How to spend billions – fast: Carney’s Defence Deadline

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1:03Visit Schwab.com to learn more. This is The Documentary from the BBC World Service. A race is on in Canada, against time and history. Its military is rebuilding on a deadline. Here in a bitterly cold Quebec morning recruits dash across the slick frozen deck of a wobbly suspension bridge, shouting, they're platoon ID. They're part of a surge of young women and men joining the Canadian Armed Forces. It's what I don't like. Why is French is little king? I'm from the BBC, it's English only. I'm afraid. Can I just get your name on tape please? Yes, it's Captain Zeput-i-5. This is my platoon here, 60% amazing. And how long have these recruits been here? They were here for five weeks. For five weeks to go. Yes, and they have still four weeks to go.

2:05Okay, so not fully cooked. Exactly. Half way there. Excellent, and you're seeing lots of people coming. Absolutely. All around recruits in green fatigues, climb, crawl, and cheer each other on. While some sprint over the slippery bridge, others hive themselves over a high wall. They land in the snow, crouch, and point their weapons. So it's obstacle course? It's the diva, the resiliency, and teamwork. Okay, okay. It's mainly that. And of course, it's hard. They have the weapon now, they do it once without the weapon, just to get used to the obstacle course, and then after they do it with the weapon. Canada is looking to do more with weapons. A judgment has been made at the very top that the world is suddenly more dangerous. The threats that Canada faces are multiplying. Prime Minister Mark Carney, not just Russia or China. We're facing the most significant crisis of our lifetimes because of President Trump's

3:10unjustified trade actions and his threats to our sovereignty. Carney has given his generals and admirals an unusual command. Spend money. Lots of it quickly. He set the clock running to inject an extra nine billion Canadian dollars by the end of the fiscal year, and he's promised billions more in the years to come. The brave women and men who are protecting our sovereignty do not have the resources they need for a riskier world. My name is Neil Rezel. I was raised in a Canadian military family and I've been a journalist for almost 30 years. This is a story I never thought I'd tell. Our military just isn't built to spend quickly. At times, it's struggle to even spend what it's been given. So, for assignment here on the BBC World Service, I'm following this new money to see what difference it's making, what it can buy, and what it can't. Can Canada long criticized by its NATO allies for failing to spend turn fear into force?

4:25For almost anyone who joins the Canadian Armed Forces, basic training starts here. Don't move your knee. Just move your left arm. The Canadian forces leadership and recruit school, a huge complex in Saint-Gyau-Séritier du Gisalfa Montreal. We're now practiced at your own time. In a giant indoor parade ground, about 60 uniformed recruits are practicing a rifle salute. What? What? What? What? What? What? Breaking movements into counts. It's probably one of thousands of movements and methods they'll learn in their nine weeks here. Move through the warn of hallways, and there are innumerable classrooms and this one they're learning to make

5:27their C7 rifle safe down the hall first aid in a big room and an adjoining building how to deal with chemical biological and nuclear attacks the whole place is a factory for the profession of arms there's so much going on it's hard to picture what a surge of spending would look like here or if there's even been one so that's retreat to the quiet office of the man in charge Lieutenant Colonel Mark Kelly some aspects of my job have been very easy because I have no functional budget right now any money that I can spend to increase basic training capacity and throughput is there wow wow like a blank check effectively essentially there's rigorous financial controls but we're being told now is the time so any investments you can make to increase the quality of your training the throughput of your training the number of

6:27candidates you can train successfully and get out the door like it's absolutely game on so what do you buy when you're running a soldier factory for us it's a combination of time and beds we need beds for candidates to sweep in and we need time to train them so for example we realize that with the increase number of people we turn around in the diamond ordered bunk beds like a million dollars in bunk beds a million dollars turns out buying hundreds and hundreds of bunk beds made in Canada can be expensive but we could turn around very quickly and not have to do a year of a business planning cycle and just say if we can find them we can buy them it's not just beds he recently bought 10,000 backpacks 25,000 pairs of boots no years-long planning process he needed them he got them this is not the Canadian military I grew up with my father served in the Royal Canadian Air Force for 37 years he was a cold warrior when he retired in 1991 I mused about enlisting but that was firm don't do it he said

