By Scott Taylor
It was announced last Thursday that Chief of the Defence Staff, General Jonathan Vance will be stepping down from his post as Canada’s top soldier. There was no ‘effective immediately’ caveat, so it is presumed that Vance will continue to lead the Canadian Armed Forces until such time as the Trudeau Liberal government has selected his successor.
One can probably assume that with the current distractions such as the ME-to-WE conflict of interest allegations, the COVID pandemic and resultant collapse of the Canadian economy, Trudeau will be in no rush to sit and sift through the CV’s of his senior generals. As a result, insiders expect that Vance will keep his job through this fall and possibly even into early 2021.
However the sweepstakes have begun and pundits are already laying odds on who will be Canada’s next CDS.
There is no clear-cut frontrunner from the pack of Canada’s senior officers.
While in theory the CDS post is to be rotated through the three service branches – Navy, Army and Air force – for the past thirty years this has not been the case in practice. Army generals have been the incumbent six times, Air force generals thrice and a Navy Admiral only once (and that was only an aborted 11 month term).
During the scandal plagued era of the mid-nineties the Liberal government of the day actually left the CDS position vacant for more than a year.
One of the contributing factors as to why General Vance has no heir apparent stems from the Vice Admiral Mark Norman affair. In 2017 the RCMP alleged that Norman – then the Vice Chief of the Defence Staff – had leaked government information to a shipyard.
General Vance suspended Norman while the case was played out in the courts. As a result the VCDS position became a revolving door with Norman’s responsibilities being handed off in quick succession to VAdm Ron Lloyd, LGen Paul Wynnyk, LGen Jean-Marc Lanthier and as of just a few days ago LGen Mike Rouleau.
The legal case against Norman collapsed, but the admiral chose a settlement and retirement over returning to his old job. Lloyd, Wynnyk and Lanthier have also all since retired.
Although the ink is still wet on his new VCDS business cards, many consider that Rouleau is a top contender to replace Vance. Prior to his current post Rouleau commanded the Canadian Special Operations Forces Command (CANSOFCOM) and more recently he presided over Canadian Joint Operations Command (CJOC).
Rouleau’s replacement at CJOC, LGen Chris Coates is also in the running for Vance’s office as he was until recently the Deputy Commander of NORAD.
Then there are the three current service branch heads – LGen Wayne Eyre the Army Commander LGen Al Meinzinger the RCAF commander and Vice Admiral Art McDonald head of the RCN.
Of those three, Meinzinger has the most experience as a three-star general with Eyre and McDonald only recently having been promoted to their present rank.
Vice-Admiral Haydn Edmundson is currently the Chief of Military Personnel and could very easily be the dark horse in this race if the RCN are finally to get their turn at the top job.
There has also been some speculation that the Trudeau Liberals will want to be the first to appoint a female general to command the CAF.
To make that happen there are two possible options. The first would be to convince LGen Christine Whitecross to cancel her imminent retirement and accept a post which she has previously said she is not interested in attaining.
The second would be to promote once again the very recently promoted LGen Frances Allen. Regardless of how capable and qualified Allen may be, such an accelerated promotion over the heads of the more experience male three-star generals would undoubtedly be viewed as blatant tokenism on the part of the Trudeau government.
The race is on and it will be interesting to watch. As for General Vance, I wish to take this opportunity to thank him for his service. I have often criticized his actions or inactions in this column, but never without personal respect for the uniform he has chosen to wear for the past 39 years.
