The Canadian military is revising the way it handles domestic operations, after realizing there are gaping holes in the existing strategy.
Newly released documents show the 2010 Winter Olympics were an organizational nightmare because the military lacked what they call domestic doctrine. Doctrine provides rules and protocol on how to handle different types of operations.
“The absence of adequate, or up-to-date, domestic operations doctrine and policies resulted in excessive debate and distracted from the real task of planning and executing Op Podium,” the after-action report on the military’s contribution to Olympic security says.
Military planners were stymied by matters ranging from what jobs they were and weren’t prepared to do at the Games, to how to get all the soldiers they needed for the plan.
Legal authorities that govern military activities at home are also flawed, the report suggests.
“Many constraints imposed reflect pre-9/11 rationale and are not truly reflective of the types of tasks and unique CF capabilities routinely requested by our security partners,” the report says.
The report was obtained by The Canadian Press under Access to Information.
“It is not to say that we’re not ready at home, we are ready at home,” Colonel Sean Friday, deputy chief of staff for plans at Canada Command, said in an interview.
Canada Command, the branch of the military responsible for domestic operations, was set up in 2006 precisely to co-ordinate domestic and continental operations.
“But the kind of operation we did with Podium is not one that we’ve done frequently in Canada,” Col. Friday said. “A major task force in our own country? This is not normal for us.”
More than 5,000 soldiers took part in the three-month Olympic security operation, which was led by the RCMP.
The overall budget was $900-million, and the Defence Department was allocated $212-million of that. But that budget covered only the incremental cost to the military of participating in the Games. Documents posted to the vice-chief of defence staff’s website suggest the total cost was actually around $473-million.
While the Olympic and Paralympic security effort was considered a success, the report outlined eight areas where the military could have done better.
All have their roots in the lack of an overarching domestic strategy and include the need for better systems for finding the needed soldiers, managing personnel and contracting for supplies and services.
Similar problems were encountered at the G8-G20 summits last summer, Col. Friday acknowledged.
“The doctrine that existed was equally applicable to all types of scenarios and what we’ve found is that doctrine is insufficient,” he said. “We need to have a standalone doctrine manual just for domestic operations, rather than a chapter in overall operations … across defence, security and safety.”
He is leading a team focused on getting the new manual ready by July.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the military doesn’t have a robust domestic plan already, some observers say.
“It’s not needed,” said retired colonel Chris Corrigan, the executive director of the Royal Canadian Military Institute. “We have sufficient policies in place and rules, orders-in-council, on how domestic operations take place in the country between the military and civilian agencies.”
But there is a difference between calling in the military to help with a snowstorm and using its capabilities to secure international events, others say.
The reality is that military doctrine over time has developed with a focus on overseas operations, said Elinor Sloan, a professor of international relations at Carleton University.
The last time the Forces were really used to deal with a security issue at home was during the FLQ crisis in 1970.
“It’s never been something that the Canadian Forces has actually focused a lot on because there hasn’t been a threat to address in the homeland,” she said. “And now, of course, we look at internal security threats an awful lot more because of the terrorist threat.”
But others question why the military hadn’t seen an operation like the Olympics coming.
In the post-9/11 era, militaries around the world have become involved in domestic security for major events, such as the Super Bowl, Phillipe Lagasse, a professor of international affairs at the University of Ottawa, noted.
“The CF knows that it’s involved in security detail and so forth during major summits,” he said. “They should have then foreseen the next logical step of getting involved in a major sporting event.”
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