Equipment Procurement in Canada and the Civil-Military Relationship: Past and Present

Abstract

The procurement of military weapons and equipment in Canada has historically been controlled by partisan political considerations rather than by a clear desire to increase the capability of the military.  Civilian leaders have typically given actual combat strength a low priority, thus Canada has often failed to effectively design, produce, or even to purchase the weapons and equipment its military needs to carry out the priorities of the civil power.  Distributing regional economical benefits equally among the provinces instead of acquiring equipment in the most efficient manner possible resulted in numerous contract scandals and exceedingly long procurement timelines.

To secure even the most modest materiel, officials within the Department of National Defence (DND) have had to comply with a succession of rules that can only be described as illogical from a standpoint of military performance.  Rather than designing a more efficient method, the DND's internal process has continually evolved into an amorphous mass of bureaucracy involving myriad committees requiring endless analysis, re-evalauations, and approvals, thus compounding the problem.  This research demonstrates the ahistorical nature of military acquisitions in Canada and how few lessons have been learned from a long list of project failures.  This results largely from the political midsirection of the procurement process and the weakness of the civil-military relationship in Canada.