20 March 2019. In mid-March David Pugliese, a reporter who has been covering Canadian security and defence matters for many years, submitted several questions to the government about the Arctic Offshore Patrol Vessels. Less than two hours later, he was contacted by a shipbuilder with major contracts with the federal […]
Defence Policy Review
24 posts
The Defence Policy Review released last week is an ambitious commitment not only to the men and women of the Canadian Armed Forces, but to the support of Canada’s foreign policy goals as articulated just a few days before. Those whom Canada sends in harm’s way ought to have the […]
The Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) released a report on 1 June 2017 called “The Cost of Canada’s Surface Combatants.” The PBO report reviews the costs of the Canadian Surface Combatant (CSC) program to construct 15 ships to replace the capabilities of the Halifax-class frigates and Iroquois-class destroyers. It uses several […]
The Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence has released a new report, Reinvesting in the Canadian Armed Forces: A Plan for the Future. This follows the report that was released in November 2016, entitled UN Deployment: Prioritizing Commitments at Home and Abroad, and a report released in April […]
3 May 2017. The Minister of Defence made a speech today at a CDAI function. The speech is entitled “Towards a New Defence Policy for Canada.” It talks about the defence policy review – although still no report released. https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/news/2017/05/towards_a_new_defencepolicyforcanada.html
Unfortunately, all those brave words are merely old wine in new bottles. It may be fair to say that anytime in the past when a political call has been made for "more teeth and less tail" it invariably ends up with reductions in operational capacity. How many times has the […]
As Canada conducts its defence review and prepares the next White Paper, it might be worth looking at the recent New Zealand effort and the Australian Strategic Policy Institute's response to it: "Imagine that Australia released a Defence White Paper that refused even in the most veiled terms to discuss […]
Eric Lerhe comments on the CDA & CDA Institute Special Event- Defence Policy Review: For one of the more focused Defence Review efforts, the CDAI 11 May 2016 Roundtable and its published analysis is hard to beat. For me the high points were Col. Charles Davies (retired) with his view that there are "no […]
In early April 2016, the government of Canada announced that it would conduct a Defence Policy R eview to examine the issues and elements of defence policy in a world that has changed greatly since the last review in the 1990s. In February of this year, in anticipation of this […]
As Yogi used to say, 'Deja vu all over again!' As in the late 1980s, the strategic importance of the Arctic rises to near the top of our national concerns. By far the greatest part of that concern should be for accident prevention in those waters closely followed by rescue […]