As the East Coast picks up the pieces post-Fiona, MPs ask themselves what an army is for

While members of the Canadian military hacked and chainsawed their way through the tangled wreckage of a storm-ravaged East Coast on Tuesday, members of a House of Commons committee gathered in Ottawa to ask themselves whether storm cleanup is actually a job for soldiers.

Their answers were — perhaps predictably — divided along partisan lines.

Conservative MPs seemed to suggest that the military's overriding duty is to train for war, the kind we're seeing in eastern Europe. The governing Liberals, more often than not, looked toward the battle against climate change, while New Democrats lamented the lack of capacity within civilian governments to do what people in uniform do.

Caught in the middle of this political crossfire were two senior ranking members of the military who could only awkwardly defer and deflect as MPs asked them to pontificate on matters of government policy that are outside their purview.

"Our minister will submit the defence policy update for discussion in cabinet, and we keep a close eye on that," said Maj.-Gen. Paul Prevost, who runs the military nerve centre known as the Strategic Joint Staff.

He was responding to a question from Quebec Liberal MP Emmanuella Lambropolous, who wanted to know what specific capabilities the military needs to respond to domestic and international emergencies.

Naturally, it wasn't a question Prevost could answer. The military advises, plans and executes government policy. It doesn't make it.

Another Quebec Liberal MP, Yves Robillard, tried again with a more general question about what the military needs to execute both its domestic and international mandates. Prevost basically gave him a one-word answer: people.

Prevost told MPs how two political and social crises — the pandemic and the sexual misconduct scandal — have left the military short by as many as 10,000 bodies.

More than 100 military personnel have been deployed on storm relief.

Aside from ripping off roofs in Atlantic Canada, Fiona has exposed once again the conundrum at the heart of Canadian defence policy — what does Ottawa want its Armed Forces to be?

Does it want the military to be an instrument of state power, projecting Canadian values and protecting Canadian interests in an increasingly dangerous world? Does it want it to be a lightly-equipped constabulary capable of offering assistance to provinces in emergencies, climate-related or otherwise?

The answer, of course, is that the two tasks aren't mutually exclusive. And for the longest time, Canada has been calling on its military to do both — and to do more — with fewer resources.

Prevost also laid out for the committee the growing challenge presented by repeated calls for aid from civilian authorities across the country — calls which have been growing swiftly in number for years.