7:28there's no future the cold war over he knew budgets would be slashed the coming years proved him right the number of active duty service members fell by almost a third and our NATO allies noticed the Canadian Armed Forces are really good in 2016 President Barack Obama brought the message directly to parliament the world needs more Canada NATO needs more Canada we need you MPs applauded but they didn't boost funding to the NATO level last year President Trump deployed a different strategy you know they don't pay very much for military and the reason they don't pay much is they assume that we're going to protect them that's not an assumption they can make and he added a new kind of pressure talk of Canada as a 51st state it drove Canadians nuts mark Karni an untested politician rode a nationalist wave to power President

8:29Trump is trying to break us so that America can own us that will never that will never ever happen Lieutenant Colonel Keely had the news on last summer when a newly elected prime minister made one of his first big policy pronouncements it amounts to almost nine billion extra Canadian dollars to be invested by the end of March first up a big pay rise for those in uniform I was watching on TV and I walked out from the office and there was a couple platoons and they were in the barber shop sitting there getting haircuts and I was like hey good news the prime minister is all given you a 20% pay raise and they all jumped up and started howling with the light they went the only ones on the other side of the country and a recruiting office near van koover we all had the announcement on the news exciting time to be in the military in

9:29general definitely captain Joshua register oversees recruitment in British Columbia and Yukon his orders in this race to rebuild the Canadian armed forces keep new people coming through the door or in his case two doors a guard needs to let you into the recruiting office when I visited it was full of empty chairs we are trying to get away from having people come in person in order to expedite recruiting processing times and with our new online application process it's less full than it used to be for sure which means that we can offer quicker customer service speed matters the military has been blasted for a recruitment process that would last months or even years during which time many candidates would simply bail out captain register says the new money is helping change that we've been allocated more resources at the end of the day it comes down to staff power some of the processes that we've used in the background have changed we have upgraded our capacity to conduct criminal

10:31record checks and background checks he says they've streamlined paperwork to it all adds up last year the number of recruits nationally jumped 55% to hit a 10 year high this year will be even better he says again this is not the Canadian military observers had come to know not long ago the defense minister said the force was in a debt spiral but there are choke points money can't fix quickly across the street from the recruiters here we have the medical offices so this is actually our primary thing that needs to happen in person the medical is the one step that you can't really take care of online so they kind of become a sticking point for their recruiting fixing that'll be really hard there's a nationwide shortage of doctors still captain register is bullish we will do it yes we are on pace to exceed last year's record you will do it that's a confident captain I have the privilege of being able to see the prospects and

11:35affect the outcome so but it's too soon to declare mission accomplished all these new recruits produce a problem for Lieutenant Colonel Keely in Quebec so our biggest issue right now frankly is just there are more recruits who want to enroll every single week than we can train and our gap right now is that the recruiting system can enroll about 300 Canadians a week and we can only accept about 240 his base normally takes four to five thousand people a year next year he says it could reach ten thousand so they're cracking up an entirely new basic training center in Ontario deciding to open up an entire new basic training school within a year and a half timeline and actually have it running that's a pretty quick turn for the Canadian Armed Forces these recruits don't just need new beds and boots and backpacks they need people to teach them all these new moves here too he's waving his checkbook to hire instructors we've got about 93 year contracts open including paid moves from anywhere in Canada so if

12:38anyone in the Canadian Armed Forces any reserve component anywhere in Canada wants to come join us we will pay for their full move here to the Montreal area and as long as they do one full year of employment we'll also pay for their full move back Lieutenant Colonel Keely has more than money at his disposal to meet the mission to grow the force he has discretion he's changed standards instructors used to be all mid-career uniform trained leaders now he's wrong some from the junior ranks and retirees and then there are the standards for the recruits themselves let's go spread out come on wake up here a platoon and sweats is warming up ahead of a workout what's happening currently they're doing PT so physical training they're gonna do some squats some lunges they're getting ready for a rock march tomorrow who was that so they put on a really big heavy bag and they walk until we tell them to stop

13:40basically it's only 5k but it's still a little bit of a gut check and how is the kind of baseline fitness level changed through the years it's changed quite a bit to be honest it's gone from really hard charging soldiers noticing quite a few people are they say they've trained before but they've never rough marched in their life they struggle a little bit the standards of those starting basic training may be down but Lieutenant Colonel Keely says the standards of those finishing remain the same he tracks the graduation rate the percentage who actually get through so we've seen our average graduation rate which is around 83% over about 20 year run of calculation it dropped to 77% last year but it's important to put that in the context of almost doubling the number of recruits that came at the door so the share of dropouts is up but the

