OTTAWA — Canadian soldiers are deployed near the Russian front lines without proper helmets, as was the case during the Bosnian War in the 1990s.
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“When I landed in Croatia in 1994 to join the United Nations Protection Force, we had to swap helmets with the returning soldiers… It was on the charter bus that took us to Bosnia,” recalls Rob Talach, an infantryman for 35 years .
Nothing appears to have changed since then, as the soldier shared his experience publicly on LinkedIn in response to a CBC report Monday revealing that Canadian soldiers stationed in Latvia are buying advanced ballistic helmets that protect their ears from extreme noise, to which they are exposed.
These are around 800 Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) personnel currently stationed in this Baltic country. You lead a NATO tactical group tasked with protecting the alliance’s eastern front as close as possible to the border with Russia.
Canadian Armed Forces
Canadian soldier takes part in an exercise in Latvia
Defense has the means to make the purchases our soldiers need. Evidence of this is her inability to spend the money allotted to her each year. In 2021, one billion of the five billion dollars earmarked for this remained on the table.
15 years waiting for a purchase
“It’s directly related to a problem that we’ve known about in the armed forces for a long time: the supply is very, very long,” said Christine Normandin, a Bloc Québécois MP who sits on the House of Commons’ Standing Committee on Defense.
The Office of Defense Minister Anita Anand asserts that “ensuring that the Canadian Armed Forces have modern and effective equipment remains a top priority for our government”.
But on Saturday, the Journal explained that the supply of our soldiers is so slow that it puts us at risk, especially in the area of advanced technologies such as cyber defenses and artificial intelligence, which are evolving extremely quickly. A reality that worries the Minister of Innovation, François-Philippe Champagne himself.
JEAN-SIMON HUBERT / QMI AGENCY
Francois Philippe champagne
“It sometimes takes up to 15 years to design, introduce, acquire and implement a new system,” said Christian Leuprecht of the Royal Military College in the parliamentary committee.
Result: “What is bought is often already outdated at the moment of the order”, regrets Ms. Christine Normandin. It’s not the equipment that is up to date and the soldiers see it, there are other troops that have more modern equipment.
Canadian material sold to others
Lt. Col. Jesse van Eijik, stationed in Latvia, expresses his frustration in an email obtained by CBC: “It is worrying, almost embarrassing, to see the disparity between the equipment we have and that of the Danes. “
The situation is all the more frustrating because the equipment available to the Allies is readily available on the market, including in Canada, where, for example, the Danes have developed modern weapons, Lt. Col. Eijik says.
Indeed, our allies are drawn to Canadian innovation. In the cyber defense sector alone, Canadian industry sells three times more to our Five Eyes allies than to National Defence, the president of the Canadian Association of Defense and Security Industries told the parliamentary committee. , Christyn Cianfarani.
“Our allies value our cybersecurity sector more than Canada itself. Something is wrong there,” she insisted, urging Ottawa to urgently review its military procurement system.
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