A Work in Progress:
The Canadian Armed Forces in Transition

Uncertainty is a fact of life. That said, Canadians can probably be forgiven if they feel that 2025 was a more uncertain year than most! Justin Trudeau, the long-serving prime minister, resigned. The Conservative Party, which seemed certain to win the federal election, crashed in flames. And the new Liberal prime minister, Mark Carney, emerged from relative obscurity to take on Donald Trump, who had won the US presidency for a second time.

One of the most important issues on Carney’s plate today is national defence. The Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) have suffered from decades of chronic underfunding and the past half decade witnessed a veritable avalanche of searing critiques about its lamentable state due to the failure of successive governments to provide adequate funding. Indeed, Canada was widely perceived as a rich G7 economy failing, year after year, to honour its defence commitments.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 provided further proof of how far Canada’s defence capabilities had fallen. When the CAF looked at its inventory to see what it could contribute to Ukraine’s defence the cupboard was almost bare. Of 88 tanks, only two dozen were fit for service. Four howitzers were sent to the Ukraine but Canada’s stock of artillery ammunition was discovered to be woefully inadequate. In the final analysis Canada provided other supplies to help the Ukrainians but the failures of relying overly on soft power strategies to advance Canada’s national interests were laid bare. Today, hard power is the new currency of great power relations.

There was also the Trump factor to consider. Regarding defence, he insisted that NATO’s 2 percent of GDP defence spending target should be raised to 5 percent. Amazingly, the European members of NATO, confronted with a trans-Atlantic negotiating culture predicated on fear, falsehoods, and flattery, agreed to what, hitherto, would have been considered a preposterous proposition. A certain degree of logic lay behind it all. The United States was turning its back on Europe in order to focus on the possibility of conflict with China and Washington was intent on monetizing its European foreign policy. If the European members of NATO wanted to continue supporting Ukraine they would have to buy military hardware from American manufacturers. This made sense in a simplistic, transactional way and took into account mounting American anxieties about the inadequacy of their own warfighting inventories. But it failed, abjectly, to take into account the fact that American irresolution on Ukraine was being telegraphed to Beijing.

The Trump factor concentrated Ottawa’s mind mightily. Could, or should, Ottawa rely entirely on Washington in the future when it came to defence? Ottawa has, for example, significant obligations in the form of the mutual North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) agreement. And, still further, Canada and the United States share a vast array of equipment, facilities, exercises, and exchanges in common. Certainly, the defence, and overall security relationship, that exists between the two nations is extremely complex.

Critiques of Canada’s defence situation have identified a number of major shortcomings. The regular and reserve forces have problems recruiting and retaining personnel, the latter increasingly distressing because the people leaving are often highly qualified, mid-career individuals and it takes years to train their replacements. Nothing suggests that this challenge is going to grow any easier as the services become more technologically sophisticated, not less.

Generations have also lamented the appalling length of time, and cost overruns, involved in securing new equipment as governments tried to Canadianize equipment or ensure that defence projects addressed unemployment. And, unfortunately, defence is not a bipartisan issue in Canada. Thus, every time a government changes, defence procurement is subject to fatal start-stop uncertainties. Defence procurement also involves a willingness to embrace risk and act with a real sense of urgency. If we look, for example, at the replacement programme for the fifty-year-old CF-18 fighter jets in the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) we see governments dithering and delaying. And now, years after the decision was made to replace the CF-18s with the CF-35, the federal government is re-examining, yet again, whether the RCAF should have a mixed fleet of fighters.

Elsewhere in the aeronautical realm, the government is moving ahead with two major purchases with direct applicability to the Arctic and the submarine threat including 14 multi-mission (anti-submarine, intelligence and surveillance) P-8A Poseidon’s with options for another two. The first P-8A should be delivered next year as part of a $10.4 billion dollar package. Canada is also acquiring 14 MQ 9B Sky Guardian Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems, the first expected in 2028.

Meanwhile, the Canadian Army, the largest of the three services, is embarking on a major organizational restructuring with the acquisition of tracked, self-propelled howitzers, medium direct fire cavalry vehicles, long-range precision strike capabilities, possibly a new tank and certainly a fleet of small drones along with counter-drone technology to equip our ground forces from front to rear. Indeed, as Lieutenant General Michael Wright, the Canadian Army commander has frequently said, the army Canada has is not the army Canada needs. Currently, and with the lessons acquired from the battlefield in Ukraine, there are 49 projects in the works. In addition, the roles of the Reserves and the Rangers are also being clarified and plans are afoot to expand and re-equip the latter in view of the mounting importance of Arctic operations.

