Walking Down the Yellow Brick Road

Back in Canada after a month abroad, including two and a half weeks in Canberra, graciously hosted by Dr. Rob Engen1 and the Centre for Future Defence and National Security, I wanted to take stock of what I learned. Despite my willingness to learn more about Australia, I find myself with a lot more insights on Canadian defence culture than I would have expected.

In Canadian defence circles, Australia is the subject of our envy. Despite being similar in many ways to Canada, Australia is seen as the better cousin. Defence spending over 2% of GDP, more elaborate strategic documents, ahead in terms of digitalization, a partner in AUKUS… Everything is shinier in the Oz defence world.

Or, is it?

Before you get up in arms: yes, by many metrics Australia is doing better than Canada. But I think that how we view Australia says a lot about how Canada views and talks about itself.

I would like to particularly thank Jennifer Parker (ANU), Dr. Malcolm Davis (ASPI), Lachlan McShane (Oliver Wyman), Rachel Falzon (WiDA), Jordan Beavis and his colleagues at the Australian Army Research Centre, Jo Lindsay (Department of Defence), and Tom Corben (United States Studies Centre) for taking the time to share their insights with me.

Here are my observations.

After years of doing peer reviews and editing articles, I have noticed a tendency to rely on policy documents to assess the state of a country’s defence sector and apparatus. While a policy indicates the direction a government wants to pursue, implementation can tell a different story.

At a surface level, it is easy to look at Australia’s defence sector (here I include government, military, and industry) and use that for self-flagellation purposes in Canada:

• Australia spends over 2% of GDP in defence spending

• Australia reviews its defence policy every two years

• Australia has had a Defence Industry Development Strategy (DIDS) for a year now and has its own Defence Industry Minister.

• AUKUS (especially Pillar II)

• Australia has a defence innovation accelerator and has engaged in innovative approaches to capability innovation such as Ghost Bat and Ghost Shark.

• Some states have their own Ministers for Defence and Veterans Affairs (e.g., Western Australia2)

• Culture of commemorating wars.

  

Do not get me wrong. This puts Australia at an advantage on so many fronts compared to Canada. But serious issues remain for Australia.

Let’s take AUKUS to start. Jennifer Parker3 has written widely on the matter, and it is clear that the implementation of the agreement will be a long and winding road for Oz. It is par for the course given the massive undertaking that it is, but there are more snags than we can see from Canada. Infrastructure building is slow, and despite a lack of timelines, there is a sense that schedules are slipping. Further, while Australia agreed to purchase nuclear submarines, it lacks the education, training, and scientific apparatus to help develop and sustain these submarines at home. As for Pillar II, progress and direction are questionable. There is a lack of a strategic vision and agreement on the matter; the goalposts seem to change constantly, leaving very little room for progress in actual development.

Another example is Ghost Shark. This maritime uncrewed system developed by Anduril Australia in partnership with the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) is no small feat, and is an example of Australian innovation and the success of the Advanced Strategic Capabilities Accelerator (ASCA, Australia’s Defence Accelerator). Now, one of the Ghost Shark prototypes is in the U.S. for testing (since August 2024), and because of export controls rules and regulations, there are questions around Ghost Shark making its way back to Australia without extensive bureaucratic burden and Australia having to purchase a capability it developed (despite Australia being part of ITAR and NTIB)4.

Of course, those are issues that come with the innovation path Australia has been pursuing in recent years. But in terms of AUKUS Pillar I, some the challenges Australia is facing are eerily similar to what Canada went through with the National Shipbuilding Strategy. Shipbuilding is hard.

So is procurement. Australia and Canada are not dissimilar in their procurement challenges: heavily procedural approaches, slipping schedules, and ballooning costs are common themes. Where Australia certainly performs better than us is on the monitoring and assessment of procurement projects. The Australian National Audit Office frequently audits projects, and the common themes from those reports include: governance management of the project need to be improved; the “value-for-money” calculus often falls on the wayside; and changing of requirements or immature designs would lead to delays and increasing costs. I was told that other challenges with defence procurement in Australia included also enthusiasm in project scheduling (overestimating how quickly capabilities can be delivered), getting to the “two passes” of Cabinet approval for Defence to implement the project, and a resource mission mismatch in procurement (number of projects keep on increasing, but the procurement workforce and expertise do not).

A final point that I have noticed (reading between the lines of my meetings and a conversation Rob Engen had at the Australian National Archives): Australia and Canada both have a culture of prioritizing things over people. The governments of both countries are heavily investing in infrastructure, platforms/ capabilities, while seeking to reduce (“rationalize”) the workforce. However, we are missing out on the calculus that maybe new infrastructure, new projects, new platforms might not change how many people we need to maintain and sustain them. For example, drones, while a critical capability that are pushing the boundaries of warfare, will not replace people (and at times, traditional platforms), have argued RUSI’s Dr. Jack Watling and former Slovak officer who served in Ukraine Jakub Jajcay. Another example is the lack of growth in the procurement workforce, despite an explosion in the number of projects. When discussing defence spending, there is a tendency in berating Canada for increasing personnel spending – but little discussion as to why it is something we should be ashamed of.

