Preserving capacity, General Tom Lawson, Chief of the Defence Staff, Keys to Canadian SAR
Issue link: http://vanguardcanada.uberflip.com/i/716217
P Procurement www.vanguardcanada.com AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2016 31 F or some time, Canada's defence procure- ment system has been underperforming. The ongoing problems with the defence procurement system have created an anomalous situation, historically unprec- edented in Canada, where vast amounts of money set aside to buy capital equipment go unused each year, despite pressing equipment needs across the entire armed forces. canada's procurement problem Since 2007, an average of more than 20 per cent of such allotted funds (as much as $1.5 billion a year) has gone unused annually because the system could not deliver equipment on schedule. As a result of this delay, the resources budgeted for defence pro- curement have been progressively deferred into the future. This occurred most recently with the 2016 federal budget, which shifted $3.7 billion in pro- curement funds into the future. This was the third time in six years a shift of this type occurred, and it brought the cumulative total deferred to more than $10 billion. Adequate spending on new capital equipment is vi- tal to ensure a modern, well-equipped military. This is especially important for air and naval forces which rely heavily on modern technology to produce com- bat effectiveness. For decades, the Department of National Defence (DND) has set targets for how much of the defence budget should be devoted to capital equipment, ranging from a high of 30 per cent to a low of 20 per cent. Due to the inability to use allocated procurement funds, the money spent on capital equipment has declined as an overall share of defence spending. Since 2011, an average of just over 14 per cent of the defence budget has been spent on capital, a level unseen since the 1970s. This continued inability to spend funds on procurement is especially problematic because of the extensive procurement backlog built up during the this essay is one in a series commissioned by canadian global affairs Institute in the context of defence, security and assistance reviews by the trudeau government. the views expressed are those of the author and not cgaI.