Canadian Military having trouble acquiring upgraded equipment

The Canadian Military is having an increasingly tough time upgrading its hardware thanks to federal elections and changes in the senior National Defence staff.

A new report from the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy, authored by David Perry, suggests several factors are responsible for a slow down on procurement.

“There’s also been some other long standing issues about problems generating requirements and doing the costing for projects and things like that,” said Perry.

One other factor is that the process to acquire new equipment has been made even more complex because of a number of added steps.

Funding is not a problem though, with the Defence Department’s procurement budget nearly doubling between 2004 and 2009, as the issue seems to lie with staffing.

For example, Perry’s report shows, the military’s Material Group had a ratio of 2,600 staff for every $1 billion in procurement funds in 2003.

That ratio fell to 1,800 staff for every $1 billion in 2009, and it has gotten worse since then.

This means there simply isn’t enough people around to update and maintain our military assets.

“In some cases, like with the Navy, they simply just can’t keep things going anymore. It doesn’t make any sense anymore, financially, to keep things going on that kind of financial commitment,” Perry continued.

There are improvements being made to help streamline the way the Defence Department approves projects, however these attempts are focused on lower dollar-figure approvals done by the Defence Minister and it remains to be seen if this will lead to more procurements.

Read the full paper, here.