14:44absolute number who finish is up even more we still put 2200 more basic training qualified calf members onto their next training establishment then we were scheduled to the year before we've seen a huge net benefit to the Canadian Armed Forces even though more candidates are coming here and being unsuccessful for a variety of reasons these are the ones who made it platoons sound off on that giant indoor parade ground after nine weeks of crawling shooting shouting and more one final task march before families and friends as graduates this is the documentary from the BBC World Service

15:47Tyler Reddick here from 2311 Racing another checkered flag for the books time to celebrate with chamba jump in at chamba casino dot com let's chamba no purchase necessary BTW group boy were prohibited by mar ctnc 21 plus sponsored by chamba casino momentum doesn't appear overnight it's built refined repeated Puerto Rico understands momentum as companies rethink supply chains and reshore operations they're choosing a location that already delivers life saving medicines advanced manufacturing and global scale innovation as a US jurisdiction operating under federal law with competitive tax incentives designed for long term investment companies don't just relocate here they scale here not culture or business culture and business Puerto Rico it's not what's next it's where visit invest PR dot org forward slash business I'm Neil Rizel so that's it the ceremonies over now the families are coming down

16:59out of the bleachers they're streaming out into this parade ground and I can see hugging their children their babies grandparents it looks like it's a very happy scene here congratulations do you need to find somebody I see you looking around the bleachers my father-in-law suddenly she's smothered in hugs and someone hands her a giant bouquet oh my god no I am so sorry you okay I am beyond words I'm excited and I'm grateful to be here with all my friends and all my peers and instructors and my family why did you sign up now I always had a call to serve and I wanted to do my part for this country that I open the doors to me and to my family and I think I can do great things here and to help

18:05others and to help this country they're absolutely shining right so much you're together yeah how does this moment feel to see this oh it's pretty awesome like she works so hard she has so many difficulties and she went through it so awesome yeah this is a very exciting moment for the Canadian Armed Forces the government is putting a lot of money into the Canadian Armed Forces right now it's about time it's about time yeah yeah so many cuts during the last 30 years so yeah what's that I had this conversation with a number of families here the Canadian government is pumping a lot of money into it yeah it's a great time it feels fantastic it makes me feel more settled more excited for him and he's got a great future ahead of him really like it's incredible I'm so proud the flip side of the money though is that the government says yeah it's a pretty dangerous world out there now how do you feel about that I feel like they're really

19:08freaking lucky to have them honestly they've got my son and they are damn lucky to have him you could feel the pride but pride isn't readiness it doesn't put planes in the sky or ships to sea this is a squimalt harbor on Vancouver Island home of Canada's Pacific fleet access is tightly controlled a century ago big guns on the hills behind me guarded the narrow entrance across the water gray warships lie beneath towering cranes from here they can slip out and soon be in the open Pacific or at least they can when they're working the prime minister has described their readiness in brutally simple terms only one of our four submarines is sea worthy less than half our maritime fleet and land vehicles are operational while he's

20:11speaking the truth rear admiral David Patel the most senior officer here on the west coast the part of one submarine that is accurate and we're getting that submarine back to sea so I appreciate any government official stands up and speaks truth because it allows us to then communicate to Canadians about our challenges and our opportunities as we reinvest and build the force let's see what they're up against what difference can a sudden rush of money make to keeping ships at sea so when you're going on the ladders three points contact face the ladder I've seen many people go down okay all right thank you hazards yeah there's the first one there's a second petting officer second-class Christopher Kale helps me not break my neck as we squeeze into the crowded space below deck of a frontline warship called a frigate okay you see when I was saying space is a premium yeah so there's catwalks that go up and down everywhere there's machinery underneath the above the side it's the smells of kind of bilge and diesel or what's what's that smell it will

21:15definitely be a mix of oil diesel seawater will combination of all one okay I can't really get away from that we're deep inside HMCS van Kuver it's been in port more than a year now and it isn't expected to be operational again until 2030 it's getting a full refit everything needs to be checked and then checked again and it's no small task all around our gauges fuse boxes wire switches displays and what must be miles and miles of cabling and pike because it's a warship there's lots of redundancy so there's backups on backups but all of that redundancy needs maintenance still yes it does what can be done to speed up the maintenance process because you can't even foot that many people down here like I know it's it's not a fix with a ship with this much stuff in it this many competing interests throwing more people at the issue it's not really going to

22:16increase the efficiency he is quality trained personnel that can do a lot of things on the ground that are flexible that can understand what they have to do and we just slowly develop those people over time in his case it took 12 years in the Navy to learn his job which is why go faster has limits HMCS van Kuver is just one of five warships being worked on during my visit most of them you would say they're probably at the 30 year mark plus or minus which is at the end of their design life so these ships have been around as long as you have longer actually they've been around longer than I have Navy captain David Rebares is commander of fleet maintenance here it's his job to make these old ships safe and see worthy we're now seeing new types of defects that arise so as we're peeling off some insulation on the insides of the ship we're seeing some degradation in places the steel hulls are getting thin what we're seeing now is more steel work

23:19steel work is often quite demanding it often requires the removal of a lot of equipment and that equipment is brought from the cramped quarters deep below deck here we're entering into the the combat system portions here we do the repairs and refurbishment on on naval weapons the Navy's enormous maintenance facility it's like several warehouses stitched together a whole world under fluorescent light we're walking just by the pipe fitters they can manufacture any replacement piping for the ships and submarines here they're giant machines everywhere looming overwork benches where the tiniest details are mastered we're entering the machining section here so we have the full machining capability here the fleet can be remade piece by piece they even make their own parts there's not thousands of these ships so we have to deal with the obsolescence and parts are not always available so being able to manufacture them in-house and reinstall it is crucial for keeping the ships alive and operational

24:24five ships are here the facility is near capacity and captain reber says he'd like to hire two hundred more people it's not like we can flip the switch and conduct all sorts of acquisitions or procurements right but the new money does loosen bottlenecks what it's done is that the plans that we had to improve our operations to increase the input of apprentices for example or to acquire tooling or spares that were being throttled back because of the financial restraints that we had in the past now we're able to and proceed with those procurements he now has money to buy parts and pay overtime and they're already have been specific wins we leave the shop floor and head up to his office there's a great view above a length dusting of snow on the mountain tops below a black submarine surrounded by scaffolding in a dry dock over there in the dry dock is hmcs cornerbrook when the prime ministers said canada had one seaworthy sub this is it but even it's been out of the water since last fall one of the main jobs

25:28has been to change its batteries each one of them would be above the size of a person and wait it is over four five hundred pounds so quite an impressive evolution when they're replacing them they barely fit in the hatch that they're being brought on board through and that is done using a crane so obviously there's some limitations with wind and to make sure we do it safely and they're once on board they're actually moved on teak boards using dish soap you heard it right a squirt dish soap on teak boards to slide the batteries into place is that work tied to the new two percent target the work itself would have existed regardless so now we have more tools that are disposal more specialized equipment that allow us to do it more effectively with the submarine he's used new money to buy a battery charger and had it placed close to the dry dock and he's been able to pay for extra shifts because he's under pressure to get the sub back in the water

26:29and if you look at a submarine there's only two access points it's fairly limited in space it's not easy to send many many folks on board at the same time so the only way we can really increase the number of hours of work that we're conducting on board is is to work around the clock are you gonna hit the deadline we have to hit the deadline because we're limited by the tides of when a submarine can come in and out of dry dock right so the wind the tides there's a lot that you don't control absolutely for captain rebeirs Canada's spending race runs into physics the size of a submarine hatch the pull of the tide for rear admiral patchal it's not physics but math the biggest challenge for me is actually not having enough ships I need more ships to send more sailors to see sailors want to go to see we hire them to go to see I need to get them to see so the biggest bottleneck in terms that you know train recruit retain inspire is actually bunks for sailors to go to see what is a metric the public should use to see how effective this

27:34new wave of spending really is it's an age old question how do you measure readiness how much military capability was required to defend a massive g7 country right with the longest coastline in the world a quarter of a million kilometers enough distress run the equator six times I guess massive right so if you ask me how many ships do we need it's it's a big number I think Canadians will know it'll take some time but I'm expecting 10 years from now to see our navy and all three of our oceans all the time and that is a goal I'm expecting to see this harbor full of HMC ships and ships that are ready to go to see and ready to defend Canada and supporter allies abroad Canada has promised a boost military spending whale into the next decade but it all gets reviewed in 2029 the year President Trump leaves office so here's the real question is all this a spending sprint or the start of a marathon the answer will be measured in Canada's

28:38capabilities thanks for listening to the documentary from the BBC World Service I'm Neil the editor is Penny Murphy Neil Churchill did the mix