A report from a former Lieutenant General in the Canadian Armed Forces seems destined to be ignored…. again. Apparently, there are as many military personnel in Ottawa’s National Defense HQ as there are on active duty in the navy or regular force army. During the last six years, Command and Support has grown at four times the rate of actual deployable force. That seems a tad disproportionate to me.
Andrew Leslie, the author of the report, wants to see that change. Of course after years inside the Canadian military, he knows the odds against any of his recommendations being adopted. In the last forty five years, not one plan to reform Canada’s Armed Forces has been fully implemented. It seems like maybe it’s time for that to change.
When there are more people running the military than there are in it, it represents a really skewed set of priorities. It’s hard to justify the amount of money we spend on our military knowing most of it stays right here in Ottawa. The government talks about Force Projection, but the bulk of their personnel don’t seem to project much beyond DNDHQ.
My nephew served three tours in Afghanistan while upwards of twenty-thousand military staff did their best to bring peace and stability to Ottawa. Recent stimulus spending has fueled a large part of this expansion. Now that well is running dry, and the deployable forces seem to have been left off the gravy train. Thirteen billion in awesome new jets is a grand gesture, but it’s meaningless if there’s no actual people to put them in the air. The same is true of the army, and navy. When the budget is being drained by a top heavy administration, there’s not much left for actual boots on the ground.
If you think of it from a business perspective, it’s not a good idea to have more staff at head office than you do actually doing whatever it is your company does. That’s a recipe for disaster in the private sector. In the Canadian Military, it’s business as usual. The status quo has been institutionalized in the name of stability and a healthy dose of hidebound leadership. Case in point, former Chief of Defense Staff Rick Hillier.
Hillier’s take on Leslie’s recommendations: “You try to implement that report as it stands and you destroy the Canadian Military. You simply can’t take that many people out of Command & Control functions.” Really? How many bodies do you need in C&C per deployable person? Apparently, the idea of a leaner more efficient military has yet to breach the fortifications around Ottawa. While the deployable forces are tasked to do more and more with less and less, DNDHQ is doing a little bit more with a steadily growing mountain of resources.
Andrew Leslie’s own words seem like an appropriate wrap up. “If we don’t do something along these lines, battalions will be disbanded, ships will be tied up and aircraft will continue to be grounded while headquarters continues to grow.”
Note to Defense Minister Peter McKay and current Chief of Defense Staff Walt Natynczyk: YOU SORTA NEED SOMEONE TO COMMAND & CONTROL!
Cheers, Winston
Brain Bits To Go 
Great Article, Win…but the same can be said of ANY government entity that becomes bloated, including government as a whole.
The arguement is, Government doesn’t MAKE money, it SPENDS money, and gets it’s income through taxation. When you have too many people working IN government, you cannot sustain those salaries anymore. There are then three options to pay those people thier bloated salaries and pensions.
1) Increase Taxes on what business remains, and the private sector employees,
2) Take over Businesses and become your own producer,
3) A combination of both
This, my friend, is the socialist agenda, and is exactly whey California is bankrupting itself. Excessive government salaries (google Bell city council), unreasonable public sector pensions and excrutiating private sector taxation (which has forced companies to leave the state) have left a state that used to be the 4th largest economy on THE PLANET, near penniless.
The term, “Too many Cheifs, not enough Indians” comes to mind.
I know your stand on big government my friend, but that isn’t what this one is about. This isn’t about cutting the military budget, it’s about where that budget is going. When you have more butts in chairs in DNDHQ than you have boots on the ground, that’s a problem. It’s about wildly inappropriate allocation of resources.
For a post that speaks more to the issue you are raising, scroll back through the blog and read “Quick Tips For Political Reform”. You’ll understand why the Tea Party doesn’t impress me any more than any other party on either side of the border. I believe that elected officials shouldn’t earn any more than the people who elect them. How much money do you think that would cut from the budget? Money that could then go where it’s supposed to. To serve the people.
