Liberals Press Ahead with Second-Hand F-18s Amid Questions Over Who Will Fly Them

The Canadian Press - The Kingston Whig-Standard 

The Trudeau government pressed ahead with its plan to buy second-hand fighter jets from Australia on Tuesday despite withering fire from the federal auditor general, who warned that the military might not have anybody to fly them.

A pilot prepares for take off in a CF-188 Hornet aircraft at Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base in Romania during Operation REASSURANCE on Sept. 27. Last week, the auditor general released a report highlighting the pilot shortage faced by the Canadian Air Force and continued problems with procuring new fighter jets. CPL. DOMINIC DUCHESNE-BEAULIEU/POSTMEDIA

Six years after blowing up the Harper government’s plan to buy new F-35s without a competition, auditor general Michael Ferguson targeted the Liberals’ own attempts to buy jets. He first picked apart the government’s aborted plan to purchase “interim” Super Hornets to bolster Canada’s aging CF-18 fleet, and then its current plan to buy used Australian fighters.

The government says those extra fighters are needed to address a shortage of CF-18s until a state-of-the-art replacement can be purchased and delivered — a lengthy process that will run through 2032, at which point the CF-18s will be 50 years old.

But the auditor general’s office arrived at a very different conclusion: The military doesn’t need more planes because it doesn’t even have the pilots and mechanics to operate what it already has. What it really needs, the office found, is more people.

“The shortage of personnel in relation to technicians means that they don’t have enough technicians to prepare and maintain the planes,” Casey Thomas, the principal auditor on the fighter jets study, told reporters on Tuesday.

“And they have 64 per cent of the pilots that they need, so they don’t have enough pilots to fly the planes . . . What National Defence actually needed was to increase its personnel.”

The auditor general’s report also flagged concerns that the government’s plan to sink $3 billion into the current CF-18s and additional Australian fighters to keep them flying to 2032 won’t be enough, as the money won’t actually improve the aircrafts’ combat systems.

Without more money, which some analysts have suggested could mean hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars more, Canada’s fighter-jet fleet will become even more obsolete, to the point where the plans might not be any use at home or overseas.

Yet only a few hours after the auditor general’s report was released, Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan announced that the Liberals had signed a contract to buy the 18 second-hand jets from Australia. Officials have pegged the cost at around $500 million.

Sajjan also said he had directed officials to look at options for upgrading the combat systems on the CF-18s and Australian fighters, which he acknowledged would mean investing more money into aging fighter jets.

Missing from the announcement: Any new funding or other initiative to increase recruiting and retention of pilots and technicians.

Instead, Sajjan said the government and military have already introduced several initiatives through the Liberals’ defence policy last year, such as giving tax breaks to military personnel deployed on overseas missions, to give them reasons to stay.

At the same time, the minister sidestepped questions about recruitment, saying the military can’t reduce its standards for new pilots. He noted that commercial airlines are also facing a significant pilot crunch.

Air-force commanders have previously said the current training system, which can only produce 115 new pilots each year, a fraction of whom are fighter pilots, is not fast enough to replace all those who move on to commercial opportunities.

The subtext to much of the auditor general’s report on Tuesday was the question of how Canada ended up in a position where the military will be flying fighter jets until they are 50 years old.

The Liberals were urged early in their tenure to launch an immediate competition to replace the CF-18s. Instead they spent two years working to buy those stopgap Super Hornets before a trade dispute with the company that makes them, Boeing, saw the government move on to the used Australian jets.

The Trudeau government insists that it was doing its due diligence, but critics — including numerous retired air force and defence officials — have accused it of trying to bend procurement rules to avoid buying the F-35.

Yet even before the Liberals took the reins, the Harper government was having a hard time making any progress on buying new fighter jets. The Tories championed the F-35 before resetting the entire process in 2012.

That move was prompted by Ferguson’s first report, which accused defence officials of misleading parliamentarians about the stealth fighter’s costs and various technical issues. National Defence later pegged the full lifetime cost of the fighters at $46 billion.

“Lot of people had a hand in this,” said defence analyst David Perry of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, adding that the worst part is there is no easy or obvious solution to what has become a very troubling situation for Canada and its military.

“I think our fighter force is in trouble.”

Auditor General Slams Government Plan to Maintain CF-18 Fleet Until 2032

By: Murray Brewster, CBC News 

Canada's auditor general has shot down the Liberal government's handling of the air force's aging CF-18s in a blistering report that raises questions about national security, and even long-term safety, regarding the viability of the country's frontline fighter jets.

