Canada has a plan to rebuild its army — Washington should hope it works

In September 1943, troops of the First Canadian Division carried out a daring attack on the Italian town of Potenza , enabling the British and American forces to turn what might have been a disastrous defeat into a significant victory. Fast forward 83 years, however, and it is reasonable to ask if today’s Canadian Army would once again be able to save the day in a major combat operation involving U.S. forces — or even to contribute meaningfully to such an operation in a distant battlespace.

At the moment, the answer is clearly no.

And the reason is obvious: At least since the end of the Cold War, the Canadian Army has been optimized for “contribution warfare” — that is, “for employment in multinational coalitions for operations other than large-scale, high-intensity combat.” That made sense during the post-Cold War unipolar moment when middle powers like Canada were primarily engaged in peacekeeping and counterinsurgency operations. But that moment has passed, and the army Canada currently possesses is no longer the Army Canada needs . Nor is it the army the U.S. needs Canada to have.

Recognizing this, Ottawa has laid out a plan to convert the Canadian Army from a hollow force into one that is adapted to the contemporary battle space. That plan, known as Inflection Point 2025 , calls for the creation of a warfighting army organized, trained and equipped for sustained major combat operations “against peer or near-peer adversaries.”

But, while Inflection Point is a good plan, so far that’s all it is: a plan. And, to paraphrase the immortal words of Robbie Burns, even the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.

Canada’s ambitious plan may well go awry if Ottawa isn’t willing or able to do more than create a new organization chart. If it isn’t willing or able to invest in the recruitment, equipment, training and sustainment system necessary to stand up new Canadian combat units that are more than just repackaged hollow formations. There are good reasons to believe that such investments will not be forthcoming — at least not any time soon.

To start, there is the recruitment problem. Inflection Point assumes that the army’s strategic intake plan will not only make up the 3,000 soldier shortfall in last year’s overall recruiting numbers but also recruit the 8,500 more regular personnel it envisions by 2040. But that is a working assumption, not a given. And, if the past is prologue , there is little reason to believe that Canada can recruit, train and retain the personnel necessary to convert these assumptions into reality.

Then there’s the procurement problem. A Canadian Army unit deployed for either deterrence or warfighting purposes will need the very best equipment appropriate to the evolving battlespace. But Canada’s procurement system, even as recently reformed by the Carney government, is not built to deliver such equipment — and certainly not in a timely fashion. What it is built for is the satisfaction of politically motivated interests such as creating jobs in Canada and diversifying away from the U.S. arms industry that have little to do with providing the army with the equipment it needs to fight and win in the contemporary battlespace.

And even if Canada solves its procurement issue it will continue to face the related challenge of sustainment — building the stocks and supply lines capable of providing a division-sized unit with the ammunition, equipment and personnel it will need to remain in combat.

That challenge has always been daunting, but it is even more so today when — as then Gen. Wayne Eyre told Parliament in 2023 — at Ukraine War rates of expenditure, Canada would exhaust some types of battle-decisive munitions “ in days ” while replenishing them could take years. Add to that the challenge of replacing soldiers killed or wounded at Ukraine War rates, and Canada’s sustainment challenge appears overwhelming.

And finally, there’s the doctrinal problem. The Canadian Army, like many NATO armies, is proving slow to adopt tactics, organizational structures and command-and-control practices that the war in Ukraine has demonstrated are key to survival, let alone victory, in today’s battlespace. While perhaps understandable, this leaves open the possibility that, despite all the insights and promises in Inflection Point, Canada’s new army will continue to comprise hollow formations lacking the survivability, flexibility and lethality envisioned in the plan.

To an American reader, all this may sound like an Ottawa problem of little interest to Washington. But, as in the Second World War, the ability of the Canadian Army to fight and win on foreign battlefields matters enormously to Washington. American victory in some future battle might well come down to the ability of a highly-trained, appropriately organized and well-equipped Canadian unit to show up at just the right moment — as at Potenza in 1943.

Let’s hope we don’t face a re-run of Salerno anytime soon. But if we do, let’s hope the Canadian Army is well past its inflection point, and fully prepared to reprise its victory at Potenza.

Andrew Latham is a professor of international relations at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minn., a senior fellow at the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy.