The Canadian Army does not have enough vehicles to support both the brigade in Latvia and a similar-sized training exercise in Canada, a House of Commons committee was told on Thursday.
Maj.-Gen. Robert Ritchie, the director of the strategic joint staff (the military’s nerve centre), told the defence committee that over 400 vehicles of all types have been deployed for the NATO deterrence mission in the Baltic nation.
“We do not have a mirror complement of that equipment in Canada, nor is it required,” Ritchie testified, making reference to a radical shift in combined arms training implemented last year.
“The vehicles that the individuals are using for that [Latvia] deployment are the ones that they need to conduct the pre-deployment training on so that they understand the systems and have the trust and confidence in using that equipment.”
Ritchie did not specifically address how deep the vehicle shortage was in Canada and how it affected training for other, smaller overseas missions or domestic deployments.
But the fact that the army doesn’t have enough vehicles to support a brigade in the field and carry out a concurrent training exercise in Canada — for a force the same size — is a concern that several defence analysts and observers have shared in the aftermath of the Liberal government’s plan to rebuild and re-arm the forces.
The military has faced criticism for shifting the combined arms training, where foot soldiers exercise alongside tanks, artillery and aircraft in order to improve their co-ordination skills, from the base in Wainwright, Alta., to Latvia.
Critics, including a former commander of the army, say the change means soldiers are less ready to fight right away and have to learn on the job.
The change, according to critics, was made in part because of internal budget reallocation at the Department of National Defence and an overall shortage of funds. CBC News was the first to report on the training overhaul in the spring of 2024 and at the time the department denied funding played any role.
On Thursday, Ritchie further defended the decision, saying soldiers are getting training on the ground and in the conditions which they might have to fight.
“There is a deterrence effect by virtue of conducting the training in location on the front line for which the multinational group is defending,” Ritchie said.
He added that a “conglomerate of reasons have led us to the decision to move the pre-deployment training to Latvia, which was exceptionally well received by Latvia and all the allies.”
However, internal Defence Department documents, obtained by CBC News, say there have been problems with the on-the-ground training in Latvia. During the most recent deployment, Canadian soldiers did not have a “venue during workup training.”
“This required a more academic approach to preparations” for the major exercise known as Oak Resolve, said the documents.
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The training issue has been compounded by a critical — and in some cases crippling — shortage of spare parts that has forced the brigade to park vehicles, including Leopard 2A4 main battle tanks.
The factors forcing the army to park vehicles include Canadian “supply chain issues, parts backlog” and the new “compressed” training regime, which has seen troops complete their combined arms training in Latvia, rather than in Canada, said a separate set of internal documents obtained by CBC News.
Ritchie acknowledged the problem to parliamentarians and said the federal government’s injection of $9.3 billion into defence this year is helping address that problem.
“The recent budget commitment has enabled major spare parts orders delivery, and we have undertaken that at speed,” Ritchie said.
But he pointed to past decisions that “eroded a couple of things” — namely, the army’s reserve of spare parts and that some “long-standing suppliers pivoted to other contracts.”