Auditor General Michael Ferguson's fall report, tabled Tuesday, methodically picks apart the recent policy change at the Department of National Defence, which requires the military to have enough warplanes to meet Canada's commitments to both NORAD and NATO at the same time.

Watch Power & Politics take a look at the ups and downs of Canada's fighter jet program

The RCAF is currently facing a shortage of both qualified pilots and technicians. Those pilots the RCAF does have on active roster are struggling to maintain the minimum 140 flight hours per year. 

From the get-go the policy was a non-starter, and the federal government knew it, said Ferguson.

"The fighter force could not meet the requirement because National Defence was already experiencing a shortage in personnel, and the CF-18 was old and increasingly hard to maintain," said the audit.

As of April 2018, the air force's CF-18 squadrons faced a 22 per cent shortage in technical positions — and a startling number of technicians were not fully qualified to do maintenance.

Fighter pilots are also in short supply. The air force is losing more of them than it is training each year; among those who do remain, almost one third do not get the required 140 hours of flying time per year.

At a news conference following the release of the report, Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan conceded that personnel shortages were identified "early on" after the Liberals took over in 2015.

"This is a problem we knew we had," he said, pointing the finger at budget cuts made by the previous Conservative government. "This is what happens when you don't put enough resources into the military."

Watch Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan react to the AG report on fighter jets on Power & Politics


The extent of Liberals' own efforts to boost recruiting and retention of pilots and technicians in the three years since the election was the subject of some confusion Tuesday.

A written statement from Sajjan said the government "will launch new efforts to recruit and retain pilots and technicians."

During the news conference, the minister said the military's top commander had been directed to deal with the problem and that recruiting pilots is "a priority."

Pressed for specifics on recruitment, Sajjan said he's "going to leave it to the experts to figure out."

Proposed solution 'will not help solve' issues

The auditor's report took issue with the Liberal government's strategy to fill the so-called capability gap by buying additional interim aircraft.

The current proposal is to buy used Australian F-18s — of approximately the same vintage as Canada's CF-18s — and convert them for further use until the federal government completes the purchase of brand-new aircraft.

This plan, the auditor's report said, "will not help solve either the personnel shortage or the aging fleet."

Ferguson said an earlier, $6.3 billion plan to buy 18 brand new Super Hornet fighter jets on an interim basis would have been even worse — and the government was told so in no uncertain terms by the air force.

"National Defence's analysis showed that buying the Super Hornet alone would not allow the department to meet the new operational requirement," said the audit.

"The department stated that the Super Hornet would initially decrease, not increase, the daily number of aircraft available because technicians and pilots would have to be pulled away from the CF-18s to train on the new aircraft."

The proposal to buy Super Hornets was scrapped last spring after the manufacturer, Chicago-based Boeing, angered the Trudeau government in a separate trade dispute involving the sale of Bombardier passenger jets.

The Opposition Conservatives have long claimed the 'capability gap' was concocted by the Liberals as a way to push off a decision on a permanent replacement for the CF-18s. In the last election, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pledged not to buy the F-35 stealth fighter, the preferred option of the Harper government.
Sparring in the House

The report led to sparring in the House of Commons, with the Conservatives seeing the auditor general's assessment as vindication.

"Today's report confirms what we have been saying all along," said James Bezan, the defence critic.

"Justin Trudeau deliberately misled Canadians by manufacturing a 'capability gap' to fulfil a misguided campaign promise, and in the process has put the safety and security of Canadians at risk."

Sajjan, however, believed the report supported the government's position.

"The report confirms what we have always known: The Harper Conservatives mismanaged the fighter jet files and misled Canadians for over a decade," he said.

"The report confirms a capability gap exists, and started under the Conservatives."

In fact, what the report said was that "Canada's fighter force could not meet the government's new operational requirement." It contained objective analysis of how many aircraft would be required to meet various contingencies.
Fleet 'will become more vulnerable'

Meanwhile, the auditor is warning that the Liberal government has no plan to upgrade the combat capabilities of the CF-18s to keep them current over the next decade while the air force waits for replacements.

The last major refurbishment of the war-fighting equipment on the jets happened in 2008, and Department of National Defence planners have done little since because they had been expecting new planes by 2020.

"National Defence did not have a plan to upgrade the combat capability of the CF-18 even though it will now have to fly until 2032," said the audit.

