Canadian Military to tighten its belt, reassign jobs, monies

The Canadian military is having to make some very difficult changes. Facing a $2.1 billion budget cut by 2015, has forced the Canadian Forces to take a hard look at how it’s spending money.

One major plan underway is to cut bureaucracy and redirect some of the savings towards actual operational needs    It’s part of a plan to give the military “more teeth, less tail”.

Michel Drapeau has a civilian law office in the national capitol, Ottawa,  specializing in federal and military law, and other civil matters. He is also an assistant professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Ottawa, and a retired Colonel of the Canadian Forces and frequent analyst of military affairs.

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A long-standing criticism of the Canadian Forces by analysts, and by some members of the military themselves,  is that too much money is being spent on administration , consultants, and bloated staff at National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa.

In its Defence Renewal Charter, the military has announced it will be making major changes at NDHQ and administrative costs by 2017-2018.  This will mean re-assigning some 4,800 people to other positions in the military, including new training for the changed roles, and likely moves to new bases across the country for some as the CF reduces desk jobs. Some positions will likely also be cut completely.

While defence analysts are not happy about the budget cuts, most are in strong agreement with the move to cut bureaucracy and excess administration.  Some of these recommendations were made in a report made by retired General Andrew Leslie in 2011.

The moves to reassign  NDHQ personnel to more active roles, and drastically reduce administration costs are expected to result in freeing up between $750 million to $1.2 billion. This money will be redirecting towards operational  needs.

While the Canadian Forces has always been respected for their amazing capabilities with limited resources, the redirected money to the “fighting end”, will please NATO allies.  It should mean more training time for the CF and for reserve personnel which the “regular” force depends upon to fill its ranks and obligations.  Training , flight hours, and sailing days have been cut back in the past few years, while the reserves have seen their training time greatly reduced. The reassigned money is expected to enable Canadian forces to gain back some of this critical training time.