For any procurement system to function effectively it needs political leadership committed to actual results. Therein lies the problem. Canadian governments and the Canadians they represent, are not opposed to supporting the military, but too often defense spending is seen as discretionary. It is nice to support the military, but not if it means our taxes go up or healthcare, employment insurance, or CPP is reduced. A good example is the governments recent holiday tax break which is estimated to cost as much as $6B in revenue. The only complaints seemed to be about the logistical details (turns out our government can’t even give away money properly). I wonder what the reaction would be to a spur of the moment additional $6B expenditure on defense.

I was interested to read your working papers on Canada US Defense as well as the SCOND June 2024 report on Procurement Reform. I worked on a defense procurement reform study back in 2008. I was a new federal public servant working in the ADM Acquisitions office of PWGSC and an interdepartmental team was set up in response to a mandate letter to “fix procurement”. Most of the observations made back then have been repeated in the 2024 study. At the time DND was pushing quite hard to establish a defense procurement agency under a single minister. Although I was an inexperienced outsider to both Defense and GC procurement it seemed to me that unless you changed the actual process, placing it under a new organization really wouldn’t make any difference. This has been aptly demonstrated by the Australians over the past decade. The one thing that did stand out then however was that our procurement system actually could deliver major capital projects in a reasonable period of time given the right conditions – strong commitment by the PMO, and a discipline towards purchasing established “off the shelf” equipment with minimal modification. This of course was demonstrated by the C-17 and C130J transport aircraft purchases, the used Leopard C2 tanks, and the CH47 Chinooks.

Opportunity is knocking

All that being said, Canada may have an opportunity to advance some much-needed improvements to Defense, due to both public shaming on the international stage, and for more pragmatic reasons. With the recent election of the Trump administration, Canada’s trade relations with the United States are already under pressure – and the inauguration hasn’t even occurred yet. As per the working papers, Canada should expect that defense spending will play a role in any new trade negotiations – at the very least our lack of commitments (or lack of follow through on commitments) have put us on the defensive right from the start. Given that president Trump often is more often concerned with a performative victory as opposed to a more substantive one, a demonstrable commitment by Canada to reach the NATO 2% spending target before the end of his term might allow him to claim a negotiation victory and pave the way for a more favorable renewal to the CUSMA agreement for Canadian trade.

Getting to 2% can be done quickly. Establishing a new defense procurement process under a new defense procurement organization may be a long-term solution but the disruption it would cause over the short-term makes it impractical for the crisis we now are in. Nothing would get done over the next four years. The existing system must be used, and it can work provided the political leadership is willing to truly demand results (as opposed to interfere in the process for various interests, including simply saving money by not spending it); and if the public service is willing to accept that they do not need to control every aspect of the procurement. A clean process that doesn’t deliver a result in reasonable time is not a success.

The approach is two-fold. The first would be to focus on buying more of what we already have. That isn’t a waste of money, there are many capabilities in our portfolio which we could certainly use more of. The advantage is that many of these procurements could be made through the US FMS agreements. Yes, they would be sole-sourced contracts but that is not a violation of the treasury board contracting regulations. Since you are adding to existing fleets you need to buy the same product for reasons of logistics, maintenance, training and interoperability. Examples could include more artillery, more munitions of everything (Ukraine has shown the need for more than you expect), more LAV6 (give the existing fleet to the reserves), more ESSM air defence missiles for the RCN (many can be stored as the new ships will carry twice as many and need them – think pre-buying), more RB70 anti-air launchers for the army, maybe even consideration to buying additional F35. The fact that you can prepay for a FMS contract means that you can spend money quickly and not be held up by delivery delay. Since the procurement process (including RFP documents etc.) has already been implemented previously, adding new contracts for the same items would not been an overly administrative burden for the stretched procurement teams. Further, the nature of the FMS contract limits the ability of buyer to modify existing systems which prevents delays due to the strong desire of many players within the defense establishment to customize procurements.

The second approach is to change the effort involved within the procurement process, but not the steps of the process. The procurement process could be far quicker and require far fewer resources with some changes. This includes vastly reducing the size and complexity of procurement documentation, from TB submissions to the request for proposals. For example, for major capital projects that involve military hardware, most military leaders know what products they would consider, far in advance of the preparation and release of bid documentation. When the new surface combatants were competed, I am sure that almost anyone involved knew in advance who the competitors were going to be and what products they would be proposing. Major military procurements involve only a handful of competitors. As we should only be purchasing existing platforms and systems (we can no longer afford customization – if it works for the US or the UK or other NATO members it should be fine for us as is barring safety code compliances) our RFB should be short documents outlining general (but necessarily mandatory) requirements, budget, contract terms, and an award system that gives merit to prioritized needs. Let the suppliers come back and make an offer to a interdepartmental award committee who then can ask questions and decide which product has the best fit – accepting that perhaps you will get not everything you desire but what other militaries have. Make the winning contractor provide the specification – we don’t need to write one – to spell out exactly what we are getting prior to the contract award. We do not have the expertise anymore nor the capacity to write up a detailed package down to the colours of the wiring. Outline extremely short timelines for each step of the process as a means to reduce the tendency to over-deliver. If documents are short and to the point approvals are easier, and chances of budgets being blown and schedules missed are minimized.

Poor defense procurement in Canada is a convenient problem to have if you have little desire to spend money on defense. Perhaps now will there will be the motivation to actually improve it.

We need to wean ourselves from being dependent on America, both financially and militarily. It needed to start as soon as trump was elected first time