I am not green – I know that complaining and ranting is inherent to the defence culture (if not the public policy game writ large). Australian defence has that trait, too. Pessimism can keep us realistic, but to what extent are we leaning so much into the venting/ criticism game that we self-sabotage?

Further, I know that Canada ought to work at lot on its defence sector. I do not think we should rest on our laurels.

Let’s embrace nuance, folks.

What I want to underline is Canada’s leveraging its allies to self-flagellate. Plenty are the commentaries looking at our allies and partners to underline how much we fall short. The narrative then becomes: “if our allies do it, then we must adopt it.” It is particularly the case when it comes to U.S. defence concepts and policies, to the point that “Canadian innovation means adopting U.S. concepts and doctrine, faster” has become a regular quip of mine. I understand the hypocrisy of this sentence in the context of the point I am making – but there is a reason for it.

This is not a new issue. The more I edit articles for work, the more I am seeing arguments for the adoption of what our allies do, seemingly because they do it (and they are seen as inherently better than us) or because they want us to. Often times, if the reason for adopting a specific policy is because one of our allies does it, the view is that doing so would fix all of our problems. There is little discussion about the specific Canadian context; and when it is, it is mostly to shame Canada for not doing well enough. We then overlook whether or not it will work if adopted while keeping the larger environment as is. On the flip side, if our allies want us to do something specific, we either ignore whether or justify that it is in our interest – because we were asked to (think of why Canada has an army-dominated military). Therefore, the fact that our allies do it/ want us to do it becomes a reason in itself to adopt a policy/ concept/ strategy.

I will expand on that in another stackie as it will be relevant to parts of my PhD dissertation (in a roundabout way), but to plant the seed: reflect on the way that we are thinking about interoperability and interchangeability. Are we thinking about adapting and changing ways we are working with allies to be more joint (because let’s be real, interoperability is essentially joint with more letters), or are we now pushing towards a uniformity at the doctrinal and capability levels?

We have a tendency to chase the silver bullet, and it is human nature. Our brains look for simplicity; it creates certainty in our minds and helps alleviate anxieties.

What I find particularly interesting in the Canadian culture is the language of shame that surrounds our policy discussions – and it is in part what makes us less productive, less motivated, more risk adverse, and less innovative. There is that intrinsic belief that if we shame and guilt ourselves, then we will pursue action. But when that action happens, are we rewarding ourselves?

I find that we are stuck in this loop of shame and criticism that we cannot seem to escape. Do not get me wrong, there is a lot to criticize in defence – there always has been, and there always will be. I am one skeptical spud, and I always approach things with caution before I celebrate.

But are we encouraging when we see things moving? When our decision makers are moving in the right direction? I think that, while it seems that there is an expectation we would celebrate as if a Canadian team had won the Stanley Cup, we could be more supportive.

We have a tendency of not really reflecting on why our system is the way it is, beyond reducing the root of our defence problems to the idea that Canadians do not care about defence. For one, I think the Westminster system contributes to Canadians – and Australians! – not seemingly caring that much about defence and foreign policy. Plus, I would like to see voting patterns of the citizenry in countries that we perceive as caring more about defence. Finally, how about we talk about the folks who are directly involved in defence decision-making and continuously pass the responsibility buck?5

Then, we need to ask ourselves: why do we see a backsliding in transparency in Canada? Why have we become so risk adverse, are we afraid of risk or do we have a low tolerance for mistakes? Why do we see such defensiveness amongst the people we critique?

It then becomes easy to understand why sticking to what our allies do and try to emulate that with little evaluation becomes the path of choice: we are entertaining a public policy environment where shame and learned helplessness dominate. Defensiveness and retrenchment become our government’s way to respond.

I am not suggesting researchers, advocates, and industry become unabashed cheerleaders and that we avoid all forms of criticism. But could we move towards an environment where we privilege critique over criticism, where we remove the language of shame behind our conversations. Stop the “let’s get serious” narrative where we infantilize (and feminize, according to Andrea Lane) our defence policy apparatus. I find this type of language counterproductive and stifles innovation (and leads to an incestuous defence sector, but I’ll wait I am older with fewer f– to give to write about that one).

The criticism of the defence decision-makers without the language of shame was interesting to see when in Australia. One could argue it is because they are more militaristic than we are; but we could also reflect on the possibility of a more collegial and constructive way of providing advice and critique.

Sometimes we travel to discover about another country and its culture; but this trip really put Canadian defence culture into perspective for me.

Oh, and that jet lag is the absolute worst. But that is self-evident.