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More than a decade ago, the army had a plan to rebuild. It went nowhere

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Ottawa is a city of plans. Many plans. Sometimes you find there are plans to have a plan. But as the old Scottish poem says, “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men often go awry.”

More than a decade ago, as Canada’s war in Afghanistan was grinding to its conclusion, a plan was drawn up to rebuild, refresh and re-equip the army for the future.

It withered and died over several years — a victim of changing defence fashions, budgets, inter-service and inter-departmental bureaucratic warfare and political indifference.

Parts of the plan were resurrected, but in true bureaucratic fashion, those elements have languished somewhere in the dark recesses of the Department of National Defence and Public Services and Procurement Canada.

Several of the key weapons systems in the 2010 plan — ground-based air defence, modern anti-tank systems and long-range artillery — are among the items the Liberal government is now urgently trying to buy, just as other allied nations also scramble to arm themselves against a resurgent Russia.

In November, a senior defence planner told a conference that it could take up to 18 months to land some of the less complex items on Ottawa’s wish list. In the meantime, Canadian troops in Latvia staring across the border at a wounded, unpredictable Russian Army will have to make do — or rely on allies.

Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Wayne Eyre arrives to appear before the House of Commons standing committee on National Defence in Ottawa on Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2022.
Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Wayne Eyre arrives to appear before the House of Commons standing committee on National Defence in Ottawa on Oct. 18, 2022. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press)

Gen. Wayne Eyre, chief of the defence staff, said in an interview with CBC News broadcast this week that the new equipment “cannot arrive fast enough.”

The military is looking for ground-based air defence systems to guard soldiers against attack helicopters, low-flying jets and missiles. It’s seeking anti-tank weapons like the U.S.-made Javelin, which the Ukrainians have used to deadly effect against the Russians. It’s trying to source better electronic warfare systems and weapons to counter bomb-dropping drones.

The urgency of Eyre’s remarks points to the obvious question: If there was a plan to buy some of this equipment, what happened to it?

Former Conservative defence minister Peter MacKay signed off on the proposal to reconstitute the army post-Afghanistan and set in motion a series of plans. He launched procurement projects for medium-sized fighting vehicles — the kind the U.S. is now supplying to Ukraine to beat back the Russian invasion. Also on MacKay’s shopping list were ground-based air defence systems, anti-tank weapons and long-range rocket artillery systems such the U.S. HIMAR — another donated weapon Ukrainian troops have used to help stem the onslaught.

A man speaks to a group of soldiers.
Defence Minister Peter MacKay addresses troops at Kandahar Airfield as Canada’s combat mission in Afghanistan ended in July 2011. (Murray Brewster/The Canadian Press)

“It was quite a robust, detailed plan with short, medium and long term goals,” MacKay told CBC News in an interview. “The close combat vehicle (CCV) was a big part of that … There was obviously a need to replace and complement some of the long-range artillery that we use in Afghanistan.”

Former army commander and lieutenant-general Andrew Leslie, who also served as a Liberal MP between 2015 and 2019, was one of the authors of the 2010 rebuilding proposal. He said it was meant to cover gaps the military had seen develop during the counter-insurgency war in Afghanistan.

“This was not something that was dreamt up in isolation. They were planned, programmed and sequenced [for delivery] between the year 2010 up to around 2020,” Leslie told CBC News. “I kind of wish that people had followed through.”

‘The plan seemed to get picked apart’

Within a year of agreeing on the plan, Leslie moved on from the army commander’s job and then out of the military. MacKay was shuffled to the justice minister’s portfolio. Another champion of the proposal, former chief of the defence staff general Walt Natynczyk, retired around the same time.

After 2013, MacKay said, “the plan seemed to get picked apart, and almost put to one side. So it never came to fruition.”

He said that while the current Liberal government, in its 2017 defence policy, resurrected some elements of the proposal, the proposal is mostly “sitting there on a shelf somewhere, unfortunately.”

The last major element of the proposal — the purchase of 108 close-combat vehicles — was cancelled by the Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper in late 2013. The chief of the defence staff at the time, the now-retired general Tom Lawson, said that the “Canadian Armed Forces do not procure capabilities unless they’re absolutely necessary to the attainment of our mandate.”