As for the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN), its major surface ships – the Halifax-class frigates – are aging out rapidly and their replacements, the much larger Canadian Surface (or River-class) Combatants (CSC), are still little more than a distant dream. If the CSC delivery schedule holds true the core of the navy will be dangerously diminished in the 2030s. And the nation’s submarine prospects are even more perilous. The RCN acquired four, second-hand, conventional submarines from the Royal Navy in the 1990s. Sadly, theses submarines have been plagued by accidents, faulty maintenance, and systems failures. Recently, one of the boats, HMCS Corner Brook, emerged after 14 years of maintenance and repairs. For years ‘submarines’ was a word that no one dared utter because to do so might have fatally compromised the RCN’s chances of securing government approval for a follow on to the Halifax-class frigates. However, almost every naval expert agreed that submarines, with their stealth, ubiquity, and lethality, constituted the jewel in the crown when it came to a fully operational fleet.

All that changed in July 2024 when the Liberal government, hitherto studiedly indifferent to criticism of its woefully insufficient defence policy, surprised many by announcing that Canada would purchase 12 submarines for the RCN. And since Canada had no indigenous capacity to build them, they would have to be acquired off shore. What made foreign boats doubly attractive was the price tag would have the effect of catapulting Canada’s defence budget upwards to, or near, the much-publicized 2 percent NATO threshold.

South Korea’s Hanwha Ocean Shipbuilders were fast off the mark, mounting a full court press designed to promote their conventional, air independent propulsion KSS-III-Batch II submarines. And they promised the Canadian government that Hanwha would deliver the first four submarines for roughly $20 to 24 billion dollars by 2035. Furthermore, they claimed that their lithium-ion battery system would enable them to travel 7000 nautical miles and to function for three weeks submerged under the Arctic ice.

However, selecting a submarine was not going to be a simple or straightforward process because the Carney Liberals were also looking to reorient the nation towards Europe. Pivoting made sense. Canada had and has powerful, well-established cultural, economic, and security ties with Europe. Key European states like Britain, Germany, France and Poland were looking to re-animate their defence industries as they sought to increase their support for Ukraine. Those allies operated submarines in the North Atlantic and had an intimate knowledge of Russian sub-surface operations in northern waters. Into the mix came the German 212CD submarine, built by Thyssen Krupp Marine Systems in Kiel, whose purchase would help Ottawa cement relations with European allies while diversifying away from suffocating levels of dependence on American arms manufacturers.

Whichever submarine will be selected, the capability to operate in the Arctic and under the ice will be paramount as Canadian governments have largely failed to establish a genuine security presence in the High North, despite decades of promotional rhetoric. Indeed, Ottawa’s shortcomings have been frequently highlighted by concerns over the presence of Chinese Arctic research vessels in the western Arctic and Trumpian jibes about Canada’s inexcusable weaknesses in the North. Ottawa has seized the opportunity to incorporate the Canadian Coast Guard (CCG) into the Department of National Defence but the CCG’s icebreaker inventory is distressingly elderly and inadequate. The RCN does, of course, have so-called Arctic and Offshore Patrol Ships (AOPS), which are capable of navigating through “First Year” (1 meter thick) ice, but they lack sonar, a helicopter, and a major weapon system.

Nevertheless, Prime Minister Carney has moved decisively since coming to power and committed, through Budget 2025, to reaching the 2 percent NATO spending target in this fiscal year and further announced his intention to move towards the 5 percent target, with 3.5 percent to be spent on defence and 1.5 percent towards new or upgraded infrastructure with security dimensions. The latter will go towards such things as the Australian-designed Over the Horizon Radar that Carney agreed to purchase as part of the revitalization of Canada’s northern surveillance and warning system.

Moving forward, the government must act with a genuine sense of urgency as if it is at war. Certainly, Canada’s latest budget lays out significant defence spending increases, including $30.8 million over four years to establish the Defence Investment Agency. Budget 2025 also outlines numerous operational priorities for the Canadian military, especially for Canada’s commitment to NATO via Operation Reassurance. In addition, there are significant pay raises for regular and reserve force members with a view to attract more to join the CAF and others to stay. With all of the money flowing towards defence, one would surmise a new defence plan must be in the works, or that a draft, at the very least, has already been written.

Today, Canada is at a turning point; shamed, coerced, and driven to redress its own shortcomings. Perhaps Trump was doing Canada a favour by forcing Ottawa’s hand. It was clearly time, indeed, past time for Canada to abandon its free-loading proclivities and reanimate the CAF. In fact, Canada, with the support of European friends and allies, now has an incentive to make something of a fresh start in the defence realm. No more nonsense about punching above one’s weight; a verbal sleight of hand that government after government has retailed without shame to an indifferent Canadian public. It is clearly time to get on with getting on.