On the CBC News website, Murray Brewster explains why Canadian defence industries haven’t gone to anything like a “war footing” because the federal government hasn’t told them what they plan to purchase or when, despite pleas that they “get with the program”:
The association representing Canada’s defence contractors says it’s going to take a lot more than talk to put the industry on a so-called “war footing.”
In a bluntly-worded opinion piece published online Wednesday, Christyn Cianfarani, executive director of the Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries, said that Canada — unlike its allies — has not put in place a framework to ramp up production to meet the demand triggered by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Instead, Cianfarani wrote, the industry has heard “vague pleas” from the Liberal government “for companies to get with the program,” without any clear sense of which items of equipment are needed and what the long-term expectations might be.
“Canadian defence companies can and would step up if they knew exactly what, and how much, to step up with,” she wrote.
In an interview with CBC News last summer, Defence Minister Anita Anand described the enlistment of weapons manufacturers in the struggle to save Ukraine as a “moral imperative.” Gen. Wayne Eyre, the country’s top military commander, also publicly urged the defence industry to get on a “war footing” in response to the crisis.
“No one in industry has a clue what government will require from companies to achieve that end, or even what ‘wartime footing’ means to government in the modern context,” wrote Cianfarani, adding that the last time the country’s defence industry was on a war footing was during the Second World War.
“No firm will take vague exhortations to ‘increase their production lines’ seriously without meaningful and systematic commitment from the government. No respectable CEO is going to take the risk of ordering tens of millions of dollars worth of parts to then see them sitting on a shelf awaiting integration, while simultaneously telling investors to trust them that a buyer will materialize in this highly managed protectionist market.”
