John Robson: When It Comes to Defence Procurement, the Feds Are Asleep at the Switch
Commentary
Australia is building or buying 11 nuclear-powered submarines because of the looming threat of conflict with communist China. Whereas in Canada we’re still going “What’s conflict?” and “What’s communism?” and, within the Trudeau administration, “What’s China?”
In democracies there’s always a mix of good news and bad on defence. The Australian says, “The Australian Defence Force will be transformed into a more agile, lethal force, capable of mounting missile strikes and amphibious assaults far from the mainland under an ambitious blueprint to respond to China’s unprecedented military expansion.” But agile is a term planners use, like “lean,” when they intend to skimp on funding, so “despite ‘the most challenging strategic circumstances’ since 1945, the government is refusing to increase the Defence budget for at least four years and has deferred key multibillion-dollar decisions on the future of the navy’s surface fleet.”…