Blair steals a page from the Harper playbook to justify cuts to National Defence

For more than a decade while it was in power, the former Conservative government railed against a great, faceless bureaucracy it blamed for undermining its ambitions for the Department of National Defence (DND).

That tactic appears to have been adopted by the current Liberal defence minister as he explains the government's intention to cut $1 billion from the defence appropriation.

Appearing earlier this week on CBC Radio's The Current, Defence Minister Bill Blair presented the proposed cut as good fiscal stewardship at a time when ordinary Canadians are feeling the bite of rising inflation and a shortage of affordable housing — political factors the Liberals see as obstacles to re-election.

When they were in power and frustrated by their inability to pursue their defence agenda, the federal Conservatives under Stephen Harper made giving the Canadian Armed Forces "more teeth and less tail" their mantra. Essentially, they argued that DND was afflicted by a bloated bureaucracy that needed deflating.

Blair borrowed a few pages from that argument this week.

"Canadians are being faced with tough choices and we've got to make tough choices too," Blair said during the interview, which aired Monday. He said he believes DND has a responsibility to contribute to the planned overall government spending reduction of $15 billion mandated by the federal Treasury Board.

"Our goal is to increase the military capability in our contribution at home and abroad," he added. "It's also to support the men and women who do that important job for us, but that does not mean that the bureaucracy that administers that important work is immune from the scrutiny that we're being asked to apply."

Blair also claimed that under the current government, defence spending is in the process of doubling to $40 billion annually. He also suggested the government has seen little return for its investment thus far — dusting off another old argument advanced by the Conservatives during the last round of belt-tightening at DND, when Harper's government was trying to balance the budget.

"Over time, we've already made very, very significant increases in the defence budget, and what we have not seen is an increase in military capacity commensurate with those budget increases," Blair said.

The minister, who was appointed in last summer's cabinet shuffle, said that even in his short time in the ministry, he's "seen significant expenditures … that are not making a direct contribution to increasing military capacity or support to military families."

He offered no examples in the interview beyond executive travel. In a statement issued last week that was meant to recast the cuts as savings, Blair also spoke about consulting as a budget area worthy of the axe.

But there are several oversimplifications in Blair's budget statements to date that trouble the experts who know DND's budget inside and out — including one former vice chief of the defence staff. One of them is the assertion that the budget has doubled.

According to the federal main estimates, the current defence budget sits at $26.5 billion and won't reach the $40 billion mark for several years. The goal of doubling expenditures is still an aspirational one.

Military procurement expert Dave Perry, vice president of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, said DND hasn't been able to spend significant portions of the extra cash it has been given already.