Vice Admiral Jean-Yves Forcier is the first to admit that forecasting has not been a priority of the Canadian Forces. From ice storms to floods, soldiers have always been there to help. But in years past, there was never much focus on identifying and planning for responses to future domestic disasters.
As the first, and perhaps most central, piece of CF transformation, one goal of Canada Command (Canada COM) is to remedy that.
“We have not always had a very robust national defence planning effort or cohesive forecasting – what I call weather gauging – of national events that have clear potential to require the CF to assist,” Forcier acknowledged. “Yes, we have responded well to crises – we have a proud history – but we were very limited in deliberate planning. Today’s transformation effort is aimed at fixing that.
“Our role is to improve the CF ability to respond to domestic requirements by viewing Canada as a single operational area with a single, integrated structure that brings the best available military resources from across the country to bear on any crisis or contingency, wherever it occurs nationwide or, in fact, continent-wide.”
One priority, Forcier said, is to improve the process of responding to requests for assistance. Whether the request comes from a government department, a provincial government or the US, the procedure “is excruciatingly slow and bureaucratic. That’s the kind of issue we’re trying to fix.”
“Canada Command is not a staff function like the Deputy Chief of Staff of yesterday,” he emphasized. “We are an operational command: one commander with the authority to gather a clear picture of all CF assets in Canada to direct planning and execute operations; one commander in charge of the defence of Canada who also acts as the prime coordinate for support of government departments and law enforcement, and is directly responsible for planning and executing all domestic and continental operations with US Northern Command and potentially Mexico. We have a lot more autonomy then we ever had before.”
While Canada COM jurisdiction does not include the relationship with the North American Aerospace Defense Command, it will work closely with NORAD and USNORTHCOM. “In fact, we look at ourselves as a triumvirate capability to protect the continent,” Forcier said.
To conduct operations and support force generation, Canada Command includes six standing regional Joint Task Force commanders: Atlantic region under Rear-Admiral Dan MacNeil in Halifax; Quebec under BGen Christian Barabe in Montreal; Central under BGen Guy Thibault in Toronto; West under BGen Tim Grant in Edmonton; Pacific under Rear-Admiral Roger Girouard in Vancouver; and North under Col Norm Couturier in Yellowknife.
“These commanders are responsible for integrated regional military planning and have operational control of all assigned assets,” Forcier said. “They have automatic operational command of all resources in their area when they need a rapid response. There is no need to call home in the first hours.
“They are entrusted to keep an enhanced situation awareness, especially as it relates to possible requests of assistance from the CF, but they remain in support of federal departments or, in some cases, provincial governments.”
Forcier stressed that the commander of JTFN will oversee all operations in the north, not merely act as a ‘host’ to other commanders using his terrain. “That practice has ceased,” he said. “It is a drastic change in our philosophy and is going to take some time to operationalize.”
Forcier, who will retire this summer, set the transformation process in motion last February as chair the CDS Action Team on command and control restructuring. Though he stepped on a few toes in the process, the final report reflects a new way of viewing force employment. “It was not our intention to deconstruct NDHQ, but rather to change our mentality and create force capability to plan and execute military operations, separating the operational functions from strategic and departmental functions. We challenged every bit of the organization.”
If there is an obvious challenge for Canada COM, it’s the ability to juggle its operational mandate with the political nature of its clients. “Government departments are not structured the way Defence is structured,” Forcier admitted. “They have no separation of strategic and operational boundaries. On top of that, USNORTHCOM has a hybrid strategic/operational mandate as a combatant commander of the US unified command plan. We have a foot in both camps. One of our top challenges is to maintain a good flow of information to the strategic Joint Staff and the various operations branches in all the key government departments.”
Though the command is barely a month old, Forcier said it is already showing results. “In the few days we have been in operation, our awareness of CF asset readiness, and our awareness of national and regional issues has increased significantly.”