seems to me, that ADM Norman’s predictions for the RCN look very pessimistic for the future. The truth hurts I guess. In my opinion, I believe that this is by design from the Liberal government and always was. They are setting up for the RCN to fail no matter what the CAF tries to accomplish because the PM has no use for the military, and has never had any love for the military and would like nothing more than to purge the CAF to the bone! Watch out for another round of CAF cuts in the near future and the 1.24 GDP for defence will fall even further behind the NATO Standard. Canada and Canadians need to take stock of what is happening with the military very soon, and curtail this government’s total disdain for anything defence. All Canadians should be angered and ashamed at these “goings-on.”
I guess building 2 battery plants for 5000 jobs which is costing the Canadian people 30 billion so China can build 200 coal fired power plants and allowing a million immigrants a year in to the country which affects health care, jobs, homes, etc is more important. The writing was on the wall when he got rid of Anita Anand and put Bill Blair in. Canada could not fight a third world country with what we have. Sorry for the political comments.
Living in Toronto, I can say Bill Blair’s tenure as police chief wasn’t significant or memorable. He didn’t institute change to the force which was necessary. With that, I don’t have confidence with him leading the military. We need to acquire political maturity like the Australians and have an all-party consensus that defence and security are important policy issues. Another narrative which needs to be countered (put forward by the government) is we can’t afford more defence spending. If Australia can do it, so can we.
Good morning Justin,
I cannot speak to your thoughts about Bill Blair. However, it would seem to me that Canada does have an all-party consensus about defence. Sadly, it is not what we would wish. Instead, it appears to me to be that we should spend 1+% of GDP on defence and trust to our three-ocean moat and the Americans to protect us.
Ubique.
Les
Yes, recent history does appear to suggest that our political leaders (on all sides) do not take Canadian defence very seriously, especially in the context of troubling international security developments. The sad truth is that these same leaders recognize that they will not be punished at the electoral polls over defence issues.
But are our leaders in synch with the general views of Canadians? Two fairly recent public opinion polls suggest they are not.
An 8 May 2023 Nanos poll for CTV News found that about two-thirds of Canadians supported an increase in defence spending to reach the NATO 2% target.
A 4 August 2023 Ipsos poll revealed that more than half of Canadians consider the CAF to be old and antiquated, but still considered the CAF to be among the best in the world. Most significantly, 75% of Canadians think Canada should increase its military spending, both to protect Canadian territory and sovereignty, and also to contribute to global peace and security.
Perhaps our self-absorbed political leaders should get in better touch with the concerns of many Canadians about defence matters.
Good morning Dan,
Thank you for bringing these interesting polls to the forum’s attention.
It would be very helpful to know how they posed the question on increased spending and whether the polls explored what the respondents would be willing to give up to pay for a larger defence budget.
I fear that this is a case of people being willing to increase spending as long as it does not involve any sacrifices on their part.
Ubique.
Les
Les,
Yes, your caution about the wording of polls is a valid one, and we must be careful about reading too much into polls in general. Nevertheless, these two national polls do represent a significant turnabout in public opinion on the matter of defence spending in Canada over the past year or so. The Ipsos poll in particular was quite extensive and featured a series of related questions about the attitudes of Canadians and the reasoning behind these views.
These polls, their specific questions, the breakdown of their supporting tables, and their methodology, can be downloaded at:
https://nanos.co/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/2023-2337-CTV-April-Populated-report-MILITARY-with-tabs.pdf
https://www.ipsos.com/en-ca/half-of-canadians-consider-armed-forces-antiquated
I must admit that I am expecting the next government to gut the CSC program and buy , at best, a number of small, limited-use corvettes.
If I am (sadly) correct, it will be interesting to see how the current gang of naysayers react to such a chain of events.
Ubique.
Les
I don’t think he’s stating anything that everyone already knows. We are going to have a few more lean years before things will improve and believe me they will improve with a new fleet coming. Eventually we’ll have at least 3 type 26 (hopefully all 15) or 12 lesser expensive ships, 2 JSS, 6 AOPS, 6 to 8 submarines and 6 to 8 Kingston Class replacements which they just announced the replacement project.
Hi Retired RCN. Shephard media has a story about Kingston class replacements (citing a “spokesperson”) but there is no press release from DND, and major Canadian media (CBC, CTV) haven’t picked it up. I suspect nothing is really happening yet.
As of two years ago requirements were being discussed for the Kingston Class replacement including concept art, nothing official. Digging into it a little further, you probably won’t see an official announcement until the end of AOPS. There isn’t enough personnel to staff a project office at this point.
Yeah, that sounds about right. Just guessing, but the team of NSS technical staff is probably fairly small and has to review plans for the coast guard ships as well as the navy. Between the CSCs, polar icebreakers, ferries, and Seaspan’s coast guard vessels, they have their hands full. Not to mention a considerable variety of minor vessels, and the submarines.
Hello Michael Peirson. I have searched high and low for anything from the GOC about “standing-up” of an OPV “team” for a new class to replace the Kingston MCDVs and can find nothing! Wherever this Tim Fish is getting his information from a so called DND “spokes person” it certainly is suspect! Let’s just let this one go for now and if confirmation comes from the government or DND that a team has been “stood-up”, then we can go from there. There normally is something coming from the government that they have officially stood up a team, but I can find nothing either on the government webpages or any other credible Canadian media that this is official. So, chalk this up to a less knowledgeable NZ reporter (Tim Fish) from a “less than reputable” media source media. Cheers!