"Without these upgrades, according to the department, the CF-18 will become more vulnerable as advanced combat aircraft and air defence systems continue to be developed and used by other nations."

The fact that the CF-18s are not up to date means they will not be able to operate in certain environments where the risk of surface-to-air missiles or advanced enemy planes is great.

That, in turn, "would limit Canada's contribution to NORAD and NATO operations," Ferguson said.

Sajjan said the department is looking at an upgrade to the combat systems.

"We would love to be able to solve this problem immediately," he said.

Conservatives hoping Auditor General will investigate Super Hornet deal

By: David Pugliese, Defence Watch 

Conservative defence critic James Bezan said his party has asked Auditor General Michael Ferguson to conduct an investigation into the Liberal government’s proposed sole-source purchase of 18 Super Hornets.

A US Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter lands onto the deck of the USS Ronald Reagan, a Nimitz-class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, during a joint naval drill between South Korea and the US in the West Sea off South Korea on October 28, 2015. KIM HONG / AFP/GETTY IMAGES

“Given the magnitude of this decision, we have requested that the Auditor General of Canada conduct an investigation to determine that all rules were followed properly,” Conservative MPs wrote in a letter to the Auditor General sent just before Christmas.

No word yet from the Auditor General’s office on whether this investigation will happen.

But Bezan says the party believes the AG can unravel the purchase to see whether it makes financial sense or whether it will end up costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars extra.

“I know with lifetime gag orders put in place at Defence, Public Works, Justice and other departments on this purchase, it will make it incredibility difficult to ever see what the details really are,” Bezan explained. “But the Auditor General is one person who can really get in there and ensure that rules are followed or were followed.”

In the letter to the AG, the Conservatives noted: “This deal could stick taxpayers with a multi-billion dollar bill and will have a significant impact on the aerospace industry across Canada; thousands of jobs could be at risk. Most importantly, this decision will directly affect the Royal Canadian Air Force, their ability to keep our borders safe and to work internationally with our allies.”

Poorly-trained Reservists may endanger Peacekeeping Missions: Auditor-General

By: Steven Chase, Globe and Mail 

The Auditor-General of Canada says there is a risk that inadequately trained reservists may endanger soldiers’ health and safety on a deployment such as a peacekeeping mission to Africa.

The government is preparing to announce what it bills as a major return to Canadian peacekeeping and there is widespread expectation that this could include a sizable contingent of soldiers to a particular dangerous and deadly United Nations mission in the West African country of Mali. More than 105 peacekeepers have died there since 2013, including 69 from “malicious acts.”

Reservists, or part-time soldiers, serve alongside regular troops in deployments. For instance, army reserve soldiers completed 4,642 deployments to Afghanistan, where 16 of them died and 75 were wounded in action.

Auditor-General Michael Ferguson appeared before a Senate committee on Tuesday morning to follow up on a spring, 2016, report that revealed the weak state of Canada’s army reserve – with major shortfalls in training, equipment and preparedness. His report, released in April, said the military budgets for about 21,000 full-time and part-time reservists but can count on only an average of 13,944 trained and attending soldiers.

Asked about whether unfit reservists could jeopardize themselves or others in a deployment such as African peacekeeping, Mr. Ferguson said, “We identified that there is such a risk.”

The military tries to mitigate this by providing reservists extra training before deployment.

But the Auditor-General said his office has found that there can still be cases where reservists do not receive sufficient training. “It might have been physical fitness or it might have been training on individual weapons – so that can create a risk and that risk is then a risk to the safety of the individual and, in fact, could be a risk to the safety of the whole unit.”

In the course of the study, auditors asked to see the Department of National Defence system that tracks the training and readiness of soldiers. “According to the system, it was 7 per cent of them were up to date on their handling of their own personal weapons; 55 per cent of them were up to date on their physical fitness,” Mr. Ferguson told the senators.

He said that when auditors asked DND why the reservists appeared to be so unprepared, “the response we got from National Defence was, ‘The information in that system is not reliable.’ ”

He said this means that the military is relying on individual unit commanders to decide if their reservists are ready to be deployed “and they’re not really tracking in enough detail” whether these troops are prepared.

His spring report also noted significant shortfalls in equipment and instruction for reservists.

Mr. Ferguson said his office found many reserve units were not given clear instructions “on what they were supposed to be training for.”

