The pandemic is just the latest crisis involving civilian politicians asking soldiers to help out with disaster management. Down the road, this trend could lead to a wholesale reinvention of Canada’s military.
It’s safe to say that the Canadian military plans for just about everything.
It’s also safe to say that nowhere in the dusty stacks of military strategies for various hair-raising scenarios shelved in the Department of National Defence (DND) is a plan for sending soldiers to long-term care homes to backstop failing provincial systems. Hospitals, maybe — not seniors homes.
But pandemics have a way of re-ordering priorities. Which explains how a niche project — one of those nice-to-have items of equipment the military keeps on its wish list — can suddenly rocket through the ponderous federal procurement maze in a matter of days.
Earlier this month, DND put out a request for proposals for delivery of a “biocontainment aeromedical evacuation system” — a gadget developed and refined by the U.S. Air Force in the aftermath of the Ebola crisis of a few years back.
Back in normal times (ie: a few weeks ago) such a specialized piece of kit — which is used to transport people infected with highly contagious diseases and is meant to slide inside C-17 Globemaster and C-130J transport planes — was far, far down on the list of procurement priorities for an air force that has struggled for more than a decade to replace its fighter fleet.
What is ‘national security’ now?
Nothing focuses the mind like a crisis, however.
Within the military and the larger defence community, there’s a growing debate over whether the novel coronavirus pandemic, and governments’ extraordinary responses to it, represent a watershed moment — or simply a ghastly one-off event that will soon be fo