Military response to Fiona good PR

But forces face ongoing recruitment, retention challenges

In the immediate aftermath of hurricane Fiona, the Canadian military was quick to deploy more than 700 personnel to the Atlantic provinces to assist in the cleanup.

This is fast becoming an all-too-familiar response in the face of the growing number of natural disasters that have hit Canada over the past decade.

Whether it is floods, fires, hurricanes or combating the COVID-19 pandemic, Canadians can expect to see the uniformed personnel of the Canadian Armed Forces rushing to the rescue.

It makes for good public relations, having photo ops with soldiers filling sandbags or, in the case of Fiona, chainsawing downed trees. Somehow, it reassures the worst-hit victims of these disasters to have the military deployed to assist them.

Minister of National Defence Anita Anand did a stellar job in fielding the media allegations that the military response to Fiona was too slow out of the gate.

As Anand was quick to remind the critics, in the case of aid to the civil power, it is the provinces that have to make the request for assistance. It is not the responsibility of the Federal government to pre-emptively deploy military personnel.

It also needs to be remembered that the CAF is not particularly well equipped to deal with the aftermath of natural disasters.

The combat engineers who formed the nucleus of the Fiona cleanup response do possess a limited number of engineering assets that are useful under these conditions. However, combat engineers’ primary skill set is meant to overcome obstacles on a battlefield. They are trained to demine minefields, defuse improvised explosive devices (IEDS) and bridge rivers and trenches. Those familiar with Canada’s decades-long deployment to Afghanistan will realize that the combat engineers suffered the highest rate of casualties per capita, more than any other combat trade.

Can they cut off tree limbs with chainsaws and deliver water to stranded survivors of Fiona? Absolutely. However, this is not a cost-effective use of highly trained, specialized combat troops. Firefighters could water the lawn at city hall, but it makes no sense to task them with this.

If Canada’s peacetime military were simply sitting around in their barracks waiting for the next war to break out, it might seem like a no-brainer that the government would utilize them in an effort to get some return on their investment.

However, as events in Ukraine have heightened global insecurity, the CAF is also facing a severe recruiting and retention crisis at the moment.

The fact that in the past year alone the CAF was deployed on no less than seven aid-to-the-civil-power operations, (not including the pandemic or hurricane Fiona) has severely interrupted ongoing training, as well.

If the current trend continues, the CAF will soon be unable to retain the necessary proficiency to deploy a combat-capable task force.

Over the past decade, the CAF’S involvement in response to natural disasters has roughly doubled every five years. According to those scientists who warn of climate change consequences, those natural disasters are only going to become more frequent and more intense.

So instead of tasking Canada’s professional warriors with disaster cleanups, perhaps it’s time to create a separate volunteer civilian force that would be equipped with task-specific vehicles and gear.

In fact, this could be a much-expanded version of Team Rubicon, a non-profit organization comprised of mostly veterans who volunteer to assist in the wake of natural disasters both at home and abroad.

I also think we need to prepare all Canadian citizens to be better able to cope with future disasters. Most importantly, they also should be formally organized in a way that they can best assist fellow members of their community. There are all kinds of ablebodied Canadian men and women out there who would be happy to lend a hand to their neighbours.

It may make a cute photo to have uniformed soldiers delivering water to residents in Fiona-affected Newfoundland. However, it is a misuse of their professional skill sets and such interruptions in regular training are taking a toll on their collective proficiency.