DND Deputy Minister Jody Thomas, now retired, has been speaking out (US DoD photo)
By Tim Ryan and Newell Durnbrooke
You have to give former National Defence deputy minister Jody Thomas credit. At times she appears to be the master of distancing herself from the decisions or issues that previously took place under her watch.
Take for instance, the F-35 purchase. Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government wanted to buy 65 of the U.S.-built stealth fighters in 2011.
Then, the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau increased that number to 88 jets. That 88 figure was recommended to the Liberal government by the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Forces as the right amount of fighter jets needed by Canada.
But on April 1, 2025, Thomas was questioning whether 88 was indeed the right number of aircraft to purchase. “Eighty-eight doesn't allow for attrition,” she said in an interview with CBC’s The Current. “It doesn't allow for multiple deployments at the same time. And so I think that it is time to look at capability requirements and truly what needs to be purchased to meet those and meet our international and domestic commitments.”
You don’t say. But who was Deputy Minister of the Department of National Defence between October 2017 and January 2022 when the fighter jet purchase was conceived and presented to the Trudeau government? Well…come on down Jody Thomas.
The same CBC interview contains some choice comments from Thomas about the need for Canadian companies to have more of a role in providing equipment to the country’s military.
This debate largely stems from the issue of the U.S. control over systems being installed on the Canadian Surface Combatant (CSC) ships.
But this isn’t a new issue.
The Ottawa Citizen reported in December 2020 that Canadian defence industry officials had previously warned Thomas and Bill Matthews, then deputy minister at the procurement department, about the potential dangers of U.S.-controlled technology and the lack of Canadian content onboard the CSCs.
Officials with various firms had been complaining to politicians and media outlets that the Canadian Surface Combatant project had fallen far short on its promises of creating domestic employment. There was little work for Canadian firms, besides the politically-connected Irving shipbuilding.
But Thomas told the executives they were hindering the project and she characterized their efforts as being those of sore losers. “I think there’s still too much noise from unsuccessful bidders that makes my job and Bill’s job very difficult,” she said, referring to Matthews, deputy minister at Public Services and Procurement Canada.
Interestingly, that the now retired Thomas seems to have a different view. During the interview on CBC’s The Current, Thomas stated that more emphasis should be placed on buying Canadian systems, instead of American equipment. “We obviously need to be interoperable with the United States,” she said. “NATO is interoperable with the United States, but we don't need to be quite as integrated as we are.”
“I also think we need to see where we're going to invest in Canadian capacity in Canadian industry,” she added in her CBC interview. “We're never going to have the defence industrial base that the United States has, but we do have some niche areas where we are really, really technically advanced, and I think that's where we should be investing in Canadian technology and anywhere where we can see an opportunity to accelerate existing programs.”
Retired Lt. Gen. Mike Day has accused CBC of “teribble (sic) reporting.” (Esprit de Corps file photo)
Retired Lt.-Gen. Mike Day continued his attacks on the CBC but at least this time he didn’t go after the corporation’s defence journalist Murray Brewster (as he has in the past). For his latest on X, the social media platform, Day jumped into the issue of the ongoing debate on whether to continue funding the CBC. (Most Canadians support funding the CBC…right wing types don’t). Day noted in an April 6, 2025 tweet that Canada benefits from government support of the public broadcaster. But then he added: “The CBC provides absolutely teribble (sic) reporting.”
Day’s latest foray into media slamming was reminiscent of his April 9, 2024 comments on X, again about the CBC. “Gvmnt funded CBC has 0 coverage of the Def Pol UPdt.”
Day’s claim was inaccurate, as the CBC had indeed been covering the Defence Policy Update with a variety of reports.
Retired Col. Brett Boudreau, who had senior positions in the Canadian Forces public affairs branch, responded to Day’s comment with this view: “An unfounded and unreasonable take that panders to the CBC haters.”
Boudreau pointed out that if Day needed a “whipping boy” for the lack of perspective and explanation of defence policy since April 2022, then the retired general only had to look at the Canadian Forces and his fellow senior officers who have remained silent for years and have said little in public.
CBC journalist Murray Brewster also responded to Day, pointing out the broadcaster’s “wall to wall coverage.”
Who knows what motivates Day, the former head of Canadian special forces. But some have suggested he is still smarting from the media coverage about the military police investigation into allegations of special forces wrongdoing in Afghanistan.
That investigation looked into allegations that unarmed Afghans were executed by members of Joint Task Force Two during the Afghanistan war and that special forces officers tried to cover that up. The case also involved additional allegations of wrongdoing by Canadian special forces…all of these allegations coming from a former member of JTF2.
CBC first broke the story in 2010 and in October 2024 reported on new details that the former JTF2 soldier is now suing the federal government. Day has been named in the lawsuit.
The CBC reported that the JTF2 soldier, Claude Lepage, is claiming he was shunned by JTF2 and pushed out of the military after he denounced Canadian troops' alleged involvement in the killing of unarmed people in Afghanistan. The lawsuit contains a number of details about attacks on Afghan civilians.
In response to CBC News questions, Day wrote that the allegations that led to the military police investigation known as Sand Trap have been "consistently refuted" and that airing them has a "direct impact on the well-being of those accused and exonerated of these acts."
"They have repeatedly been proven innocent," he wrote, "and yet once again they will be the victims of media attention that will doubtless dwell on the salaciousness of the fictitious events."
It should be interesting to see what comes out of this lawsuit….or whether federal government secrecy rules over special forces operations prevent any information from being made public in court by Claude Lepage.