The attitude of ‘we’re not going to buy it unless it’s absolutely necessary’ has been shared by both Liberal and Conservative governments since the end of the Cold War, said MacKay.

While he said the government’s pursuit of a balanced budget at the time was a worthy one, rebuilding military capacity is seldom a government priority in peacetime — even when it makes sense.

It’s one of the reasons the Canadian Army went into a desert war in Afghanistan wearing green camouflage fatigues and in unarmoured vehicles.

A cycle of failure

Leslie has become decidedly jaded about politicians’ promises to restore the armed forces to fighting strength.

“Liberals and Conservatives both have found a neat trick of telling Canadians that they are increasing defence spending, that the capabilities are on the horizon, but then somehow never getting around to fine-tuning the various procurement systems so that the money gets out the door,” he said.

Retired lieutenant-general Andrew Leslie says federal governments have gotten good at deflecting blame for failures in military procurement. (Chris Wattie/Reuters)

When those procurement systems fail to deliver the goods, Leslie said, the politicians say, “‘Hey, we told them they could have their money. They just couldn’t spend it in time.'”

“And of course,” he added, “at the end of the year, the cycle [of handing back unspent money to the federal treasury] starts.

“You know, after 20 to 25 years of this, you begin to suspect that it’s deliberate.”

Politics aside, MacKay said the system itself is to blame.

“There is a competing and almost intractable attitude between departments like public works that want to somehow design a perfect, impenetrable contract that will stand up against any challenge,” MacKay said.

“The Department of Industry Canada wants every nut and bolt and washer made in Canada. And of course, not surprisingly, the Canadian Armed Forces want the very best possible equipment that sometimes isn’t there on the shelf, and certainly takes time to build and procure.”

And not everyone agrees on what the military really needs — even within the defence establishment itself.

Eyre’s recent warnings about the precarious geopolitical climate are “probably a little overstated,” said Lawson, who suggested his successor was simply doing his job and advocating for the military.

“There is something else at play here that is really grave and important to Gen. Eyre,” Lawson told CBC’s Power & Politics this week.

“The main responsibility of every chief of defence is … to make sure that the Canadian military has enough people, the appropriate numbers of people, that they are equipped to an appropriate level and that they are trained and providing the readiness that the government may need.”

 

Canada’s top soldier says 2022 marked a ‘turning point in the global order’

Jan. 3, 2023 – Retired general Tom Lawson, a former chief of the defence staff, discusses comments current Chief of Defence Staff General Wayne Eyre made in a year-end interview. Plus, the Power Panel debates the possible political implications of holiday travel headaches.

Lawson’s remarks drew a sharp response from Leslie, who said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is unprecedented and has upended the global order.

“The world is now much more dangerous than it’s been at any other time during my lifetime,” he said. “Far more dangerous than the Cold War. So I believe Gen. Eyre’s comments are balanced and reasonable, and I think general Lawson is completely and utterly wrong.”

What defence expert Dave Perry is struggling to understand is why the equipment the Liberals are scrambling to buy now — the air defence and anti-tank weapons they identified as important in their defence policy five years ago — haven’t been purchased already.

“There was a series of projects that were funded and policy approved in [the defence policy document] which was published in the summer of 2017,” Perry said.

“So I do find it really curious that versions of those are now being pursued on an urgent operational basis for Latvia, when there’s been approved projects, with money attached to them, on the books for five and a half years.”

‘A lack of urgency’

Senior defence and procurement officials, testifying before Parliament last year, said they were proud of their record of delivering equipment under the current defence policy.

Perry begs to differ and points to the rising pile of unspent capital in the defence budget.

“There’s urgency now,” Perry said. “But I think, in part, Canada ended up in the situation as a result of a lack of urgency in the preceding five-plus years.”

Leslie takes a more tough-minded view.

“I was the army commander for four years at the height of the Afghan war. So I had a front row seat to the various influencers, and their shenanigans concerning defence procurement,” he said.

“Tragically, it wasn’t until Canadians started dying in Afghanistan that a great deal of focus and energy was placed on defence procurement. And the bureaucracy was told in no uncertain terms — woe betide any of you who slowed down programs that caused more soldiers to die because they didn’t have the equipment they needed.”

