This week, the government announced its plan to rebuild, rearm, and reinvest in the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF), as part of its commitment in the Speech from the Throne.
Given the scope of these investments, and the ambitious agenda set before us, we have received numerous questions about what this means for the Defence Team. Specifically, there has been a keen interest in the integration of the Canadian Coast Guard (CCG), as well as enhanced compensation and benefits for CAF members.
Canadian Coast Guard to join the Defence Team
Investments are being made to help protect Canada’s North through a larger sustained year-round CAF presence on land, sea, and air, and to strengthen Canada’s ability to detect, monitor, and respond to threats in Canada’s Arctic and northern approaches. As part of this commitment, the role of the CCG is expanding and will be moved under National Defence.
While details of this transition are still evolving, we’d like to take this opportunity to welcome the CCG to the Defence Team. We look forward to working together to ensure a successful transition.
5 thoughts on “CCG To Be Moved Under National Defence”
I fully agree with the integration of CCG vessels into the RCN. This also makes sense that reporting, and observations from these ships is very important. Consider the rotation of naval staff on the ships as they will have to be able to man the very necessary armament. Every vessel designated as RCN needs to be armed, not embarrassed
I really don’t see the point of putting the CCG under DND if they aren’t going to have any shipborne or airborne weapons systems and they aren’t going to make the forece members a militray as opposed to civilian workforce (not that it’s very easy to tell the difference these days) . In fact they should change their name because it’s misleading. The reality is that they don’t really guard anything, at least not effectively.
It’s about time..!!
Wasn’t this studied and discarded in the 70s or 80s because it would create two types of sailors: one civilian, unionised and overpaid and one in uniform, with no voice, no control over hours worked, no overtime pay, etc.
Some years ago, probably in the mid 70s I worked out that assuming average annual deployments a Leading Seaman’s annual salary, when divided by average hours worked at sea(on watch and working in parent department, cleaning stations, etc.) and duty watches in home and foreign ports was earning a little over half of the legal minimum wage.
Steve Foldesi, Captain RCN retd, ex-CO Skeena and Provider
Strikes me as a bit of a shell game…by shifting the CCG budget under DND, it bumps up defence spending towards the 5% target without actually investing anything. I agree there should be greater integration of CCG and DND operations and training, but by the same token one could also expand RCAF roles and platforms by taking over air patrols and tasks for fisheries and pollution control, Expand the RCAF maritime air patrol fleet to include not only the LRPA (eg CP140 Auroras), but reintroduce medium range aircraft like we had with the Trackers, in addition to drones.
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