Defence growth happened far from front lines, analysis shows

OTTAWA—Canada’s defence department bulked up during war — but not where you think.

Since 2004 — as the country’s mission in Afghanistan was ramping up — the defence department began swelling up, according to a Star analysis. But the dramatic growth happened far from the front lines with more civilians, more contractors and a ballooning headquarters staff.

Military experts say the numbers tell the tale of a bureaucracy run amok, even as the uniform ranks — especially the navy — remain stretched for manpower.

And it comes at a time when a radical plan to transform the defence department has been put in the hands of Defence Minister Peter MacKay and Gen. Walt Natynczyk.

At its heart, the goal of this still-secret blueprint is to trim the size of defence headquarters, pushing thousands of military personnel out of Ottawa and on to the country’s air force bases, naval ports and army bases.

The transformation of Canada’s Afghanistan mission to training from combat and a home front budget crunch are putting pressure on the defence department to enact big reforms to cope with government-wide belt-tightening.

Defence expert Douglas Bland says the Canadian Forces have become more capable in recent years but at “great costs.”

“The Ottawa HQ is just continuing to grow and grow and grow,” said Bland, who holds the chair in defence management studies in the Queen’s University School of Policy Studies.

“There’s just an expanding of an organization that is carrying out principally the same functions it has for many years,” he said in an interview.

The Star’s analysis shows:

 • The number of civilian employees has grown by 31 per cent — from 22,710 in 2004 to 29,843 — almost four times the growth of the uniform ranks. In the same time, the navy has lost 1,100 full-time sailors since 2004, threatening its ability to fully staff its fleet of ships. “There’s no question the front lines, the sharp end, is woefully under strength,” said Brian MacDonald, a retired colonel who is now a senior analyst with the Conference of Defence Associations.

 • Uniform ranks have grown by 8.5 per cent — from 87,653 in 2004 to 95,123.

 • Another 5,000 civilian contractors work for the defence department, mostly in the Ottawa area.

 • In fiscal year 2009-2010, the department spent $2.8 billion on professional services, consultants and outside contracts, up almost $1 billion since 2004. That’s $1 billion more than the next biggest spender, the Department of Public Works and Governments Services.

 • •Eyes are turning to the defence headquarters’ offices sprawled across the Ottawa region where some 20,000 military and civilian defence staff work, about the same number as in the entire Canadian Navy.

But it’s believed that a new blueprint prepared by Lt.-Gen. Andrew Leslie, the military’s chief of transformation, puts the defence department headquarters in the crosshairs.

Leslie, the former head of the army, was tapped to probe how the department could be made “cheaper, better, faster, leaner.”

His report was submitted in early July and now sits in the top offices at defence headquarters awaiting action. The defence department is refusing to release it. Leslie declined to comment for this story.

However, speaking at an Ottawa conference in February, he sketched a vision of transformation while warning there is a “need to change.

“The status quo will not meet the defence interests of tomorrow based on the resource allocations of today,” Leslie told the Ottawa Conference on Defence and Security.

“Quite frankly, we need to take folks from headquarters and put them back in the field units,” he said at the conference.

“I hope a whole bunch of them go back out to the field units. And there are thousands,” he said.

Still, he conceded he was facing “significant” resistance within the department as he poked at staffing levels and how jobs were being done.

“Nothing will defend itself so vigorously . . . as a headquarters which is threatened with being shut down,” Leslie said.

During the preparation of his report, Leslie crunched numbers on the growth in staffing in all areas of the defence department. And he probed the rise in spending on contracts and consultants. The Star obtained much of that analysis under the Access to Information Act. However, the detailed tables had been completely censored.

Still, numbers that are publicly available reveal sharp increases in the civilian staffing and the spending on professional contracts and consultants, including $339 million for business services, $1.2 billion for engineering and architecture services and $549 million in contracts lumped under the vague category of “other services.”

Almost $50 million went to management consulting and another $43 million on temporary help.

“The Auditor General of Canada or somebody should be looking at the contracting system,” Bland said.

“It’s a flag that indicates some difficulties in management over time but also in the almost uncontrolled development of the bureaucracy. Maybe it’s a symptom of what’s going on in the rest of government,” Bland said.

The defence department pins the sharp rise in civilian employees and spending on professional contracts on the efforts in Afghanistan.

“In order to support Canadian troops in Afghanistan, civilians were hired and professional services contracted so that military members could focus their efforts on operational matters,” said Jay Paxton, spokesperson for MacKay.

“Just as Canadians have been tightening their belts during a fragile economic recovery, so too will this government manage our resources to ensure continued value for taxpayers’ money,” he said.

Still, defence watchers are carefully taking note of what the department does with Leslie’s report.

Senator Colin Kenny, former chair of the Senate committee on national security and defence, doubts that Leslie’s recommendations have been well-received, noting the transformation office has been closed.

“I suspect they don’t much like what (Leslie) has to say,” Kenny said.

“They shut down his office. There’s nobody in it. Transformation isn’t a one-time event. Transformation should be an ongoing culture,” he said.

But Kenny also said that the majority mandate won by the Conservatives on May 2 gives the government a window to make tough decisions, such as closing military bases he argues are kept open only for political purposes.

“Nobody talks about base closures because all it does is cause grief for politicians . . . and so you guarantee the perpetuity of bases that are redundant and not necessary for military purposes,” Kenny said, citing Goose Bay and North Bay as two bases that could be shuttered.

Many are pointing the finger at MacKay, saying only the minister can drive the reforms needed to enable to carry out its mandate with fewer resources.

“It will be interesting to see what sort of traction it will have inside the building and whether the minister will get personally involved in implementing recommendations,” said Alain Pellerin, executive director of the Conference of Defence Associations.

“In the past, if you look at the success stories in reorganizing the forces or headquarters, you have to go back to a proactive minister who put these measures into place, whether the uniform people or the civilian people liked them or not,” he said.

Origin
Source: Toronto Star