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As sports betting addiction takes hold in Brazil, the government moves to crack down

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SAO PAULO (AP) — “King” doesn’t disclose his real name. Even clients of his Sao Paulo newsstand have to call him by his moniker. The Brazilian online sports gambling addict lowered his profile after a loan shark threatened to put bullets in his head if he didn’t pay up.

Broke and embarrassed, King sought treatment and support earlier this year.

“I was once addicted to slot machines, but then sports betting was so easy that I changed. I got carried away all the time,” he told The Associated Press.

King’s story is that of many vulnerable Brazilians in recent years. The country has become the third-biggest market in the world for sports betting, following the U.S. and the U.K., a report by data analysis company Comscore said last year. But unlike those countries, rampant advertising and sponsorship have been coupled with an unregulated market. The government is now — belatedly, some say — striving to get a handle on the epidemic.

On a recent evening, King’s Gamblers Anonymous meeting took place in an improvised classroom inside a church, with coffee and cookies to keep everyone awake, and supportive messages scrawled onto the blackboard. One that’s become ubiquitous in Brazil and beyond: “Only for today I will avoid the first bet.”

King and other attendees, all Christian, started a prayer and the meeting began.

King said his financial problems arose from his addiction to online sports betting, chiefly on soccer.

“I miss the adrenaline rush when I don’t bet,” he said before the gathering. “I have managed to stop for a couple of months, but I know that if I do it once again, even a small bet, it will all come back.”

Driven by the pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic was a key driver for Brazilians embracing sports betting. King said he transformed almost every sale during that time into a bet. His hook was the non-stop advertising on TV, radio, social media as well as sponsorship of local soccer teams’ jerseys. He asked for bank loans to pay his gambling debts and then, to cover those, went to the moneylender. His total debt now amounts to 85,000 reais ($15,000) — impossible to pay off with his monthly income of 8,000 reais.

Digging oneself out of debt in Brazil is especially daunting with its sky-high interest rates. Loans from Brazilian banks could add interest of almost 8% per month to the borrowed sum, and from loan sharks could be even more.

Four Gamblers Anonymous meetings attended by the AP in October featured discussions about difficulties paying down debts, forcing working-class members to postpone housing payments and cancel family vacations.

Some members of impoverished Brazilian families have used welfare money for betting instead of paying for groceries and housing, official data suggests. In August, beneficiaries of Brazil’s flagship program Bolsa Familia spent 3 billion reais ($530 million) on sports betting, according to a report from the central bank. That was more than 20% of the program’s total outlay in the month.

A host of gambling related problems

Sports betting was made legal in 2018 in a bill signed by former President Michel Temer. The subsequent turmoil has recently been setting off alarm bells, with addicts venting on social media and media reports of people losing huge sums.

On Oct. 1, the economy ministry prevented more than 2,000 betting companies from operating in Brazil for having failed to provide all the required documents. Soccer-loving President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said in an interview on Oct. 17 that he will shut down the entire market in Brazil if his administration’s new regulations — presented at the end of July— fail to work. And Brazil’s Senate on Oct. 25 opened an investigation into betting companies, focusing on crime and addiction.

“There’s tax evasion, money laundering of organized crime, the use of influencers to trick people into betting. These companies need to be audited,” Sen. Soraya Thronicke, who proposed the inquiry, told journalists in Brasilia.

Sérgio Peixoto, a ride-sharing app driver in Rio, is one of many lower-middle-income Brazilians who have reduced their spending due to sports betting debt. Peixoto’s debt currently amounts to 25,000 reais ($4,400). His monthly income is four times less than that.

“It stopped being a game, it wasn’t fun. I just wanted to get the money back, so I lost even more,” said Peixoto, 26. “I could have invested that money. It would surely have given me more benefits.

Pressure to bet

Pressure on people to gamble is everywhere. Current and former soccer players, including Vinicius Júnior, Ronaldo Nazário and Roberto Rivellino, are among the poster boys for local and foreign brands. All but one of the top-tier soccer clubs have betting companies among their main sponsors, with their name and logo emblazoned on their kits. There have been cases of kids and teenagers setting up accounts using their parents’ personal information and money, multiple local media outlets have reported.

Brazil’s economy ministry estimates that Brazil’s sports betting market had $21 billion in transactions last year, a 71% increase compared with the first year of the pandemic, 2020.

