Every few years the Canadian Armed Forces gets a new boss. The position is known as chief of defence staff.
It’s the only “four-star” general or admiral position in the entire country. We only have one at a time (except in the rare circumstance when our former CDS goes over to a senior position with NATO). They are our only “general,” in that all other general or admiral ranks have a modifier – vice-admiral, brigadier general. They are the top of the chain of command within the military. The buck stops on the CDS’s desk.
July 17, the new Chief of Defense Staff, General Jonathan Vance, took command at a time when our military could be on the precipice of some serious world events.
For instance, we are at war, again, this time in Syria and Iraq. We have fighter bombers flying out of Kuwait nearly every day, dropping ordnance on people who make the Taliban look like someone you would want for a next-door neighbour. It’s only a matter of time before our involvement mushrooms from a few hundred to several thousand.
China is building airfields out of reefs in the South China Sea, staking its claim over a large body of water. They are doing essentially what Japan did in the early days of the Second World War, expanding their territory, but this time on the sly. Instead of invading islands, they are making their own.
A year ago an airliner was shot down over Ukraine with a Russian missile. A civil war in Ukraine has our NATO allies shaking in their boots and calling desperately for us to stand up to the Russians. The past year has been the worst for NATO-Russian relations since the Berlin Wall fell. In the Kremlin we have the most antagonistic Russian leader since Andropov, possibly Brezhnev. Russia is re-arming at an alarming rate. Our government is wondering if we need to step up our efforts to back Ukraine from non-lethal items like night-vision goggles to perhaps something a little more lethal, like anti-tank missiles.
The Royal Canadian Navy is in shambles. In recent years we’ve had to retire, in an emergency fashion, our 1970s-vintage destroyers and our fleet tankers, also known as supply ships. Without those tankers, our ability to work beyond our shores is severely hampered. We have to beg, borrow or steal fuel from our allies. This from a nation that, at the end of 1945, had the third largest navy in the world.
Our military procurement under the Conservatives looked promising at first, but in recent years has become a complete mess. The much-ballyhooed ship procurement strategy has produced no ships, yet. We have no new search and rescue aircraft. We still don’t know what fighter plane we’re going to be flying when the wings start falling of the CF-18s. Our deployment to Kuwait of only six CF-18s is telling. The most we can deploy these days is half a squadron.
But there is a bonus – this month they finally replaced the First and Second World War vintage bolt action rifles for the Canadian Rangers.
Post traumatic stress disorder numbers among veterans are now skyrocketing. A recent report put it at three times the previous number. The number of vets diagnosed with PTSD is now 14,375. That number is expected to climb significantly. Consider our maximum deployment, according the Forces website: “At its height, nearly 3,000 CAF members were deployed at any one time in Kandahar.”
The question is soon going to be not which veterans have PTSD, but which few don’t?
So what is General Vance’s number one priority above all other things, including an active war in the Middle East and the possibility of a new cold war with Russia?
The Globe and Mail reported, “In his first speech as CDS, Gen. Vance told the officers, politicians and bureaucrats attending the ceremony in a downtown convention centre that the well-being of members of the Armed Forces will be his top priority and that of all other officers of the army, navy, air force and special operations.
“Any form of harmful sexual behaviour has been and always will be absolutely contrary to good order and discipline. It is a threat to morale, it is a threat to operational readiness, and a threat to this institution,” said the general. “Therefore, as my first order to the Canadian Armed Forces, everybody must continue to work together to eliminate this harmful behaviour. It must stop now.’”
Yes, sexual harassment is bad. There’s no question about it. But I wonder if the new general might have some other priorities that should be at the top of the list, like the war in Syria and Iraq we are already in, and the one with Russia we want to stay out of.
— Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at [email protected].
