"...In terms of personnel, training and equipment, CAF has rarely been in such rough shape. Government disinterest and lack of direction has reached the point where retired generals are speaking out, offering opinions they say are shared by senior officers still serving.
...Officials said last year the military is under-staffed by around 10,000 regular and reserve troops, while the commander of the Royal Canadian Navy, Craig Baines, said recently he needs another 1,000 sailors. At the same time, the Department of National Defence is launching formal proceedings against 900 personnel for refusing to get the COVID-19 vaccine.
...The government’s record on buying new equipment in the past decade, under both Liberal and Conservative ministries, has been abysmal.
We still do not have a fighter jet to replace the CF18s a decade after the Harper government decided to sole source Lockheed Martin’s F35 and then reversed itself. The Trudeau government was elected on a pledge that it would never buy the F35 but late last year it said the plane was one of two (the other being Saab’s Gripen-E) still in the running for the $19 billion program. Not even this government could punt this decision any further down the runway.
...The result is the CAF are a mile wide and an inch deep,” he said. “A country which is pulled in multiple directions internationally, in addition to facing calls for military help at home, and which cannot expect more resources, desperately needs better government guidance as to what is important and what is less so..."
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/john-ivison-the-perils-of-neglecting-our-military
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