The ministry’s newly presented regulations include facial recognition systems for gamblers to bet, the identification of a single bank account for transactions involving sports betting, new protections against hackers and the government-authorized domain, bet.br, which will host all betting sites that are legal in Brazil. Once they are in place, come January, between 100 and 150 betting companies will continue to operate in the South American nation.

The changes in Brazil have prompted some companies to take preemptive action. A report by Yield Sec, a technical intelligence platform for online marketplaces, said several betting companies voluntarily restricted their operations in different places after the latest editions of the European Championships and Copa America in the hopes of presenting “the best possible license application face to the Brazilian authorities.”

Magnho José Santos de Sousa, the president of the Legal Gambling Institute, a betting think tank, said Brazil is currently “invaded by illegal websites that have licenses in Malta, Curação, Gibraltar and the United Kingdom.”

De Sousa expressed hope that the new regulations for advertising, responsible gambling and qualification of sports betting companies will transform the country’s deregulated arena into a more serious one that doesn’t exploit the vulnerable.

“The whole operation could turn from water into wine,” he said.

Gamblers Anonymous in high demand

Meantime, the demand for Gamblers Anonymous meetings in Sao Paulo has grown so much in recent years that the weekly gathering, in place since the 1990s, was no longer enough. Many groups have added a second day in the week to help new people recover, mostly sports bettors.

Earlier in October, a group on Sao Paulo’s northern edge admitted a man who was struggling with sports betting and card games. The 13 other people in the room stressed that he wasn’t alone.

“Welcome,” one long-time attendee said, in a greeting that has become a regular for the group. “Today, you are the most important person here.”

___

Dumphreys reported from Rio de Janeiro.



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Saskatchewan’s Jason Ackerman improves to 6-0 at mixed curling nationals

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SAINT CATHARINES, Ont. – Saskatchewan’s Jason Ackerman remained undefeated on Wednesday with a 7-4 win over Newfoundland and Labrador’s Trent Skanes at the Canadian mixed curling championship.

After going down 3-1 through four ends, Ackerman (6-0) outscored Skanes (3-3) 6-1 the rest of the way, including three points in the seventh end.

Alberta’s Kurt Alan Balderston also earned a win, defeating New Brunswick’s Charlie Sullivan 9-2 in another matchup in the final draw.

The win improved Balderston’s record to 4-2 and sits in third in Pool B.

The top four teams from each pool will play four more games against the survivors from the other pool. The remaining three teams from the pool will play three more seeding games to help set the rankings for next year’s event.

The championship final is scheduled for Saturday.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 6, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.



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Oilers fall 4-2 to Golden Knights in McDavid’s return from injury

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EDMONTON – Noah Hanifin had a pair of goals as the Vegas Golden Knights won their first road game of the season, coming from behind to shock the Edmonton Oilers 4-2 on Wednesday.

Jack Eichel had a goal and two assists and Mark Stone also scored for the Golden Knights (9-3-1), who have won two in a row and six of their last seven. The Knights entered the game 0-3-1 on the road this year.

Brett Kulak and Zach Hyman replied for the Oilers (6-7-1), who have lost two straight despite getting captain Connor McDavid back from injury earlier than expected for the game.

Adin Hill made 27 saves for Vegas, while Stuart Skinner managed 31 stops for Edmonton.

Takeaways

Golden Knights: With an assist on the Knights’ second goal, William Karlsson has recorded at least a point in all five games he has played this season (two goals, four assists).

Oilers: McDavid was a surprise starter for the Oilers, coming back just nine days after suffering an ankle injury in Columbus and initially being expected to miss two to three weeks. The star forward came into the contest with 11 points (three goals, eight assists) during a six-game point streak versus the Golden Knights, but was held pointless on the night.

Key moment

With just 48.4 seconds left to play, the Golden Knights won a race to the corner and Ivan Barbashev was able to send it out to a hard-charging Hanifin, who sent a shot glove-side that beat Skinner for his second goal of the third period and third of the season.

Key stat

It was Hyman’s third goal in the last four games after the veteran forward went scoreless in his first 10 games this season following a 54-goal campaign last year. Hyman now has five goals in his last six games against Vegas.

Up next

Golden Knights: Head to Seattle to face the Kraken on Friday.

Oilers: Travel to Vancouver on a quick one-game trip to clash with the Canucks on Saturday.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 6, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.



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