THIS country has
become a banana
republic without the
bananas.

The military mess is a
glaring instance of that con-
-. dition. If you doubt it, read

| The Tarnished Brass, a splen-
didly researched book on

“crime and corruption the

the Canadian military” by

Scott Taylor and Brian

Nolan.

 * The scandal in Somalia

was only the tip of the ice-

‘berg. The stink permeates

the top and is far worse
there than in the lower
ranks.

Even if there were no
corruption, the Canadian
Armed Forces (CAF) are an
inverted pyramid that would
do credit to a comic opera

- country.
~ In 1996 we had 100
serving generals for a force
of 67,000. Of those, 21
. were serving as “attaches”

: with our allies. We keep a
brigadier general in a §2
million apartment in Paris.

. No.more than 8% of mili-
. tary, personnel serve in any-
thing remotely resembling
- combat units.

“The show is top heavy
with officers. . ;
y° During the Second World
War, 12.8% of our forces
‘held commissioned rank. By

1968 it was 16.7%. Last year

: jt was 22.6%.

In 1954, when personnel
numbered 115,000, there

- were three lieutenant-gener-
als, Last year there were 16.

In war, a lieutenant-gen-
‘eral. wonld command an
army corps of about 50,000

“arasn. By that measure we
have cnough Gf them for a
force of 800,000.

. The latest news is that

‘the number of generals and
admirals is to be reduced to

Ja'mere 65.-We shall sce.

“*~. There is also a bureatuicra-

“ey of 28,927 civilians and a
corresponding batch of civil-
ian “generals.”

* .. They include six assistant
deputy ministers, 10 chiefs
of staff, 59 directors general,

“and 281 directors, plus
more than 100 public rela-
tions people whose job is to
polish all that brass.

; -The senior ranks push
._ paper-and live it up at your

- expense. Not that they are

the only Otrawa gang who
do that. Something to think
about when you do your tax
return.

The Department of
National Defence is an
empire whose real comman-
der until late in 1994 was
neither a general nora

. politician.

He was “Teflon Bob”
Fowler, described as a
clever, ambitious and career-
ruthless deputy minisicy.
When last heard from he
was our ambassador to the
UN. It pays to be on
the right circuit.

Fowler controlled
the pliant ministers of
defence. He ran the
generals too, often in
matters military.

There were rewards
for those who took
his orders without
blinking.

An example of his power
was that when the Somali
seandai broke, Kim
Campbell got to know prac-
tically nothing about it. Yer
she was supposedly in
charge.

Corruption? Again in the
fashion of the banana
republics.

“Eagle River,” was the
code name for a luxurious
fishing retreat in Labrador
set up to entertain three
American generals at a time
and their Canadian counter-
parts.

It had six stewards, three
chefs, a support staff of 36,

and cost us $960,000 a year
until the media sniffed out
the story in 199-4. It was
then shut down.

Tens of thousands of dol-
lars were spent sending gen-
erals for a spot of fishing
and golfing in Florida.

One of the most lavish
with expense accounts and
double dipping was John de
Chastelain, who became
Chief of the Defence Staff
(CDS) in 1989,

Dubbed “Prince John,”
he became our ambassador

“Senior military and
civilian personnel enter-
tain one another lavishly

at public expense.”

to the U.S. in 1993 and was
then resurrected for an
unprecedented second term
as CDS. A devoted Fowler
man.

“It was under their stew-
ardship,” state the authors,
“that greed and corruption
flourished in the high com-
mand.”

Senior military and civil-
ian personnel entertain one
another lavishly at public
expense.

Fowler spent $387,00
renovating his office suite.

A major general used a
C18 jet as his personal air
taxi. CF-18s cost $7,000 an
hour to run and in ore year

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Canada’s Armed Farces

the general logged 160
hours. His own officers
shopped him.

After the Gulf War a
female director spent
$86,000 sending staff to a
pleasant retreat where they
played bongo drums. The
idea was to soothe their
stressed nerves. Yet they had
been no nearer to the
Middle Ease than Ottawa.

While the generals and
the civilians were living ir
up, a company of engi-
neers in the blisterisig heat
of Kuwait could not
get an air condi-
tioning unit that
woald have cost
$42,000 to send
out to them.

At one time, sol-
diers in Yugoslavia
didn’t have enough
helmets to go
round. And sailors in
Esquimalt were applying
for welfare and getting help
from food banks.

The authors sav that the
martial values of integrity,
duty and honor hive been
replaced by greed, careerism
and cowardice.

More on Sunday.

-— The North Shore News
believes strongly in freedom of
speech and the right of all
sides in a debate to he heard.
The columnists published in
the News present differing
points of view, but those views
are not necessarily those of the
newspaper itself.

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