The Canadian Forces is an important component of Canada’s sovereignty and its ability to project change in the world. Canada’s military, according to the International Institute of Security Studies, ranks as one of the largest militaries of the liberal democracies and Canada, itself, is ranked 14th in global military spending[1, 2]. The Canadian Forces has a specific mandate to protect Canada and its sovereignty; defend North America in cooperation with the United States; and contribute to broader international and domestic concerns such as disaster relief and NATO. However, today I would like to briefly examine the unique structure of the Canadian Forces and how this arrangement enables greater efficiency and capacity within Canada’s military and provides improved interoperability with Canada’s partners. While this could be considered as a dry or ‘unsexy’ topic, the changes to the Canadian Forces articulated by this paper and its aim to enhance its cooperation with international partners are important topics as these alterations and policies have had a profound affect on Canada’s military ability to operate; its relationship with Canada’s partners and reflect Canada’s perennial security interests.
In 1964, Canada’s government embarked on a ground-breaking structural adjustment of Canada’s military. This document and its implementation by the Government changed the traditional structure of Canada’s military from a tri-service agency with separate land, sea and air branches and separate command structures, to a service which held a “single Chief of Defence Staff and a single Defence Staff”[3]. The aim of this was to produce a fully integrated defence system that would “produce a more effective and co-ordinated defence posture for Canada” [4]. Thus the primary goal of this modification was to provide Canada with a strong, flexible, and efficient military that could adequately serve all of Canada’s defence policies, reflected by the mandate of the Canadian Forces outlined above. This process did not occur over night and it took decades to fully realize a completely revamped Canadian military.
It should be noted that the 1964 change to the command structure and overall make-up of the Canadian Forces led to “reduce[ed] overhead costs and achieve[d] savings in the areas of planning, support, finance and administration”[5]. Saving money is always considered an important task by governments but the affect of this process on the Canadian Forces’ overall efficiency came later. Under General Rick Hillier in the 2000s, this process gained a contemporary and strong impetus within the military as Hillier aimed to affect a major “transformation of the [Canadian Forces] existing command structure, the introduction of new operational capabilities, and the establishment of fully integrated units capable of a high-readiness response to foreign and domestic threats”[6]. However, this still leaves us with an important set of questions: how did this change affect the efficiency and capacity of the Canadian Forces, especially in regard to Canada’s commitments in Afghanistan, and did this unique organization provide better interoperability with Canada’s allies and partners?
It is often said that wars are won by those with access to a robust logistical support system and structure. Thus, an important part of military doctrine is the supply of armed forces within the field and it is in this context that Canada’s military excels. Due to process of unification inside the Canadian Forces, supply integration has improved and this has proven to be a boon for Canada’s military during its tenure in Afghanistan and elsewhere. For example, the creation of CANOSCOM or Canadian Operational Support Command in 2006 – an overarching civilian and military superstructure – merged logistics support to the Canadian Forces [7]. According to the Sheena Bolton of the Legion Magazine, this organization has proved to be “vital” in regard to the sustainment and support of missions in Afghanistan, Haiti, and Libya as communication, resource, and information sharing between the various land, sea, and air components of the military was dramatically improved [8].
To further emphasize this point, Captain Lisa Haveman, of the Canadian Forces, made it clear that, from her on-the-ground perspective as a Chief Administration Officer, she believed that the unified structure of the Canadian Forces enabled near-seamless operations, such as the repatriation of Canadian soldiers, and supplies in Afghanistan [9]. For example, Haveman explained that the ‘horizontal’ relationship, with a single chain of command, between operators in the air force and army elements of the Canadian Forces in Afghanistan delivered greater communication and efficiency between the different components of the Canadian military [10]. This contrasts sharply with the United States’ military own difficulties in coordinating similar movement of troops and supplies as this military uses multiple structures – each of which is ‘vertical’ and has separate chains of command which all compete for finite resources and jealously guard operational independence. This problem was highlighted by the poor communication and resource sharing between the US military services, federal government, state governments, and US agencies during Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the response to this disaster [11]. Furthermore, according to Haveman, the US military services’ divided structure continued to inhibit internal communications, resource sharing, and efficiency in its operations in Afghanistan [12]. Through a comparison between the US and the Canadian militaries, we are able to see that structural differences can have a profound effect upon a military’s ability to coordinate with its various components and an inability to achieve sustained coordination can lead to greater inefficiency, miss-allocated resources, and miscommunication.
