VZCZCXRO7713
PP RUEHDBU RUEHGA RUEHHA RUEHMT RUEHPW RUEHQU RUEHVC
DE RUEHOT #0196/01 0711514
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
P 121514Z MAR 09
FM AMEMBASSY OTTAWA
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 9204
INFO RUCNCAN/ALL CANADIAN POSTS COLLECTIVE PRIORITY
RUCNAFG/AFGHANISTAN COLLECTIVE PRIORITY
RUEHZG/NATO EU COLLECTIVE PRIORITY
RUEHBUL/AMEMBASSY KABUL PRIORITY 0255
RUEHVEN/USMISSION USOSCE PRIORITY 0134
RHEHNSC/WHITE HOUSE NSC WASHINGTON DC PRIORITY
RUEKJCS/OSD WASHDC PRIORITY
RUEAIIA/CIA WASHDC PRIORITY
RUEKJCS/JOINT STAFF WASHDC PRIORITY
RHMFISS/CDR USCENTCOM  PRIORITY
RHHMUNA/CDR USPACOM HONOLULU HI PRIORITY
RHMFISS/HQ USNORTHCOM  PRIORITY

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 OTTAWA 000196
SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/12/2019
TAGS: PREL MARR MOPS NATO AF CA
SUBJECT: CHALLENGES TO THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE CANADIAN
ARMY
REF: A. 08 OTTAWA 649

¶B. 08 OTTAWA 1024

Classified By: PolMinCouns Scott Bellard, reasons 1.4 (b) and (d)

¶1. (C) Summary: Despite the recurrent pledges by PM
Harper's government to re-build the capabilities of the
Canadian Forces, the Canadian Army still faces serious
funding, recruitment, and procurement challenges as it seeks
to meet pressing requirements in Afghanistan while also
transforming itself into a medium-weight service capable of
conducting both major combat and counterinsurgency
operations. Wear and tear on personnel posted to
Afghanistan, procurements and repairs not keeping pace with
equipment breakdown and obsolescence, and unusually high
senior NCO and junior officer attrition rates led the Chief
of the Land Staff publicly to suggest that the army might
even need to take an "operational break" after 2011. Canada
will remain a willing global partner, but has not fully lived
up to its own commitment to significant military
modernization. The policy debate over the Canadian Forces
and Canada's post-2011 role in Afghanistan will again
inevitably intensify over the next eighteen months. End
summary.

BIG DREAMS, BUT
---------------

¶2. (SBU) In his 2006 and 2008 election campaigns and in the
several "Speeches from the Throne" in which his government
laid out its agenda to new sessions of Parliament,
Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper has championed
military modernization as a core goal to buttress his claim
that "Canada is Back." He and Defence Minister Peter MacKay
in May 2008 presented an ambitious "Canada First Defence
Strategy" (ref a) and pledged tens of billion of additional
spending on the Canadian Forces, as well as expansion to
70,000 regular troops and 30,000 reserves. They also
explicitly promised to up the existing automatic budget
increases for defense from 1.5 pct to 2 pct annually.
¶3. (C) The military has admitted some tough sledding in
this ambitious program. (Ref b described problems facing the
Canadian Air Force.) Chief of the Land Staff Lieutenant
General Andrew Leslie, in remarks on February 27 to senior
military officials and defense industry leaders and to
pol/mil officer separately, outlined the many challenges
faced by the Canadian Army as it meets mostly Afghan
requirements while modernizing, equipping, and staffing this
single largest element of the Canadian Forces (CF) -- 20,281
regulars/19,327 reserves. General Leslie detailed issues
that will require most of his attention during the rest of
his tenure as Chief: supporting the defense and security
elements of the Canadian mission in Afghanistan while
transforming the army into an expeditionary force; growing
army recruitment while stemming attrition; and, renewing the
land fleet while abusing it in the desolate Afghan terrain.

AFGHANISTAN LOOMS LARGE
-----------------------

¶4. (SBU) In subsequent testimony before the Senate National
Security and Defence Committee on March 9, General Leslie
claimed that the strains within the Canadian Army, largely
due to the Afghanistan deployment, were so great that it
Qdue to the Afghanistan deployment, were so great that it
might have to take a "short operational break" -- perhaps up
to a year or so -- to rest and rebuild after the Canadian
Forces' combat mission in Kandahar ends in 2011.

¶5. (SBU) The security context that will confront the
Canadian Army over the next 10-15 years is "much like what we
are doing in Afghanistan" in NATO-ISAF and Operation Enduring
Freedom (OEF), according to General Leslie. He commented
that the Afghan mission had already helped to speed up the
army's transformation into the kind of expeditionary force
that the government had described in the "Canada First
Defence Strategy," seeking to evolve Canada's "medium
weight" army into a force capable of conducting both major
combat and counterinsurgency operations against traditional
or asymmetric threats nearby or far afield, as well as in
rural, urban, and littoral domains. He observed that this
was essentially what the army was doing today in Afghanistan.

