Cutting size of military could be on the table for Harper government

OTTAWA – The country’s top military commander says cutting the size of the Canadian Forces is something the Harper government could grapple with next month as it reviews an updated defence strategy.

Gen. Tom Lawson, the chief of defence staff, says the government has not yet expressed a desire to cut uniformed members in its drive to balance the budget.

In fact, Prime Minister Stephen Harper explicitly told Lawson when he was sworn in as the top defence adviser last year that he didn’t want to reduce the 68,000 full-time and 27,000 part-time members of military.

But Lawson says that is something the government could re-examine as it looks at an updated version of the Canada First Defence Strategy, a policy that attempts to strike a balance between shrinking budgets and the needs of the military.

Lawson says everything he has done with his defence team has been built around keeping the same number of bodies, but cuts are always an option for the government.

Retired general Rick Hillier, a former chief of defence staff, said a few weeks ago that the budget targets set out by the government could not be reached without reducing numbers in the military.