While looking for a Canadian Press story on a death overseas, I came across this column by Sun defence writer Peter Worthington.
Apparently, Liberals are to be blamed for the purchase of the Upholder class submarines from the United Kingdom.
Ok.
But then Worthy adds a litany of other fiascos, some from the Chretien era and others - much larger ones - from Brian Mulroney to bolster is argument.
And what is that argument? That defence decisions are inherently overly political. Therefore the subs are another reason to vote out the Liberals.
Apparently, this isn't the first Worthy missive against the subs. Here's a letter from a retired admiral from 1997 responding to one of his earlier columns.
Worthy rightly points to the overly political nature of Canadian defence procurement decisions. We buy stuff for reasons other than military necessity or operational requirements. Hunt around long enough and you'll find a paper I wrote a decade or more ago that carried a litany of asinine procurement decisions. They were asinine for a variety of reasons. The chief one was that the item bought was either inferior to other stuff available for the task, took too long to get into the system or was just flat out too costly when other stuff was available that was better and cheaper.
That said, voting out Liberals won't change that. In 1993, voting out the Tories who were responsible for some of the idiotic equipment purchases and a whole bunch more Worthy didn't find worthy of mention didn't change anything. That's because the roots of the defence procurement problem are much deeper than Worthy's superficial appraisal shows.
In order to tackle defence procurement you need to sort out priorities. Figure out the defence tasks, then buy accordingly. Resist the lobbying from interested parties and get the right tools once you have figured out the tasks.
If Worthy took a step back and off the soap box he'd notice the massive changes within National Defence in the past 10 years. New management, and real leadership from guys like Rick Hillier, have given us a much better military force and a solid set of plans to give Canada the defence capability it needs. Oddly enough, that is oddly if you adhere to Worthy's logic, National Defence is actually in better shape now than in was in 1990. I'd say that's actually a powerful reason to keep people like Bill Graham where they are.
Worthy thinks subs are useless. Ok.
Well, a lot of people thought tanks were useless in the 1970s when we bought Leopards, but more to the point today there are people advocating we buy tanks again. Maybe Worthy is among that group pushing for tanks, given his family background. Maybe Worthy favourably quotes the Conservative defence critic because Gordon O'Connor is... wait for it... a former tank guy.
Of course, Worthy forgets to mention that Canada was offered Bradley fighting vehicles and Abrams tanks in 1990 yet the Mulroney government turned the idea down on cost grounds. That sure doesn't fit into Worthy's rant today in which Liberals are to blame for everything including stuff they didn't even do.
But guess what, guys? Tanks aren't needed either.
Let's see Pete write a column that argues against buying tanks.
I am not holding my breath waiting for that one.
