Liberals shifting Coast Guard to defence is “creative accounting”: Conservatives

Conservative MPs are questioning the federal government’s move to add the over-60-year-old Coast Guard to the Department of Defence budget.

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Conservative MPs are questioning the federal government’s move to add the over-60-year-old Coast Guard to the Department of Defence budget, despite the organization still performing the same role it has since the 1960s.

Deputy Director General Ty Curran, a spokesperson for the Department of National Defence, confirmed during a House of Commons defence committee meeting on Thursday that the Coast Guard will be added as a branch of the department.

He said that the expenditures from the Coast Guard, a civilian agency, will now be included in the department’s budget, making its funding count toward the government’s pledge to spend five per cent of its GDP on defence by 2035.

Before vowing to reach the new goal, the feds pledged to reach their NATO spending requirement of two per cent of Canada’s GDP on defence annually by 2032, but have lagged behind on reaching the goal every year.

Conservative MP Scott Anderson pushed back, questioning how the civilian agency could be considered a military expenditure without having any military capabilities. The Oceans Act currently gives the Coast Guard a mandate to aid navigation, protect the ocean environment and conduct marine search and rescue missions.

“We’re building several new ships for the Coast Guard. They’re in production, and they began production before the current strategy appeared. Are any modifications being made to those ships to increase their lethality?” Anderson said. “We talked about monitoring the Arctic. We haven’t talked about what we’re going to actually do about the Arctic.”

Maj.-Gen. Robert Ritchie, the CAF’s director of staff for the Strategic Joint Staff, confirmed that there were “no plans to militarize” the Coast Guard or to incorporate it into law enforcement, but that it would be used for monitoring. He noted that if the Liberals’ Bill C-2, the Strong Borders Act, were passed, the agency would be able to conduct security patrols, gather, and share information for intelligence and security purposes.

“The problem is, these are now warships. These are going to be warships,” Anderson quipped. “They’re legitimate targets for foreign ships, but they’ve got no defence capability that I see. Is that not a concern to the Canadian Forces?”

Ritchie noted that the Canadian Armed Forces has “a range of capabilities” that serve a multitude of purposes.

“It’s a systems-of-systems approach. And when we deploy a capability, certain elements will be focused on detection and surveillance, other ones may be effective with a kinetic capacity, and then we’ll have others that are focused on the protection and sustainment of the force,” Ritchie said, noting that the Coast Guard would still be part of the DND’s strategy in the Arctic. “We would deploy assets in an integrated fashion.”

When questioned on whether the Navy would always be deployed with the Coast Guard, Ritchie said in “certain instances” the agency would be deployed independently.

The Conservative national defence critic James Bezan noted the agency’s long history of performing its role without being considered part of the federal national defence portfolio. He questioned officials on how the government could bring the Coast Guard in under the national defence umbrella, as the government scrambles to meet its NATO commitments.

“It definitely isn’t a paramilitary organization. It doesn’t have the interdiction capabilities. They can’t even fine anyone for a fishing violation; they have to bring on fisheries officers to do that,” he said. “We just can’t have creative accounting to get two per cent; we actually need the capability to protect Canada.”

Ritchie said by giving the agency a new mandate within defence, the CAF would see an “additive output” to the intelligence-sharing capabilities of the Coast Guard.

Bezan claimed that the Coast Guard would only “significantly” add value to the defence of Canada if the agency were upgraded with new equipment to perform a new role.