By Scott Taylor
Last week Prime Minister Mark Carney made a whirlwind tour of Europe making all sorts of promises on strengthening defence ties with our European allies.
However for those familiar with the over-stretched state of the Canadian military one of those promises struck an ominous chord. On August 24 in a joint press conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv, Carney discussed security guarantees in the event of a ceasefire in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. "We know that Putin can never be trusted," Carney said in his speech. "We know that true peace and security will require security guarantees for Ukraine."
While acknowledging that the key component would be a frontline consisting of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Carney added that this would be buttressed by members of the Coalition of the Willing. The kicker was that Carney for the first time stated he "would not exclude the presence of [Canadian] troops." as part of that deterrence, or buttressing force."
"When that peace comes, we cannot simply trust and verify — we must deter and fortify," the prime minister said.
If that is indeed the case, that could spell major problems for the Canadian military.
I say that because Canada's combat cupboard is basically bare. The final stop for Carney and company was a visit to Canada's forward deployed battle group at Camp Adazi in Latvia. These 2000 Canadian troops are part of NATO's Operation REASSURANCE which is intended to provide a deterrent to Russian aggression in the Baltic states.
Canada has led the 14 nation NATO brigade group in Latvia since 2017. The initial Canadian contingent was roughly 400 personnel but that number has steadily grown. The current strength of 2,000 soldiers is to increase to 2,200 by the spring of 2026.
Given that the Canadian Army presently has just three understrength combat brigades, this means that essentially one of those brigades is posted to Latvia, one has just returned from Latvia and the remaining brigade is preparing to deploy to Latvia.
In the latest CAF Readiness Report it was revealed that nearly half of the Army's vehicles and heavy weaponry is unserviceable at any point in time. This is due to a shortage of spare parts in the system, a lack of trained personnel to maintain the vehicles and in some cases simply the advanced age of the hardware.
Obviously logistics priority has been given to the battle group in Latvia, as they have Canada's only, recently acquired low level air defence system and the majority of the still serviceable Leopard 2 tanks, which are at Camp Adazi.
Even so, reporters attending Carney's visit to Latvia were privately advised by soldiers on the ground that even on this operational deployment there is a long Wishlist among the troops for better kit and more of it. Witnessing the Russia-Ukraine conflict from a front row seat these Canadian soldiers in Latvia want more air defence, more drones and newer tanks.
Now, if Carney truly believes that Putin cannot be trusted to keep his word, and he intends to actually put Canadian boots on the ground in Ukraine, then he needs to make some tough decisions.
To find the requisite number of personnel the Canadian Army would either have to scale down the Latvia mission or stand up a limited mobilization of the militia regiments to a war time footing.
Prior to deploying into Ukraine, Canada would need to acquire modern battlefield necessities like armoured self propelled howitzers, fleets of First Person View (FPV) drones, counter drone measures, sophisticated anti-armour systems and boatloads of ammunition.
Some analysts have suggested that Carney could make his security guarantee to Ukraine an extension of the long standing training mission. Operation UNIFIER was stood up in 2015 following Russia's annexation of the Crimea. Originally Canadian instructors trained Ukrainian recruits in Ukraine but following Russia's invasion in 2022 that training was relocated to the UK and Poland. To date an estimated 45,000 Ukrainian soldiers have received combat training as part of Canada's initiative.
However, I would suggest that if there is a ceasefire, these Ukraine veterans with more than three years of bloody modern warfare experience would be in a better position to train Canadian soldiers rather than the other way around.
If Carney does not properly equip and train a battle group bound for Ukraine, they will be nothing more than human bait.
