Canada's instruments of national power suffer from crippling human resources vulnerabilities

Abstract

Canada faces an increasingly difficult international environment. The to-do list is extensive: decades of neglect and underinvestment mean that every instrument of national power - diplomacy, defence, development, intelligence, national security, law enforcement - all suffer from chronic under-investment. Perhaps most strikingly, Canada has also not produced a comprehensive national security policy since 2004. These vulnerabilities are being increasingly discussed publicly. There is, however, one persistent problem that underlies these vulnerabilities and systematically fails to receive the attention it deserves, both in public debates and inside government: human resources.

As potential changes in the level and nature of US leadership and other systemic challenges loom large on the horizon, Canada faces an increasingly difficult international environment. The to-do list is extensive: decades of neglect mean that every instrument of national power—diplomacy, defence, development, intelligence, national security, law enforcement—all suffer from chronic under-investment. Perhaps most strikingly, Canada also has not produced a comprehensive national security policy since 2004. These vulnerabilities increasingly are being discussed in public fora. There is, however, one persistent problem that underlies these vulnerabilities, which systematically fails to receive the attention it deserves, both in public debates and inside government: human resources.

It is useful to begin by laying out the assumptions that guide the thinking here. First, Canada has long neglected its foreign, defence, and national security policy. It is not true, however, contrary to what some especially harsh critics argue, that Canada is a free rider: the country does have assets and skills to bring to the table, and it often does. The Communications Security Establishment (CSE), the national cryptologic agency, for example, is widely viewed by Canada's allies as elite. It is more accurate to refer to Canada as an “easy rider,” with a tradition of identifying the sweet spot of doing just enough. One can plausibly make the case that this might have been an effective strategy in the past: it worked, in the sense that Canada did not pay a price for being complacent. But increasingly, what was for a long time the luxury of a cost-free neglect of foreign policy will be unsustainable.

Second, the US (and, less importantly, other allies) are increasingly irritated by Canada's neglect of foreign, defence, and national security policy. This matters, because one of Canada's main sources of power and security stems from its alliances and partnerships, especially its close bilateral ties with its southern neighbour, as well as the Five Eyes and NATO. Canada is not on the verge of being expelled from any one of these arrangements, but it is increasingly at risk of suffering from decreases in the substantial benefits they bring.

The third assumption is that multilateralism and international cooperation in the twenty-first century will more often be characterized as a potluck, not a party. ¹ That is, as the US and others increasingly come to favour ad hoc, “mini-lateral,” and flexible arrangements, states will get invited based on what they can concretely bring to the table, not because traditional allies have historically favourable or sympathetic perceptions of them. The challenge for Canada is double: in addition to the above-mentioned neglect of tools of national power, it suffers from a weak ability to think strategically about how to get invited to a potluck: that is, by identifying and then investing in the specific value-added that it can offer to a given multilateral setting.

Too often, Canada wants to do a bit of everything, for example, sprinkling its development assistance in too many places, or opening new embassies in countries in which it has marginal interests and can only maintain one or two Canadian employees. Canada, in other words, needs to think much more seriously about its specific aims. This implies tough trade-offs that successive governments have actively shirked. It will be increasingly costly to continue like this; this will be true especially if Donald Trump returns to the presidency in January 2025, but it will remain valid even if he does not.

In response, academics, retired public servants, and other commentators have been sounding the alarm bells for years, calling for re-investment in the full spectrum of instruments of national power and for the publication of a new national security policy. All of this is critically necessary. There is one glaring vulnerability that rarely receives attention, however: human resources. There is a near universal consensus inside the bureaucracy, at the political level and in academia, that this is a boring and devilishly complex matter that must be addressed, but at some indefinite time in the future. But this is precisely the problem: generations of political and bureaucratic leaders have avoided accountability, too often passing the buck to their successors. As a result, problems have accumulated, to the point that they have become a major obstacle on Canada's ability to improve its defences against the proliferating threats it faces today.

The gaps and challenges are many. The national security and intelligence community suffers from important recruitment shortages (the Canadian Armed Forces, for example, are about sixteen thousand troops under their authorized strength, despite significant recruitment efforts in recent years). There are also retention challenges (with, for example, the private sector competing for individuals with highly sought-after cyber skills) and morale issues (the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, CSIS, for example, systematically finishes last or second to last in cross-government employee surveys).

The intelligence and national security community, despite improvements in recent years, remains too insular. It is marred by a poor understanding of the needs and requirements of its increasingly important non-traditional partners elsewhere in the federal government, in other levels of government, civil society, and the business sector. Major backlogs for security clearances compound these problems. This matters on several fronts. Intelligence units risk losing newly hired personnel, especially those with advanced skills, when they are told they must wait for months, if not more, before they can start working while the investigation proceeds. An unduly complex process to transfer clearances from one department to another hampers mobility within the intelligence community and with the rest of government; this restricts the ability of staff to gain new experience, and therefore a stronger understanding of how government works outside their own agency.

Such concerns are regularly dismissed as arcane or as someone else's problem, including by senior officials in the government. Once retired, some senior officials do not hesitate to publicly call for more funding for the military, for example, or for other reforms, but few are willing to dive deeply into the less exciting administrative side. Few academics have studied this aspect of the national security enterprise. Yet, in the absence of serious and sustained efforts and investments on the human resources front, any new initiative, reform, legislative change, or strategy will suffer from a low ceiling for success because of problems and limitations in implementation capacity. This is not sustainable.