Yeah, I wasn't all that happy about the story and I always thought Fantino was a jacka$$.
There's a lot of things that are clear.
While the Conservatives have done a great job in slowing down the rust out of the Military caused by previous Liberal and even to an extent the previous Conservative governments in terms of equipment, capability and change of focus, there's still a long ways to go in order to have a proper 24/7 365 day available military.
1) The F-35 issue is yet to be resolved and its basically back to the drawing board. While I have concerns about pricing of the planes and the issues with the plane though the deficiencies checklist has shrunk a great deal. I have no doubt that the F-35 is probably at the end of the day going to be the jet that we should buy
2) Our airlift capability is greatly improved and that's a extremely big checkmark for the government and gives us the ability to properly respond to natural disasters and hot spots without the expensive and stupid liberal strategy of leasing other countries assets.
3) The Seaking replacement has become a tar pit. This was mainly caused by the Liberal's and Jean Chretiens vindictive nature and hatred of anything green. But the Conservatives failed to keep their thumb on this program and its slid to the point where we are back to square one
4) The Naval refresh. Sounded great, increase our Navy Presence and start understanding that our Frigates while excellent ships are past half life, we also have a serious lack of command and control ships to form Canadian only task forces. On top of that our replenishment capability for ships at sea and resupply capability for deployed troops is essentially zero. With the American's in Sochi the U.S. is positioning ships in the black sea to assist in civilian evacuations if something goes wrong, Canada doesn't have that ability. On top of that the design costs issues of the new ships is kind of insane.
5) The submarine crisis - Out of the four Upholder/Victoria class submarines 2 are operational, one is not certified for weapons use of deep diving and the fourth is undergoing repairs with no return to sea date. Submarines are critical to shore defense, and in shore intelligence gathering. These boats are also around 25 years old and are inadequate based on Soviet Ship and Submarine strategies and new models. Canada needs to start looking for new boats
6) Armored vehicle replacement has been shifted to a refit. Most of these vehicles served in Afghanistan and they are now tired vehicles. While a new variant is not imparitive it will become more important if Canada needs to deploy them again.
7) Members pay and benefits - Have lagged, we've seen and heard horror stories of pay not being adequete, of barely habitable housing, this needs to be seriously addressed as it impacts moral and retention.
8) Mental health issues - We are not doing enough to help these soldiers. Unlike any time since WW2 a large portion of our Military were deployed to combat, a lot on multiple tours. We've seen a massive upswing in Mental Illness and suicides. The Conservative government is paying lip service to it, but the program is inadequete
9) Veteran's affairs - Absolutely terrible treatment of our Veterans, and not just the older ones, but the younger ones who have come home injured and traumatized or trying to find their way int he world as a civilian. There's not enough money being put into these programs and not enough thought and care being done to make sure that its delivering and helping people. There's also a severe failure in how the military disconnects from its members when they leave. This is the most disgraceful thing that I've seen, and I expected more from a government that is supposed to be military friendly.
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