Liberals choose to score points rather than protect troops, says Ivison

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Jean-Yves Duclos is like an intellectual Mount Logan in the middle of the puny foothills of the Trudeau cabinet.

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Yet nine years in politics seem to have only dulled his senses and sharpened his flight instinct.

The Minister of Public Services and Procurement testified before the House of Commons defense committee on Thursday, talking about how the federal government is trying to reduce timelines on military procurement, without sacrificing due diligence.

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His first question from Conservative MP James Bezan concerned the anti-tank missile system purchased by Ottawa from Israeli company Rafael Advanced Defense Systems earlier this year.

Bezan said that Rafael’s SPIKE LR2 system is not as precise as expected:

“Why were the options not tested before acquiring a system that does not meet the expectations of our armed forces? »

It’s a legitimate question. The system was promised on the basis of an “urgent operational need” for the approximately 1,600 Canadian troops in Latvia, who have no effective anti-tank systems. Similar fast-track contracts have been awarded for anti-drone technology and a short-range man-portable air defense system, which will be delivered to Latvian forces early next year.

But Duclos clearly didn’t want to talk about the botched anti-tank purchase, instead repeatedly referring to the 1% of GDP that conservatives spent on defense almost a decade ago, in a very different threat environment .

It’s all good because the Liberals are on track to spend 2 percent of their GDP on defense by 2032, he said.

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“Canadians will have to ask themselves: do they want to believe the fake news or make progress toward our NATO goal, for which we have a path to go and have demonstrated success? said Duclos.

Every member of the Canadian Forces watching had to recoil at the minister’s response.

No one, least of all new President Donald Trump, cares about what Canada spent on defense in 2015.

What they know is that reaching 2% in eight years will be five years too late and they will be several billion dollars short.

The question about the anti-tank system deserved a thoughtful answer because it goes to the heart of Canada’s supply problem: how to buy quickly and diligently.

The purchase of the $44 million Portable Anti-X Missile (PAXM) system proved neither quick nor diligent – ​​if anything, it conforms more closely to military slang SNAFU (“normal situation: everything is ruined”).

The background is that in March 2023, the then Defense Minister Anita Anand granted an exemption from tenders on national security grounds to expedite the process.

Defense committee officials had already assured Bezan that a competitive process was underway.

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However, they sidestepped his question about testing competing systems in a “shoot off,” saying the purchased system had “proven capabilities” and was in service with other allies.

In an email to the National Post this week, the Department of National Defense said that in an effort to achieve the shortest time frame, “no live testing or demonstrations were planned or conducted” as would normally be the case. the case between competing arms.

“This technical risk was assessed and found to be acceptable, as all potential bidders had delivered thousands of units of this product to other customers,” the DND statement said.

It would have been nice if the SPIKE LR2 had worked to the military’s satisfaction.

But that’s not the case. DND said that in mid-July, after the contract was announced, “problems related to the operation of the missiles and launchers were identified.”

DND now says it is working with Rafael to resolve the cause of the problem and that deliveries to troops in Latvia have been “slightly delayed” until full operational capability is reached in January 2026.

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Rookie Conservative MP Don Stewart highlighted the most glaring problem with a process that takes seven years to buy a truck, or 10 years to buy a drone.

He said that while there is always an element of risk management for the bureaucracy, “most of the risks seem to be related to our soldiers not getting the equipment they need in a timely manner.”

Duclos’ response was as predictable as it was discouraging. “You (the conservatives) invested less than 1 percent…”

The minister said the government was reforming public procurement processes, with announcements expected soon.

Another witness, Simon Page, assistant deputy minister of Defense and Maritime Supply, highlighted some of the bureaucratic bottlenecks: underestimating the complexity of the planning stages; the number of departments involved in signing public contracts; lack of access to ministers; the obligation to go to the Treasury Board to obtain approval for each project, and so on.

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A five-minute conversation with any soldier heading to Latvia would show the minister and his officials how irrelevant all political and administrative interference is to the people on the front lines.

Units that have only a quarter of the vehicles and equipment they need are unfit for deployment. Training, even at a basic level, is not available, impacting recruitment and retention. “Soldiers are enlisting, but can’t get the equipment they joined to operate in,” said a CAF member about to deploy.

He said he wants all political parties to give details of what they plan to spend on defense and what it will mean for him and his unit at an operational level.

To him, this is far more relevant than what a previous government spent long ago in a geopolitical galaxy far, far away.

National Post

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