¶6. (SBU) In addition to the strain of transformation,
General Leslie highlighted the considerable wear and tear on
personnel and equipment that has resulted from the deployment
of over 2,500 replacement troops (80 pct of them regular
army) to Afghanistan every six months since 2006. The other
major challenge that General Leslie cited was Canada's slow
military procurement processes. He observed that procurement
bureaucrats (most of whom are civilians at the Department of
Public Works) tend to meet wartime and overall transformation
demands with "normal peacetime process." He claimed that due
to their "foot-dragging," in 2008 the army had to give back
to the general fund over C$50 million in needed but unspent
funds that had been set aside for military fleet upgrades.

RECRUITMENT AND ATTRITION WOES
------------------------------

¶7. (C) In his remarks to the defense community officials,
General Leslie also warned that the army's annual attrition
rate was high for Canada -- 9.1 pct in 2008. Its intake
target for new recruits in 2009 is 14,000, including 8,000
regulars and 6,000 reservists. He noted that this relatively
high attrition rate had persisted despite the government's
many efforts to address family and other standard of care
issues, which had led many senior NCOs and young officers to
quit the service for more predictable lives in the civil
sector. Young officers and NCOs in particular are tired, he
said, in large part due to the high operational tempo and
long separations caused by the war in Afghanistan. He
specified that the army currently faces a shortage of some
700 NCOs and as many junior grade officers
¶8. (C) Separately, the Parliamentary Secretary for National
Defence, Conservative MP Laurie Hawn, confirmed to
PolMinCouns on March 4 that the government had been
unsuccessful in meeting its expansion targets for the
Canadian Forces, but noted that recruitment was less of a
problem than the early retirement of NCOs and officers, in
part due to the prospect of serving multiple tours in
Kandahar. He added that the Canadian Forces' best trainers
were often on deployment in Afghanistan, making it difficult
to process new recruits. He expressed the hope that rising
unemployment rates at home on one hand, and the welcome new
deployments of U.S. troops in Kandahar on the other, would
help the Canadian Forces to recruit and retain troops, at
least in 2009 and 2010.

REPLACING THE LAND FLEET
------------------------

¶9. (SBU) General Leslie told the Senate defence committee
that the army's land fleet had taken a severe beating due to
decades of underfunded maintenance, slow procurements, and
non-stop operations in Kandahar since 2006. Some 30-40 pct
of the army's 650 LAV IIIs (Canadian Stryker variant) are
inoperable, as are about 70 pct of the 203 Coyote fighting
and reconnaissance vehicles and over 80 percent of 7,000
Medium Tactical Vehicles, which have been slated for
QMedium Tactical Vehicles, which have been slated for
near-term replacement. (Note: the Coyotes are nearing the
end of their intended service life. end note)

¶10. (SBU) The bright spots in the inventory, General Leslie
commented, are the Husky, Buffalo, and Cougar mine-protected
vehicles operating near 100 pct readiness. "We get a bang
(mine) a week against these vehicles but no fatalities," he
observed (although 113 Canadian troops have been killed so
far in Afghanistan, mostly due to IEDs). These vehicles are
quickly repaired or rebuilt and re-deployed. He added that
the 20 Leopard II tanks in theater (along with 40 more still
awaiting refurbishment in Montreal) meant to replace the 71
pct inoperable Leopard 1 models also deliver a huge advantage
in force protection, as do the new M-777 artillery pieces.

PROCUREMENT PROBLEMS
--------------------

¶11. (C) The Senate's and Commons' defence committees in
2007 and 2008 both conducted lengthy hearings and produced
reports outlying numerous problems in the defense procurement
processes, but came up with no consensus on actual solutions.
Commons National Defence Committee chairman Rick Casson
complained to PolMinCouns on March 2 that every defense
purchase involved a complicated tug-of-war among the
Department of National Defence (DND), the Department of
Industry, and the Department of Public Works (which has
overall supervision for all governmental procurement). He
admitted that the Conservatives' hopes to establish a
separate DND procurement agency had disappeared, at least
until the Conservatives one day might form a majority
government. He added, however, that the committee at this
time had no further plans to study this issue or make new
recommendations.

COMMENT
-------

¶12. (C) The government of PM Harper remains committed to
improving the capabilities of the Canadian Forces and to its
ambitious program of military modernization, and included
military budget increases in the 2009 budget (now before the
Senate for final passage), despite the country's overwhelming
preoccupation with the budget's economic stimulus package,
which will help drive the budget into deficit territory for
the first time in a decade. Despite ongoing challenges
within the Canadian Forces and more broadly in the economy,
Canada will remain an active global partner with the U.S. and
NATO, and will live up to its combat mission responsibilities
in Kandahar through 2011. There appears to be no inclination
in the Conservative Party or the Official Opposition Liberal
Party -- or, apparently, in the senior leadership of the army
-- to extend the Canadian battle group beyond 2011, however.
Minister MacKay's recent public comments about other roles
for Canada in Afghanistan after 2011 -- reconstruction and
development as well as training, mentoring, and enabling the
Afghan National Security Forces -- probably presage the
policy debates that will become more intense on Afghanistan
and on the Canadian Forces over the next eighteen months.
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