He said the Canadian Armed Forces should establish a minimum level of skill and training for all soldiers, regardless of whether they are in the reserve or the regular force, “before they would be allowed into that sort of dangerous theatre.”

The Army Reserve has more than 120 units across Canada.

A spokesman for the Department of National Defence said no ill-equipped reservists will be sent abroad. “The bottom line is that we would never deploy members who aren’t trained, ready and equipped to meet their mission in service of Canada,” Daniel LeBouthillier said.

He said the DND is taking steps to improve the training and readiness of reservists, including doing a better job of ensuring units get the funds they need, boosting recruitment and retention strategies, fixing gaps in training and trying to provide more equipment for this part-time force.

Auditor General paints dismal picture of the Canadian Army Reserves

By: David Pugliese, Defence Watch

Auditor General Michael Ferguson appeared before the Senate’s defence committee on Tuesday. His presentation, based on an audit of the Army reserves, as well as his answers to questions from senators painted a less than encouraging picture about the situation the Army’s reserve units find themselves in. Here is some of what Ferguson had to say:

-Training of the Army reserve was not fully integrated with that of the regular Army units. Although the Army reserve was given clear guidance on preparing for domestic missions, units did not receive the same level of guidance or how to train troops soldiers for international missions. The Army Reserve doesn’t always have access to the equipment it needed for training and deployments, Ferguson noted.

– Army reserve units are responsible for training their own soldiers. But the AG found that many reserve units didn’t have the number of soldiers they needed. Twelve of the 123 Army reserve units were smaller than half of their ideal size, Ferguson said.

– The Canadian Army provided funding for 21,000 reserve soldiers but only about 14,000 were active and trained. When Army reserve units met in 2105 for their annual, large‑scale collective training events across Canada, only about 3,600 Army Reserve soldiers attended, Ferguson said.

– DND knows that the current reserve recruiting system doesn’t work and that it needs to take steps to boost retention. It has set a goal to increase the Army reserve by 950 soldiers by 2019. But Ferguson said this goal will be difficult to achieve as the number of Army reserve soldiers declined by about 1,000 soldiers a year for the three years his office conducted the audit. Ferguson pointed to the latest numbers provided by DND; as of May 15, 2016, the number of active and trained Army reserve soldiers dropped by a further 1,000 soldiers, to 13,181.

-Ferguson’s audit found that although individual skills training was designed to train the Army reserve and regular army soldiers to the same standard, reserve courses were designed to teach significantly fewer skills than were taught in regular army courses. This skill gap was not always addressed during the pre‑deployment training of Army reserve soldiers, Ferguson pointed out. One example he used was that when Canadian Army soldiers began to deploy as part of NATO’s mission in Eastern Europe, a gap remained in weapons training between Army reserve and regular force soldiers.

-A number of reserve soldiers weren’t receiving the number of days of training that was predicted for them.

-Even if the reserves had all the personnel needed and all of the equipment required, and were doing all of the training, the result would be a severe strain on the existing funds the force has.

-Twenty‑seven per cent of the Army reserve’s existing budget is being spent on full‑time reservists, even though reserves are supposed to be mostly part-time.

-$166 million out of $706 million of their total budget is being allocated back to National Defence to pay for infrastructure.

“What I’m saying is based on everything that we’ve looked at, it is hard for me to sit here and see how they would be able to fund everything they’re supposed to do within the budget that they currently have,” Ferguson told senators. “But certainly it looks to me like it would be a significant challenge for them.”

Canadian Army Reserve Responds to AG Report

DND Press Release
Ottawa – National Defence / Canadian Army

Lieutenant-General Marquis Hainse, Commander of the Canadian Army, issued the following statement today regarding the 2016 Auditor General Spring Report:

“On behalf of the Canadian Army, I thank the Auditor General for his advice and recommendations in his report on the Canadian Army Reserve. I accept this report and will address its recommendations.

“The Canadian Army Reserve is an integrated part of the Canadian Army that contributes to the success of operations at home and abroad. This has been proven across the world most notably in Afghanistan over the last decade and here in Canada as recently as last summer with the forest fires in Saskatchewan. Equally important, the Army Reserve provides a footprint in over one hundred Canadian communities across Canada. Over the next year, the Canadian Armed Forces will consider the personnel pressures that are affecting attrition and retention and develop a plan to keep the Army Reserve strong and healthy. We are now in the process of implementing strategies to reduce a number of challenges identified in the recruiting process to make sure we have the right people for the future.