I support taxation to provide services to those who otherwise can’t afford them. I support socialized medicine and have been talking to a couple of activists I know to learn how to advocate for socialized prescriptions too. I believe in subsidized affordable housing for those on fixed incomes. I believe minimum wage shouldn’t leave a full time worker below the poverty line. I believe that corporations have an obligation to give back to the society they feed off of.
The “socialist agenda” is based on the idea that corporations are part of the society in which they operate and are equally responsible for the good for that society. It supports the idea that the guy with the wrench or the barcode scanner is entitled to a fair share of profits they create. When the CEO of a muti-billion dollar corporation makes a million a year plus perks, it is disgusting that the majority of people doing the actual work are barely making minimum wage. That is nothing but pure, naked greed. Corporations aren’t leaving California because your taxes are too high, they’re leaving because other states don’t have balls enough to do the same.
Just my opinion ;^D
Win, there are legitimate uses for “socialized” anything…there are individuals who simply can’t work. But when you have areas like Pembroke, where Welfare is now a “Job” (as in the case of my daughters boyfriend), you have a seriously broken system. That is NOT a legitimate spending of resources.
People need to get OFF the system when they don’t need it, rather than stay at home playing Playstation 3 all damn day. If it takes getting a job renting out porno videos, then they need to do it.
You cannot have a top heavy anything. You are 100% correct…and if you want people to pay for social programs, you have to have people working in the private sector to do it. It CANNOT be done if everyone’s primary source of income comes from the governments social services.
Just like you can’t fight a war, or provide defense, or run a cab company, or run a security company, or run a grocery store, if you don’t have soldiers, police/border patrol, drivers, security guards, checkout clerks on the ground. Exactly as you said…Poor allocation of resources will doom a business or government program to failure.
As far as the CEO of the company making a bank and not paying his people “their fair share”, that irks me too, BUT!!!!
…I pay my people WAY more money than what my competitors pay. I do that because I have found that if I want to be guaranteed that my workers will show up, I have to provide an incentive. But I owe them nothing. They COULD be unemployed.
As an employer, when I have people working for me, I am PREVENTING a drain on public resources. Me and the employee are both paying INTO unemployment to help those people who are unable to find work. Shit, the whole reason I started my company was because I was on extended unemployment. And when I went to the government to see about getting help starting my company so I could get off unemployment and start hiring people, they cut off my benefits because I had a professional license and were concerned I was working and not reporting it. They never did give me any assistance.
And isn’t that what Obama’s stimulus was supposed to do? Help put people to work? It did…it helped put people in China and Mexico to work when the bailed out companys built plants in those countries with that money.
You are right, my friend…big business IS evil…but the blood is on the hands of businesses supported by progressive governments as well.
Big business isn’t EVIL. People are greedy. People are selfish. Businesses aren’t sentient entities, it’s the people who control them that make the decisions. “Evil business”, “corrupt government”, neither of these things are possible. They are just ways to avoid responsibility. By attaching the greed, corruption, ethical vacuum etc to a thing it gives a pass to the people who are actually responsible.
There is nothing you can say that will convince that employers owe nothing to their employees. It is a symbiotic relationship. Until they westernized in the late eighties, Japan was a model of this. Employers cared for every aspect of their employees lives and employees in return were devoted to their employers. That is what launched them to the top of the economic food chain. Then they unionized, put profit ahead of people and their economy has been sliding steadily since then.
As for companies taking the stimulus bucks and relocating, frankly, corporate greed has been outsourcing jobs since long before Obama even thought of running for office. Ford opened it’s first car plant in Mexico about 25 years ago. It really hurts profits to pay people a living wage here as opposed to places without silly things like labour laws or environmental protection controls. Let’s not kid ourselves about the economy either. That deficit has been building longer than either of us have been on the planet. It’s convenient to lay it on Obama, or W’s foreign wars of aggression, or whatever other pet peeve we have. The fact is, both our countries have been living beyond our means for a long, long time. The only way it’s going to get any better any time soon is for people at all levels to adjust their expectations. Since that\’s not likely to happen, it’s going to be status quo for the foreseeable future.
BTW…when are you two coming to visit us?
Have to get a new job first and catch up the bills if I want to afford the airfare. Once that is done, you guys are top of my to go list.