No new funding and a basic message of I don't know what to do by or defense minister today.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/...ticle34890580/
I don't know if I can really answer your question properly but I'll try Azure.
Basically the Forces has been attacked on two sides politically and past experience.
Politically here's what I see.
Look at the prior Prime Ministers.
Pierre Trudeau hated the Military and hated the members with a passion, he had a loathing of them both in terms of his more pacifistic leanings and that he didn't trust them to follow his orders. Because of that he pretty much spent money on everything but the Military.
John Diefenbaker during the Cuban Missile Crisis he was loathed to get involved and refused to raise the alert level of the Forces. The Canadian Forces basically told him to take a hike and increased their alert status anyways eventually to save face Dief retroactively allowed Canada's forces to go to Defcon 3.
Lester B Pierson wanted to be the peace keeper prime minister and continued to dissemble the Canadian Forces while at the same time getting involved in the development of UN Peacekeeping.
Trudeau he didn't like us, and we didn't particularly like him and he completely gutted the forces out of sheer vindictiveness.
Brian Mulroney promised a lot, a entire modernization of the Forces but then the Soviet Union fell and he decided to spend the money elsewhere basically breaking the back of the Forces.
Jean Chrietien was like Trudeau he had the Liberal hate of the Forces and on top of that he also viewed members of the Military with quite a bit of disdain behind the scenes. He also got slapped in the face when he sent several senior officers down to the States for a conference on Desert Storm to offer Canada's help, when the officers got down there they were basically laughed out of the room. So instead he hid behind the UN legitimacy argument and then sent our badly equip troops to Afghanistan. He also decided to continue to gut the defense budget.
Harper tried initially when he came in he did a crash program to bring the deployed forces into the modern world he also increased our heavy lift capabilities and started the Jet Fighter replacement program. He also tried to straighten out the outright mess made by Chretien in terms of things like Helicopter procurement. But the global economic collapse happened and most procurement and modernization was scaled back.
Justin Trudeau reduced defense spending to a historic low. He also has no understanding of the Military which shows in his insistent on deployments while gutting it from the inside.
So in conclusion. We have had a steady string of Prime Ministers who don't really have an understanding of the need for a decently equip stand alone military.
On top of that I think our Prime Ministers all have the romantic image of a military that can be neglected in a time of peace and then built up quickly in times of war. The whole punch above their weight commentary. Unfortunately it shows that our Prime Ministers have been clueless for a long time because frankly the Military's of the first and second world wars and even Korea didn't have the complex technologies and training requirements of a modern army that must be properly equipped lavishly trained and have a high level of experience in their officers core and senior NCM core.
We've also had Prime Minister that believe that the American's will come running and pay our bills in a crisis. But as one Prime Minister was told by a President not too long ago. "Some day a President, and I'm not saying this President isn't going to accept your defense policy"