“Training is fundamental to operational excellence and I appreciate that the Auditor General has recommended areas where we can further improve. We are putting measures in place to continue to ensure that each reservist is prepared for any mission, domestic or international. Any gaps in training will be assessed and resolved before deployment and the completion of Army Reserve training objectives will be confirmed annually. We are also currently developing a plan to address the accessibility of equipment available for Reserve training as identified in the report.

“The Canadian Army takes the stewardship of public resources seriously and continuously works to improve its funding model. The Canadian Army is currently revising the Army Reserve funding model as part of its planned cyclical review process. The recommendations of the Auditor General will serve to inform this review and ensure the funding model is more transparent and accountable to the Government of Canada. The Canadian Army will work to ensure that funding is allocated in an efficient, responsive and timely fashion.

“Finally, I would like to emphasize that the Canadian Army always strives for excellence and we will continue to work at finding solutions to ensure that our soldiers are well trained, well lead and well equipped.”

Auditor General Highlights Issues with Reserve Force

By David Pugliese, The Ottawa Citizen

Auditor General Michael Ferguson released a number of reports this morning. A couple of his findings deal with the Canadian Forces. Here are mini summaries of those reports as outlined by theCanadian Press news service (more details to follow as they come):

“Individual units of the Canadian Army’s reserve units lack sufficient soldiers — just 14,000 instead of a needed 21,000 — as well as access to key equipment for domestic missions and clear guidance on training, counter to National Defence’s stated goal.

Between the 2012–13 and 2014–15 fiscal years, the number of Canadian Army reservists has dwindled by about five per cent, or about 1,000 soldiers per year.”

More from Canadian Press:

Michael Ferguson’s latest audit conducted a detailed examination of the problems faced by the military’s part-time branch and found that even though there are 21,000 positions on the books, only 13,944 reservists are considered active and ready for service.

The federal government’s stated goal is to have a reserve force of 27,000.

The audit goes into detail about how National Defence has not only failed to recruit for the part-time force, but reservists are quitting at a rate faster than they can be replaced and doing so before they are fully trained.

“In late 2015, National Defence set a goal to increase the Army Reserve by 950 soldiers (five per cent) by 2019. In our opinion, this goal will be difficult to achieve given the present rate of attrition,” said the auditor’s report.

The sweeping review also looked at training and found that many reservists don’t receive certain basic weapons training, such as the use of a pistol or grenade launcher.

They have been woefully unprepared for some duties in combat zones, such as convoy escort and force protection, and ill-equipped for missions at home like responding to forest fires and floods.

When there is a domestic emergency, reserve units are expected to assemble trained units of up to 600 soldiers, but Ferguson’s report noted that they were thrown into the field over the last few years — specifically in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba — without everything they needed, including essential items.

“When we reviewed these reports, we found many instances of key equipment lacking, such as reconnaissance vehicles, command posts, and communications equipment,” the audit said.

“We found that the Canadian Army has not defined the list of equipment that all army reserve units should have for training their soldiers and teams for domestic missions. This means that army reserve units may have to rely on other Canadian Armed Forces units to provide this equipment, but we were told that it is often not available.”

The former Harper government was keen on highlighting the participation of reservists, notably the Canadian Rangers, in annual Arctic exercises. In 2013, it staged a series of photo-ops with then-prime minister Stephen Harper shooting rifles and mingling with the troops, who are drawn from indigenous northern communities.

The audit says the army made a special effort to equip them, but even there Ferguson’s report found support wanting.

“Following recent training exercises, these groups reported that they did not always have access to the equipment they needed to be self-sufficient, such as reliable communications and vehicles larger than light snowmobiles,” said the report.

National Defence, in its response, agreed with the criticism and said it is working on the equipment issue.

Ferguson also tore a strip off the government over how it balances and pays for reservists, some of who are being called up to full-time duty. Under the law, a part-time soldier can be converted to full-time status for periods of between 180 days and three years.

But those jobs can be —and often are — renewed for longer periods of time. It was one of the criticisms in retired lieutenant-general Andrew Leslie’s 2011 report, which was meant to overhaul administration at National Defence.

Ferguson’s report goes a step further showing that as many as 1,704 part-time soldiers are on full-time duty, but the money to pay for them is being taken from the reserve budget.

“This means that the Canadian Army spent about 27 per cent of its overall army reserve pay and operating expenses on these full-time contracts, leaving less available for other army reserve activities,” said the report.