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

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.

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.

"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."

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.