Wayne Eyre’s predecessor as Chief of the Defence Staff held the position for a shorter time than anyone who ever held the job. It was messy at the end. So Eyre’s rise to the top job came faster than he expected, in 2021 — at a time when Canadian electoral politics was as polarized as I’ve ever seen. He retired last summer, not long before Justin Trudeau did. So much has changed since Eyre left the top military job. I thought it was a good time to catch up.
I don’t know him well. I’ve interviewed senior officers in the Canadian Armed Forces, but had never had more than brief chats with Eyre. But he was eager to talk, and our conversation covered a lot of ground. We discussed:
The challenges of going from less than 2% of GDP on military spending to the odd 3.5%+1.5% target that’s become Mark Carney’s daunting goal;
Challenges in recruitment and retention;
A spike in political extremism in the ranks that led to high-profile criminal charges this summer;
Pierre Poilievre’s call for a “warrior culture” to replace the “woke culture” in the CAF. I’d mentioned this to Eyre as a topic I would want to cover. It’s clear he took time to prepare his answer. Eyre himself came in for criticism on these issues while he was CDS. I’ve been a skeptic of any sweeping woke-to-warrior transformation in Canada’s military, given recent precedent to our south, but I thought it was important to hear what Eyre had to say;
And of course, we talked about relations between Canada’s military and that of the U.S. — by its very nature one of the closest military-to-military working relationships in the world, and one that risks being tested by tensions between Donald Trump and Canadians. Yes, Eyre thinks Canada should proceed with an order for American F-35 fighters.
I’ve been struck by a bunch of recent conversations I’ve had with people in non-military roles — provincial politicians in economic portfolios, university administrators — who’ve begun factoring the prospect of higher military spending into their plans. We seem to be heading for a sea change, and I thought Wayne Eyre would help us better understand where Canada’s been and where it might be going. I’m grateful to him for sharing his thoughts.
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