Military culture is adaptive, and this helps to ensure effective operations, but it is not well suited for producing policy. That is not its purpose. The cds does not receive instructions from the prime minister or the clerk of the Privy Council, the minister and deputy do, and the civilian side of dnd is primarily responsible for translating the government’s agenda into defence policy, creating options, and challenging the estimates and judgments of the officer class. A forceful, knowledgeable, and effective civilian defence establishment is critical to striking the appropriate civil-military balance. The minister alone, with a minuscule staff atop a vast and complex organization of roughly 100,000 personnel, cannot perform this role; and, without the countervailing force of strong civilian leadership inside the Defence Department, distinct military perspectives and traditions can lead to agendas that conflict with those of the government.
One unique attribute of the Canadian Forces is their tight bonds of kinship with the American military. There are many reasons for this, including the serial neglect of the CF by successive governments over the past quarter century. That neglect helped to cement a CF dependency on their US counterparts for everything from equipment to training to doctrine. This intimate, even symbiotic relationship profoundly affects the thinking of Canada’s military leaders, and has at times pushed senior officers ahead of their elected government. In early 2003, before Prime Minister Chrétien made the decision not to join the “coalition of the willing” that would soon invade Iraq, the CF leadership, anticipating Canadian involvement in the war, carved out a Canadian naval role in the Persian Gulf and ensured that CF liaison staff were located at US headquarters in Qatar. Canada’s military leaders clearly wanted to participate in the Iraq war — even though the Canadian government and public opinion were leaning in the opposite direction.
Once Chrétien had made up his mind, military leaders fell into line. There was no issue of civilian control of a military that refused to accept its government’s decision. Nevertheless, this situation underlines the need for a vigilant, confident, and forceful civilian leadership inside the defence establishment, to ensure that the military agenda is appropriately framed and constrained within broader government policy and priorities.
Paul Martin has acknowledged that the slashing of the public service during the 1990s contributed directly to the erosion of policy expertise across the government, particularly at dfait. Today, unlike at dnd and the Canadian International Development Agency (cida), funding at Foreign Affairs has not been restored. On the contrary, budget cuts continue as dfait struggles to manage with woefully inadequate resources. It has been forced to close embassies and consulates around the world, and, in some cases, to sell embassies that are ideally located. Its policy capacity has been significantly reduced as it tries to manage day-to-day responsibilities with a shrinking staff. It is little wonder then that dfait’s senior leadership is deeply demoralized as it considers the future of the foreign service in Canada.
This erosion of policy-making capacity inside Foreign Affairs is serious. dfait, along with dnd, cida, and the Privy Council Office, is ultimately responsible for providing foreign and national security policy advice to the government. Furthermore, for development assistance to work it must be twinned with strong and effective diplomacy led by experienced experts, by those with historical and cultural knowledge of the country where assistance is going. A strong Foreign Affairs Department is also essential as a challenge to dnd, and in particular to the military. When the voice of Foreign Affairs is weak — or absent — the prime minister and Cabinet do not get the balanced advice and information they need to make informed decisions.
Kevin Lynch, the clerk of the Privy Council, is well aware of the urgent need to renew Canada’s public service. A talented public servant, he knows good policy requires an engaged civil service that is informed and able to question, challenge, and provide a range of thoughtful policy options to ministers. Nowhere is this more important today — when Canada is fighting a war — than in the departments responsible for foreign and defence policy. Yet budget cutting is only one obstacle to renewal. As important is the marginalization of dfait by successive governments and the centralization of power.
Prime Minister Trudeau was the first to go around officials and run foreign policy out of his own office, and successive governments since have trusted dfait less and less. While Martin despaired over dfait’s seeming inability to develop new policy ideas, in the past few years distrust of the foreign service has become acute. Senior officials in Foreign Affairs are no longer permitted to brief the press without prior permission, even on a not-for-attribution basis. Ambassadors cannot speak publicly on matters of substance without clearing their texts beforehand. Senior officers are less and less willing to talk, even privately. The clampdown is real, and morale is now lower at dfait than it has been in generations. None of this, of course, affects Hillier.
The report of the Independent Panel on Canada’s Future Role in Afghanistan (the Manley report) agrees that diplomats and development workers are unable to speak to the public. “Canada’s ambassadors in Kabul, nato, and other capitals,” they concluded, “have had limited authority to explain Canadian policy.” One member of the panel was less diplomatic. “The muzzling of Foreign Affairs and other departments,” argued Derek Burney, “has led to Canadians being confused about the mission.”
Robert Fowler, a fiercely partisan defender of his former colleagues in the public service, reluctantly acknowledges that today government leaders may well be “improperly briefed by intimidated bureaucrats seeking to please their stern and ever-suspicious masters.” This is an astounding admission from a former public servant. Senior officials, he implies, may no longer be speaking truth to power, even in private.
General Hillier’s willingness to talk openly about when he is right and, equally, when he is wrong in his judgments and assessments is a refreshing change. It needs to be strongly encouraged. Conflicts today may be lower in intensity than “great wars” and more regional in nature, but they are highly problematic, complicated, pervasive; and the warfare itself, more often than not, is asymmetric and requires special training. The dangers are real, and when armies are being sent abroad to fight — rather than kept at home safely in the barracks, as they were throughout most of the Cold War — citizens need to be informed. Whether or not, and where, Canada’s military should go is a matter of policy, a decision only the elected leadership can make. But what the military can do, what financial and recruitment needs it has, and the constraints it bumps up against, are all properly a matter for the cds to discuss directly with the public. These are matters of fact and resources, and calls for civilian control over an outspoken cds eager to discuss them directly with Canadians reflect a unhealthy impulse to control information that belongs in the public domain.
