Roundup: A cut or not a cut of the defence budget?

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Yesterday morning, the CBC had a story about the department of national defence looking to cut $1 billion from its books as part of the government’s ongoing spending review, and people lost their gods damned minds, both in Canada and in some international venues. The story was based on comments that were made at committee by the chief of defence staff and the deputy minister, and they talked about how it was going to be challenging to meet these reductions while worrying about capabilities. This was a bit of a surprise, because Anita Anand had previous said that defence was going to be exempt from her cost-cutting demands, but the comments from General Eyre and the deputy minister sounded like DND volunteered to do their share (which I always treat with suspicion—the previous Auditor General made his own pledge to do his part to make cuts as part of the Deficit Reduction Action Plan™, and lo, wound up delaying badly overdue IT upgrades that his successor needed to beg Parliament for more resources to deal with). And because this is not my first rodeo, I immediately presumed that what this likely means is the accounting game of shifting certain spending into future years or re-profiling some committed dollars that they can’t spend (because they simply don’t have the capacity to spend their current allocation), but a whole lot of people who should know better freaked all the way out.

This came up in Question Period, and Bill Blair was present, but he didn’t really answer the question—he took a swipe at the Conservatives for their record of cutting defence spending to below 1 percent of GDP (indeed, here’s a look back in history of Harper complaining to Peter MacKay that he didn’t cut the military enough) and then read some bland pabulum that didn’t even approach answering the question—because that’s what this government does. It wasn’t until nearly 4 PM that Blair posted a thread to Twitter about how they were still increasing the defence budget, and these $1 billion in savings were internal measures like cutting back on travel and consultants, but noted the spending commitments they’ve made like NORAD modernisation, and ships and planes, and so on.

It absolutely mystifies me as to how this message-obsessed government took almost eight hours to craft a response to this news story that when they could have shut down the hysterical reaction to it in mere minutes had they simply sent out a similar tweet first thing in the morning. There is nothing in there to demonstrate why it took eight hours. They could also have had Blair give a reasonable response during QP that would have simply said “This reporting is exaggerated, we are looking for some efficiencies, but overall defence spending is still increasing,” and it would have defused everything. But they didn’t, either because they’re inept, or it takes them that many hours to get sign-off from Katie Telford’s office, which is a sad sign about where this government is at. But nearly eight hours for this kind of response to the story is unacceptable, and it’s a real-time demonstration in why things need to change at the top with this government.

Ukraine Dispatch:

The first American Abrams tanks are being delivered in the eastern front, in the hopes they will make a difference. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy marked the 82nd anniversary of the Babyn Yar massacre by Nazi forces.

Good reads:

  • The Fiscal Monitor shows a federal deficit of $1.2 billion for the first four months of the year (it was a surplus of $6.3 billion during the same period last year).
  • François-Philippe Champagne won’t table amendments for his digital privacy bill at committee until they reach clause-by-clause, which is damned peculiar.
  • Steven Guilbeault says there is room for tweaks in the Clean Energy Regulations, but he’s not going to carve out a special deal for Alberta or Saskatchewan.
  • Gary Anandasangaree says that he’s nearly ready to present a plan on searching the landfill in Winnipeg, but he needs the province onboard and they’re unwilling.
  • As part of the implementation of the Online Streaming Act, the CRTC wants all streaming services, audio or visual, to register by the end of November.
  • US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is calling on his Indian counterpart to cooperate with Canada’s investigation into the Nijjar murder.
  • For Truth and Reconciliation Day, The Canadian Press talks to some Indigenous leaders about what they want or need to see from governments.
  • Here is a look at the growing field of candidates for Speaker.
  • One Ontario college says the images of international students living in tents was a publicity stunt that isn’t reflective of their situation.
  • Scott Moe is trying to mount a defence around his planned use of the Notwithstanding Clause school pronouns policy, but there isn’t one.
  • Steve Saideman has some thoughts on the story about budget cuts coming for DND.
  • Paul Wells gets a full and frank conversation about changes being made to the immigration department to fix a broken internal system that was overloaded.
  • My Xtra column takes a deep dive into the use of moral panics and ethnic-outbidding to drive the public response to the “1 Million March.”

Odds and ends:

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One thought on “Roundup: A cut or not a cut of the defence budget?”

  1. IMO this Liberal government does not jump out quickly with a response because they want to ensure that there are no loopholes in the response which PP and the Conservatives will jump on immediately to make the situation even worse. As for the Liberals patting themselves on the back for doing something good my thought is if they don’t do it who in the Hell else is going to do it.

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