I have visited with Canadian Armed Forces in Bosnia and in Afghanistan and at bases across Canada. I have met and lectured at the Canadian Forces College in Toronto, a division of the Royal Military College (RMC) in Kingston, and I have also lectured at RMC, and I have never failed to be impressed by the competence, engagement, patriotism, and professional­ism of the Canadian men and women who proudly wear the Canada shoulder flash. They are our most important, involved, and reliable national asset tactically and strategically. But the size of their complement is too small and they are underserved by the quality and quantity of the kit and equipment with which they must deploy.

At present, our forces have a patrol deficit, a logistics deficit, a materiel deficit, an intelligence deficit, a training deficit, a reserves deficit, and the federal budget has an operational deficit. As a result of all of this, Canada is doing far less than is required at minimum and its capacity is far less than required. This is worse than a shell game. A shell game actually has a pea.

The costs of Canada’s government depriving the country’s military of the genuine capacity to deploy, of diverting what little procurement funds it does budget for to serve regional industrial benefits, can be both intergenerational and very far-reaching.

Denuding a country of its capacity to intervene, of its competence to deploy, strips it of many other important attributes, such as the confidence and, hence, the willingness to engage in support of meeting critical international challenges, like the risk of genocide and natural and man-made human­itarian disasters; and the will to be involved in support of either international agreements or in defence of the two key freedoms. Expeditionary military and special force capacity are both essential for the capability to intervene, but so are intelligence capability, training expertise, and the capacity to rapidly position diplomatic and humanitarian resources in support of vital causes.

For some in the diplomatic realm, staying out of the fray seems to be the ultimate virtue, and in a world where the risks of engagement are high that is not hard to understand. What is often lacking in this calculation, though, is an actual analysis of the costs of non-intervention, of not getting involved. Letting Syria fester after the civil war started several years ago, not engaging fully against the genocidal North Sudanese have all contributed to worsening security situations — thousands of civilian deaths and more real threats to our own security and that of our allies. The capacity to deploy underlines a country’s will to intervene and the will to intervene determines if there is any reality at all in the Responsibility to Protect Doctrine advanced by Canadian foreign minister Lloyd Axworthy and adopted as UN policy. In Western Canada, there is a wonderful expression that is thrown at the boastful when the gap between their rhetoric and the substance of their actions is both too large and deeply apparent: "Big Hat, No Cattle!" With our deployability diminished and constrained, Canada faces that manner of reaction from our allies and potential foes every time we takes a stand on any issue, whether it be the Russian takeover of Crimea, or the ISIS threat in a host of countries.

What we really need, if we are to actually be able to deploy effectively and back up our humanitarian, peace-promoting, and freedom-advancing rhetoric and international purposes, is a standing regular force of one hundred thousand full-time navy, army, special forces, and air force personnel and at least fifty thousand standing and ready reserves. I have written before that an engagement befitting Canada’s 150th birthday would be to have a policy in place that ensures that real prog­ress is being made on building an armed forces with a strength of one hundred and fifty thousand. It can’t happen overnight, but it needs to start now. I have also said that we need to be building and acquiring sufficient ships to create a sixty-ship fighting navy able to deploy in support of Canadian strategic, diplomatic, and humanitarian purpose worldwide.

Why would this matter and how would it help?

Take the notion of having a fully operational hospital ship under a Canadian flag. Brazil has several, so do China, the United States, Peru, Indonesia, Russia, Spain, Vietnam, the United Kingdom, France, Argentina, and Australia. In some cases, these are large supply ships that are rapidly convertible for use as a hospital ship; other nations use large, multi-purpose ships, like the Mistral-class vessels used by the French and Argentinian navies, which have substantial medical capacity within their multi-purpose hulls. There would be few additions to the Canadian fleet more fitting and more reflective of our values and compassion as a country than a hospital-ship naval task force. Joined by a supply ship and surface combat escort, these would be able to deploy quickly to any part of the world in clear projection of Canada’s humanitarian values as a globally engaged supporter of the Responsibility to Protect. Our naval capacity to posi­tion itself in every major region and have, at the disposition of our duly elected government and Parliament, at least five naval task forces, with self-contained amphibious, combat, humanitarian, and resupply vessels, would add a remarkable underlying strength to Canada’s global presence. One or two of these task forces may well require helicopter capacity or submarine escort.

There was a remarkable opportunity for Canada to acquire two such state-of-the-art, ally-constructed vessels. The French justifi­ably cancelled a contract to supply Russia with two Mistral-class helicopter carriers after the Russian Crimean aggression, and these two vessels were up for sale. If Canada had acquired them, they would have advanced our naval capability remarkably. Canada dithered, no doubt because of regional job generation pressures, and the Egyptian Navy stepped up. Another opportunity missed.

The creation of military capacity to deploy is not, of course, an end in itself. It must be integrated with broad consideration by the Canadian government of a mix of engagements in support of diplomatic, humanitarian, development, and military placements to areas of the world where the Responsibility to Protect must be matched with an integrated capacity to deploy and the will to engage. There was some of this, cobbled together on the run, during the Lebanese extraction in 2006, involving Foreign Affairs, Defence, and Immigration Canada. A better approach would be the standing-up of a Joint Contingency Subcommittee of Cabinet that groups Defence, DFATD, Immigration, Health, and CSIS to consider the resources necessary for any required deployment of diplomatic, military, intelligence, and related resources in support of an emergent crisis, or efforts to avert one.

Excerpted from Two Freedoms, by Hugh Segal. ©2016, Hugh Segal. Published by Dundurn Press.