Gurney: Keep Canada safe by building out the Army Reserve

You may have come across an essay on a similar theme in The Globe and Mail that same day. The long piece, by Globe foreign affairs columnist Doug Saunders, took a similar (and much more thorough) path to essentially the same conclusion — that the foundation of foreign policy assumptions that the Trudeau government was counting on when it took office in 2015 has been basically shattered in the years since. It was a good essay, but as I was working my way through it, there was something missing. I found myself wondering, when the hell is Doug going to get around to making the obvious point that Canada is going to have to defend itself by itself, or at least much more so than we’re used to even contemplating?

He gets there, eventually. But only barely — it’s a half-sentence in the second-last paragraph. But the conclusion is still right: Saunders says that we’re going to have to start spending more on defence. But spend it how?

I’ve been banging this drum for years. I don’t know if it’s my history degrees or my cynicism, but I’ve always believed that Canadians haven’t grasped how much of a historical anomaly the past generation of history has been. We are fabulously wealthy and fabulously safe, and have probably been both of those things just long enough for a critical mass of Canadians to come to take it for granted. Now that we are slowly and painfully realizing that the world isn’t the nice place we assumed it is, and our allies are not necessarily as reliable as we’ve lazily counted on, we’re going to have to see to our own defences — fast.

In a challenging global environment, it’s hard to think of a better way to strengthen Canada than by immediately building on the existing success of the Army Reserve

The problem, of course, is that a byproduct of our perceived near-total security is that we are flaky about defence. Incredibly so. This is especially true on matters of procurement. “Lamenting Canadian military procurement” is a phrase you can use more-or-less interchangeably with the more-common “flogging a dead horse” but one brief example illustrates the point.

A few years ago, the British realized their Second World War-vintage 9mm pistols were in need of replacement. They needed 25,000 new 9mms. So … they got them. That’s it. They picked a pistol, bought them, and had them in service in two years. You know why? Because it’s not that hard to buy a pistol. Canada, by coincidence, also realized a few years ago, in 2016, that we needed replacements for our Second World War-vintage 9mm pistols. We also decided we needed 25,000 of them. So this is virtually a twin of the British procurement, which they completed in two years. And we hope to have them in service … by 2026. At the earliest. Ten years after we started.

I could go on. I won’t. You all know the problems. From pistols and trucks right through to billion-dollar warships and fighter jet squadrons, we are grotesquely inept at equipping our military. But there is one quick win we could probably pull off without screwing it up too badly. And I’m happy to say it’s getting some attention.

A few weeks ago, I came across an interesting article in the Kingston Whig-Standard. James Bezan, a local Conservative MP but also the Tory critic for National Defence, had made a local stop to talk about local issues. But he also had something interesting to say: he thinks Canada needs to expand the Army Reserve.

The problem, of course, is that a byproduct of our perceived near-total security is that we are flaky about defence.

Yes. We do. Massively.

The Army Reserve has units scattered across the country, in more than 100 locations. But these units are often very small — maybe 100 or so troops in many (and often, not even that many). These soldiers have gone through basic training, like any other Canadian soldier, but rather than being assigned to a full-time unit, for deployment or more training, they return to their civilian lives and jobs. They go on military exercises during the summer and train one night a week and on weekends. They’re paid when on the job, but only when they’re on the job. These reservists offer Canada a pool of young, fit and trained personnel who can respond to a domestic crisis or join units heading overseas to fight.

And they are, compared to a full-time regular soldier, cheap.

That’s not a knock on the men and women, to be clear. But these soldiers are only paid for the time they’re actually on duty. This allows Canada to have a large number of troops available for call-up if needed for a fraction of the cost of maintaining a larger full-time army. We definitely should have a larger full-time Army — much larger — but in the interim, adding more reservists is a cost-effective way to bulk up, quickly, the Canadian military.

In fact, we’ve already committed to having more than we have. In theory, the Army Reserve should have 29,000 troops — that’s the number the military believes it needs. But it only has the money to sustain 21,000. A 2016 Auditor-General’s report found (among various other problems — more on those in a minute) that in 2015, the Reserves actually had about 19,500 troops, of which roughly 14,000 were trained and ready for duty. That’s half the needed amount.

We can do better by rapidly providing the (comparatively modest) funds to get the Reserves up to the 29,000 the military says it needs. We should also take the steps laid out in the A-G’s report for improving the overall state of the Reserves, including addressing bureaucratic delays inducting new troops and challenges with retention, and providing better training, more in line with what full-time soldiers receive.

The devil is always in the details. We are, after all, very good at screwing this sort of thing up. But expanding the Army Reserve — at least to the level we already think it should be at — and getting those troops trained and assigned to units would give the Army many thousands of extra soldiers to call on for the cost of only a few thousand full-time regulars.

Fielding almost 20,000 Reservists cost the military, according to the A-G report, barely $300 million in 2015. This is incredible value for money — we could triple that and it would still be a rounding error on federal spending. And since many Reserve units are already under their proper strength, the physical infrastructure to sustain them already exists, being used at less than full capacity. We can do this.

Building out the Army Reserve is just one part of what Canada needs to do, and fast. We need more of everything and everyone, but in a challenging global environment, it’s hard to think of a better way to strengthen Canada than by immediately building on the existing success of the Army Reserve.

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