OTTAWA—Canada’s army has the capacity to help its NATO allies deter Russia on Europe’s eastern border and launch a substantial United Nations peacekeeping mission, military officials and experts say.

The government’s decision last week to contribute 450 soldiers, light-armoured vehicles and other equipment to Latvia as part of a 1,000-strong multinational NATO force has raised questions about whether the Canadian Armed Forces can still make good on mounting a major UN peacekeeping mission, a core foreign policy goal of the Trudeau Liberals.

Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan said Wednesday that containing the spread of terrorism across Africa is a consideration as Canada mulls where it will contribute to a UN peacekeeping mission.

Sources say Mali, where the French are leading a UN mission that has seen at least 19 peacekeepers killed this year, is one destination under consideration.

Sajjan and Foreign Affairs Stéphane Dion insist Canada can mount a major UN peacekeeping mission.

Now, the commander of the army, and a leading Canadian peacekeeping expert who is helping to advise the government, are both backing those political assertions.

“We will be able to deliver whatever the government wants us to do,” said Lt.-Gen. Marquis Hainse, who turns over command of the army today to Lt.-Gen. Paul Wynnyk.

“There’s room to manoeuvre there, to contribute to somewhere else.”

But it won’t be easy, said Walter Dorn, a professor at the Canadian Forces Staff College in Kingston.

“The NATO commitment puts a strain on the number of forces that are available for UN deployments, but I think we can do both,” Dorn said.

The benchmark for what’s sustainable for a Canadian Armed Forces mission is essentially 3,000 military members deployed abroad at any given time, said Dorn, who cites the fact that a pool of 3,000 was needed for any given rotation to Kandahar in recent years, while a record 3,300 forces members served in UN peacekeeping missions in the early 1990s.

Canada already has about 400 troops in Ukraine and Poland, and another 800 military personnel in Iraq and Kuwait, drawn mainly from special forces and the air force.

That means Canada could supply up to 1,000 troops to a UN mission and not be stretched too thin, Dorn said.

“Numbers up to 1,000 are sustainable for many years.”

Peacekeeping missions, or peace operations, as the government now calls them, would likely draw heavily from the regular army.

Hainse said the army is broken into three brigades of about 5,000 soldiers who rotate through a 36-month training cycle. The training cycle during the Afghanistan war was accelerated to 18 months, he said.

The end of the combat mission in Afghanistan in 2011, and budget cuts, imposed in more recent years, resulted in the cycle being slowed.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

While Hainse said he wouldn’t want to scale it back any further, the army can sustain many missions at once, he said.

“There’s enough flexibility there to be able to cover a lot,” he said.

Read more about: