Military planners map out restructuring the Canadian Army, says top soldier

CBC

07-03-2025

The Canadian Army is about to embark on a wholesale restructuring in the face of growing demands for troops and equipment both overseas and at home, says the country's top soldier.
A military modernization team is currently studying the problem against the backdrop of a shortage of as many as 5,000 soldiers, Lt.-Gen. Mike Wright told CBC News in a recent interview at the NATO training centre in Adazi, Latvia.
"The army we have now is not the army that we need for the future," Wright said when asked if he was satisfied with the equipping of the troops on the Western military's alliance's deterrence mission in Eastern Europe.
He made his remarks against a backdrop of threats by U.S. President Donald Trump to annex Canada through economic force.
Several senior Canadian commanders have recently faced questions about how long the country could hold out if relations with Washington deteriorated further and the United States chose a military option.
Wright wouldn't comment, other than to say ties with the American military have remained unchanged and strong despite the political rhetoric.
"I'm not even going to imagine the unimaginable," he said.
The army is facing a number of challenges — both overseas and domestically — and Canada has struggled to field equipment to its force in Latvia, including modern anti-tank weapons, air-defence systems and counter-drone technology. It currently has 47 capital projects on the go.
The absence of such equipment has been a major gap for soldiers, whose job it is to defend Latvia, a NATO member, should Russia turn its military attention to the Baltic region.
Some of the equipment — deemed critical in light of the way the war between Russia and Ukraine has unfolded — is still making its way to the brigade more than a year after being declared an urgent operational requirement. Other existing equipment, such as the Leopard 2A4 tanks, are facing a well-documented shortage of spare parts.
Last fall, satellite images analyzed by Estonian media noted that several bases on the Russian side of the border, which had been emptied of troops and equipment following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, are now showing signs of life and vehicles, including tanks and long-range artillery.
"Am I content with how we are prepared here? The answer is yes, but we actually need to get to the point of what we have here in Latvia — we're able to feel that for the entire Canadian Army," Wright said. "So I'm really focused on that."
The Canadian Army currently has three major regular force infantry regiments, a series of tank and artillery units as well as 185 reserve units located in 86 cities across the country.
The modernization team, Wright said, is looking at everything and consulting with allies on how they have overhauled their armies to face modern threats that have emerged in the Ukraine war, including the use of explosive-laden drones.
The Liberal government's defence policy promises, among other things, to buy the army surface-to-surface ballistic missiles and modern, perhaps rocket-based artillery — capabilities Canadian soldiers have not used.
Defence Minister Bill Blair also recently announced that the military would acquire what's known as loitering munitions, the kinds of drones made infamous online and seen destroying Russian and Ukrainian armoured vehicles.
"I really want to look at what we need to do to put the real focus on war fighting, on the lethality within the army and be able to provide the effects to NATO or to anywhere else that we need to be," Wright said. "We're going to look at everything in terms of how we are structured, from the very top of the army headquarters right down to the unit level."
Wright didn't want to presuppose what the overhaul will look like in the end, but he said he didn't want to cut units.
The calls to reorganize the army have also been coming from outside of the military. With soldiers increasingly being deployed on domestic operations, a House of Commons committee studied whether deploying soldiers to fight wildfires and other disasters is an appropriate use of resources.
Both deploying to Latvia and responding to domestic emergencies has stretched the army increasingly thin.
In some cases, Wright said, the absence of equipment, personnel and structures has forced Canada into the uncomfortable position of not meeting a goal set out by NATO — namely the ability to deploy a divisional headquarters into the field on short notice.
"There are capabilities which NATO has assigned to us which we currently don't have the ability to fulfil," he said. "We do have division headquarters in Canada, but those divisions are — frankly — administrative and regional based."
Despite Wright's confidence in the equipping of the force in Latvia, there are still holes.
Out of the three major, urgent equipment projects — originally ordered in late 2023 — two are still awaiting delivery.
A $32.2-million modern anti-tank weapons system, known as Portable Anti "X" Missile (PAXM), which were supposed to arrive last summer, has not arrived and defence officials say it is still undergoing evaluation "and delivery can't be confirmed until testing is finished."
A new air-defence system is scheduled to arrive this spring, said Col. Cédric Aspirault, the Canadian brigade commander in Latvia
The counter-drone system is operational, he added. Last fall, the army in Latvia also received a number of light tactical vehicles — a small troop carrier with offroad capabilities — and portable medium-range radar systems.
The army is still, however, struggling with a shortage of spare parts for the 15 Leopard 2A4 tanks attached to the brigade.
"We are working towards finding your solutions," said Aspirault, who added that the spares, which are manufactured in Europe, are required to be sent to Canada before they are re-routed to the brigade in Latvia. "However, the army now is well aware of the problem, and we are looking at options to streamline that process and bring the parts directly here."