Can the Defence minister solve Canada's procurement Rubik’s Cube?
Prime Minister Mark Carney pictured with Defence Minister David McGuinty / TWITTER PHOTO
When announcing his Cabinet in April, new Prime Minister Mark Carney hailed his selection of “a new team purpose-built for this hinge moment in Canada‘s history.” He added that each minister “is expected and empowered to show leadership — to bring new ideas, a clear focus, and decisive action to their work.”
That instruction to ministers is both a promise and a warning: it promises that they have the freedom to get on with their jobs, but it also warns that if they don't deliver results as promised, they could find themselves returned to the back bench.
With that in mind, new Defence Minister David McGuinty may have some sleepless nights this summer. On the one hand, anytime a minister is given billions of dollars in new money, as McGuinty was in Tuesday’s defence announcement by the Prime Minister, it is a very happy day, indeed.
The downside for the minister, however, is that while he may be “purpose-built” to deliver on his huge shopping list of scads of new high-tech defence kit mandated by the announcement, he will find himself afflicted with a defence procurement system that seems “purpose-built” not to deliver results.
Sea King saga
The systemic dysfunction in Canadian defence procurement is no secret. It is all too well known. There is the now legendary saga of the federal government's effort to replace the ancient Sea King helicopters. First acquired in the early 1960s, a replacement was introduced in 1986 under the Mulroney government. Fully operational replacement helicopters were not in place until the end of 2022.
To the list of delayed major defence procurement projects, we could add the River Class Destroyer Project, the Arctic and Offshore Patrol Ships Project, the Fixed-Wing Search and Rescue Aircraft Project, the Medium Support Vehicle System Trucks Project, and, of course, the CF-18 Fighter Replacement Project, now known as the F-35 Project, which is well on its way to rivalling the Sea King replacement process for delays. (More about that below.)
The systemic impediments to efficient Canadian defence procurement — multi-departmental fragmentation, slow decision-making, and political involvement — have occasioned numerous pledges — Conservative and Liberal — to reform it over the past decade. The results have been meagre, as attested to by successive Auditors General and Parliamentary Budget Officers.
This very week, the Auditor General delivered a devastating assessment of the F-35 project, concluding “that costs associated with the F-35 advanced fighter jet program are running $8.7 billion higher than the original estimates” due to “delays and critical shortfalls — including a lack of qualified pilots.”
AG report
The fact that the date and subject matter of all Auditor General Reports are publicly announced well in advance suggests that this week’s major prime ministerial defence announcement was not a model of political timing. But the fact that the Minister had to release a book-length response to the Report’s findings could leave him in no doubt about just how dysfunctional defence procurement is in Canada.
The Liberal 2025 platform duly pledged, among other things, to “modernize our procurement legislation to ensure our Forces can buy the equipment that they need, when they need it — which is now.” The Prime Minister's defence announcement reiterated this pledge, albeit in passing.
Past promises to achieve defence procurement reform have resulted in administrative tweaks and band-aid solutions. Presumably, Minister McGuinty and his staff want to learn from past mistakes. They don't want to rush headlong forward only to be tripped up again and again by systemic problems. However, they also don’t want to look like they have been captured by the existing fragmented and inert system. In other words, they will want to show leadership, as they have been instructed by the Prime Minister.
Minister McGuinty and his staff will be reflecting this summer on whether the Prime Minister’s expectations for results will allow him the time he needs to carry out the kind of top-to-bottom, root-and-branch reform required to make Canadian defense procurement fit for purpose so he can deliver the expected results.
But they can’t reflect for too long to solve this administrative Rubik’s Cube. The clock is ticking, and Prime Minister Carney is, by all accounts, an impatient man.
