Canada ranks low on military oversight: study

Canada maintains a low level of civilian oversight of the military due to rigid party discipline, according to a new book that compares it with fourteen other democracies.

OTTAWA – Canada maintains a low level of civilian oversight of the military due to Parliament’s rigid party discipline, according to a new book that compares it with fourteen other democracies.

That conclusion was arrived at after a 10-year study conducted by a trio of defence experts — academics David Auerswald, Philippe Lagassé and Stephen Saideman — and reported in a new book titled: “Overseen or Overlooked? Legislators, Armed Forces and Democratic Accountability.”

“When the military makes mistakes, it can be catastrophic. So you want to have more overseers, not less,” Saideman, an international relations professor at Carleton University, told The Canadian Press.

That stark conclusion comes as the federal government under Prime Minister Mark Carney prepares to embark on a massive military spending binge at levels not seen since the Cold War. And it follows a major military sexual misconduct scandal that saw multiple senior military officials sidelined in recent years.

Saideman said the idea for the book started in 2007, when he expressed surprise over the modest role Parliament played in overseeing the Canadian Armed Forces — and the fact that parliamentary committees examining defence issues do not have security clearances allowing them to review classified information.

He said he raised this point with former prime minister Paul Martin, who told him Canada’s military oversight should be compared not with the U.S. but with Australia or the U.K. — democracies that have similar parliamentary systems of government.

Saideman took him up on that challenge, enlisted his colleagues and — after 18 years and a lot of travel — produced a book that argues Canada’s approach to military oversight is not at all like the approach taken by its parliamentary peers.

The book argues Canada is competing with Japan, Chile and Brazil for the bottom of the pack as “democracies with the most irrelevant legislatures for their civil-military relations.”