As part of its mandate, an important concern of the Canadian Forces has been the ability to operate in conjunction with Canada’s partners and allies – notably the United States and NATO. According to Hugh Segal, interoperability between Canadian Forces and its partners is a “central principle of [Canada’s] defence policy” and that interoperability, in this context, means the “ability of systems, units or forces to provide services to and accept services from other systems, units or forces and to use the services so exchanged to enable them to operate effectively together” [13] Essentially, this means that militaries with the same goal are able to share hardware, resources, and information between each other. NATO, for example, has standardized much of its hardware and institutional systems to encourage homogeneity across its members’ militaries. Canada’s International Policy Statement explains that interoperability is an important goal for the Canadian Forces and that the uniquely integrated structure of the Canadian military has aided the broad adoption of standardization, necessary for interoperability, and the specialization of Canadian Forces, with regard to the specific needs of partner militaries, in order to contribute to coalition, NATO, and joint Canadian-US operations [14]. Thus, the unified nature of Canada’s military enables Canada to operate with its partners, in accordance with its mandate, and further validates the structure of the Canadian Forces as it aids the implementation of interoperability, through standardization and specialization.
In this blog, I have attempted to show the unique structure of the Canadian military and how this structure has contributed to greater communication and efficiency. In contrast to other militaries, the Canadian Forces has subscribed to a doctrine that emphasizes uniformity and, in doing so, it has been provided with a capability to organize and coordinate efficiently. Furthermore, approaching this structure through a Liberal lens, a school in international relations which examines multilateralism, Canada’s military has been intentionally geared towards Canada’s multilateral role within NATO and as a partner of the United States as increased interoperability with these entities is a part of its mandate and is facilitated by the unified structure of the Canadian Forces.
For more information, see: –
[1] International Institute of Strategic Studies, The Military Balance, James Hackett (ed.) pp. 51–53.
[2] The Economist, Military Spending: Defence Costs, http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/06/military-spending.
[3]White Paper on Defence, Department of National Defence, Canada. 1964. Pg 19.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Major-General Daniel Gosselin, Hellyer’s Ghosts: Unification of Canadian Forces is 40 Years Old: Part Two. http://www.journal.dnd.ca/vo9/no3/04-gosselin-eng.asp.
[6] Brigadier-General Daniel Gosselin and Dr. Craig Stone, From Minister Hellyer to General Hillier: Understanding the Fundamental Differences between the Unification of the Canadian Forces and its Present Transformation, http://www.journal.forces.gc.ca/vo6/no4/trans-eng.asp.
[7] Government of Canada, Canadian Joint Operations, http://www.forces.gc.ca/en/about-org-structure/canadian-joint-coperations-command.page.
[8] Sheena Bolton, Logistics, The Legion Magazine, https://legionmagazine.com/en/2011/07/logistics/
[9] Captain Haveman, Presentation to Political Science 360: Security Studies, University of Biritish Columbia, October 02, 2014/
[10] Ibid.
[11] The White House, Katrina Lessons Learned, Chp 5, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/reports/katrina-lessons-learned/chapter5.html.
[12] National Security and Interoperability, The Canadian Forces and the Doctrine of Interoperability, http://irpp.org/wp-content/uploads/assets/research/national-security-andinteroperability/new-research-artcile-7/pmvol3no2.pdf.
[13] Hugh Segal, Introduction, Institute for Research on Public Policy. http://irpp.org/wp-content/uploads/2005/08/intro-segal.pdf.
[14] Canada’s International Policy Statement, Asean Regional Forum, 2005, http://aseanregionalforum.asean.org/files/library/ARF%20Defense%20White%20Papers/Canada%27s%20International%20Policy%20Statement.pdf.