The ghost of Sam Hughes, notorious for his ineptitude as Canadian Minister of Militia and Defence during World War I, still haunts Canada’s military buying practices, or procurement, in the 21st century.

The rifles, boots, shovels and machine guns that Hughes supplied to Canadian forces in the battles against the Central Powers were of poor quality or inadequate usefulness or both. Not until Hughes’ abrupt resignation in 1916 were the last of his infamous Ross rifles, which often jammed during conflict, replaced in favour of the more reliable Lee-Enfield, the standard-issue firearm of British forces.

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Today, Canada has one of the world’s best militaries, with a breadth of capabilities — across combat, humanitarian, natural disaster and peacekeeping roles — unmatched among other countries. U.S. military doctrine, by contrast, scorns peacekeeping in fear that it could weaken the fighting spirit of soldiers — a myth, as the Canadian Forces have proved time and again.

Unfortunately, Canada is also one of the world’s most inept purchasers of military supplies. We cannot seem to buy a fighter plane, helicopter, truck, Arctic patrol ship, ocean-going supply vessel, or adequate clothing for our military cadets on time, on budget and according to specifications.

Our military procurement system is “completely broken,” Kevin Page warned last year when he was the independent Parliamentary Budget Officer. A 2013 report by the Canadian Defence Associations Institute asserted that Ottawa’s track record of the past two decades on military procurement “reveals a common set of problems,” including “cost overruns, delays, suboptimal performance or some combination of all three.”

No military organization out there is a model of procurement. But Canada seems to have a special knack for committing to buy untested planes that cannot fly; for spending decades to replace a half-century-old generation of helicopters that began going into service the year before the Beatles first played Shea Stadium; and for failing to replace 30-year-old trucks whose age makes them a safety risk. Our 53,000 military cadets were told last December they would have to buy their own parkas in case the weather turned cold. (Yes, you read that correctly). They were also asked to raid the closets of ex-cadets for second-hand uniforms.

That our first-rate military still suffers from second-rate procurement practices will be cast in high relief in coming weeks as Ottawa decides whether to hold an open competition to replace our aging workhorse CF-18 Hornet fighter jets, whose average age is 27½ years.

Look more broadly and you’ll see other aircraft-, ship- and truck-buying programs that have stalled, as the Harper government demands of a rickety procurement system that it cope with budget cuts yet somehow upgrade our forces’ capabilities at the same time.

Indicative of Ottawa’s confusion over intended military capabilities is the feds’ new “defence acquisition guide” for military suppliers. As a vice chief of staff at the Department of National Defence (DND) candidly told a defence industry gathering in Ottawa this week, the forthcoming guide is not a heads-up on future military requirements. (Ottawa lacks vision on that.) It is meant simply to exhort contractors to supply our military on the cheap. (“Affordability” is the document’s euphemism.)

Of course, one could go to the polls next year campaigning honestly in favour of a weakened military, since that’s what the governing Tories, for their part, are presiding over. Certainly among next year’s election issues should be the following:

Ottawa likely will re-commit to the F-35 Lightning, a single-engine aircraft that will ditch if it loses that engine. (Our aging CF-18s are twin-engine fighters, for which losing an engine is a near non-event.) The F-35 is an unproven aircraft with advertised stealth capabilities that are of marginal use to the Canadian Forces. At a cost of $600 million-plus per plane, the F-35 would be the biggest military purchase in Canadian history.

In fact, the U.S.-designed F-35 is the world’s costliest unnecessary military gear. The Pentagon itself is likely to buy less than half the 3,100 planes it was expected to acquire when the F-35 program was launched in the 1990s.

Only the world’s few most affluent countries can afford the F-35, and they are the same countries least likely to attack each other. Meanwhile, unmanned drones are proving so multi-functional they are becoming ubiquitous. Drones are making conventional jet fighters seem like a holdover from the Cold War.

After a decade-long delay, there is no sign of Canada taking delivery of the 28 CH-148 Cyclone helicopters to which Ottawa committed back when Paul Martin was PM, to replace our fleet of 50-year-old Sea King choppers. The effort to replace the Sea Kings actually began 24 years ago. But Ottawa has countless times changed its specifications for the aircraft. That has caused delays and doubled the cost of the Sea King replacement program, to $5.7 billion. Blessed with three oceans and the world’s longest coastline, Canada has just 33 warships, down from 270 at the end of World War II, with which to patrol and defend our territorial waters. That “blue-water real estate” doubled in size when Canada negotiated highly favourable provisions in the international Law of the Sea treaty. But our actual sovereignty over those waters is tenuous, given that Canada still awaits modern Arctic patrol craft and new Navy supply ships that are still in the design stage — a paper navy — and have been criticized by the Parliamentary Budget Office as too costly for the job. It seems we cannot even buy trucks with alacrity. A DND program to buy 1,500 new trucks has been cancelled twice since 2006. It was restarted in 2013, but actual delivery won’t commence for several years. Experts say that delays in replacing the current 1980s-vintage truck fleet will diminish the buying power of the $800 million set aside for the new vehicles by about $48 million. So DND will get fewer trucks or the original number but of less capability than initially planned.

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It’s worth noting that Ottawa isn’t victimized by defence-contractor fraud nearly to the degree that has been the experience of the Pentagon. Instead, the fault lies mostly with a dysfunctional Canadian procurement system, and bipartisan inability of governments to stop changing their minds on what they want.

The problems caused by Samuel Hughes were largely solved by showing him the door. Alas, his addled approach to procurement later resurfaced and went viral, infecting every section of the DND and politicians of all stripes. To paraphrase Joseph Heller paraphrasing Shakespeare, “Some governments are born mediocre in military affairs, some achieve mediocrity, and some have it thrust upon them. With Ottawa it has been all three.”

Correction - June 6, 2014: This article was edited from a previous version that mistakenly referred to the Canadian Forces battling the Axis Powers during the First World War.

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