John Robson: A Recipe to Overhaul Canada’s Ailing Military

Commentary Decades ago, British Prime Minister John Major announced a revolutionary approach to budgeting. Alas, he didn’t implement it and became a footnote to history. But the idea, sound in principle, was that instead of duct-taping this year’s budget together from the wreckage of last year’s while cramming in some unaffordable voter-bait baubles, they would start from scratch by deciding what they needed and what they could afford, then work out the details within those firm big limits. Which brings me to Canadian defence. That it’s a hideous mess no sane person familiar with it now denies. It’s not just that we conspicuously lack the resources to defend ourselves against Fredonia or Grand Fenwick, let alone the sinister state and non-state actors now troubling the world, or even assisting our less hapless allies in doing so. We can’t manage procurement, recruitment, or almost literally anything else. Even our feel-good rhetoric now seems as depleted and obsolete as the black powder shells our navy still had on the eve of World War I....