Let's talk about Carneys first defence promises.

Mark Carmey had revealed pieces of his defence policy in Halifax today. I wouldn't call it a platform, as the details weren't given in full, but he did make several commitments:

• Commits to buying submarines, but sid not say how many

• Commits to keeping the whole NSS order, including all 15 Rivers.

• Officially Commits to the Navies plans to build heavy icebreakers, joining the Conservatives. This has been a Navy want for a while, but we don't know exactly what is desired.

• Commits to a new Arctic drone program, including UUV and UAS. I don't know if this is a reference to the UEA project and Skyguardian, or perhaps looking at expanding on them.

• Commits to fulfilling the personnel shortage by providing new housing, pay raises, and new family support for childcare. These have been discussed by Carney before.

• Promises a new mandate for the Coast Guard, including expanding their reach. The plan is to integrate them further into NATO spending. What's this look like? No idea. Conservatives have a similar plan.

• Promises new maritime surveillance capabilities to the Coast Guard. This also isn't quite discussed. More Starliners? Perhaps adding extra Dash 8s? There are options out there readily available. We might also be looking at new, larger aircraft. We gotta wait on this one.

• Promises procurement reform, as usual, promises legislative changes, ensuring CAF have the ability to spend when they need it, how they need it. He says he wants no more money left on the table and lost.

There is more promised down the line, and further in the platform. Sounds like a lot. Both sides have said they plan to have costed defence platforms now. That is good. Carney also commits to two percent BEFORE 2030 but gives no timeline for that.

He reiterates investigating the F-35 deal, but does make mention that it's about value to Canada in terms of economic benefit, and seemingly confirms that Lockheeds offer to expand Canadian participation would be an acceptable alternative.

No numbers, or true details here but a few commitments. The numbers will all come in the platform, save submarines. There will, again, be more announcements on the campaign trail and then further details in the platform. Seems both major parties will make defence key platforms.

There will be some that interest people. Procurement reform can mean a lot of different things, especially when discussing potential legislative changes that can be thrown on the table. There are a few easy wins, like raising CAFs spending authority from the current $10m to $100m. That is a popular idea I support.

The Coast Guard mandate is another area that has me raising an eyebrow. What is promised isn't much to go off of, quite minimal in fact, but itndoes show there is a will to change how things are run in the CCG.

I often hear people dismiss this, but let me be clear you absolutely can count Coast Guard spending to NATO requirements BUT it is highly regulated and requires certain subsets of requirements to be met to count. We already have some spending included in our NATO figures.

I don't know that criteria list off by heart, I would need to dive a bit more, but there is a pathway. This doesn't mean an armed Coast Guard, that wouldn't fly with anyone. There is no will or want for it, and the Union might have some choice words if one tries to force it.

However, there are other duties, expanding enforcement, search and rescue duties and offshore patrol, giving more mandate to the CCG ability to enforce the law, would go a ways to helping count to that spending without getting into the armed debate.

Perhaps we do as done in the past, and arm only certain vessels? Perhaps we could arm the new CCG AOPV, at least to a limited capacity, to act as armed enforcement vessels? There is a precedent already set for such a thing.

The vast majority of the fleet though won't be armed, and enforcement is likely to stay with the DFO and RCMP. How they play into this? Who knows. We have to wait on what the final plan shall be.

And of course, lastly, we have the icebreakers… We now have both parties supporting navy icebreakers. For those curious, Polar Icebreakers are something that the navy brass have been discussing for quite a while now.

There is an active want for them. What do they look like? I don't know, but I would suspect to hear about G-LAM in relation to it.

This isn't an endorsement but I expect GLAM, in any case, would be heavily pushed to fill this role. There are issues, and I can't speak on crewing, so it's hard to really compare to other options. We also don't know exactly what the navy wants, either.

G-LAM does have a few nice features that might be desired over other designs. It has a replenishment capability, that's a big one, it can act as a Ro/Ro to move equipment, even if not the most cost-effective or optimal, provides a unique capability to NATO, being a Polar capable replenishment and support vessel, while having an amphibious capability. Also has the limited ability to support submarines and do forward repair. They REALLY try to make her an everything vessel, lol.

Of course all of those come with a but, because you actually have to be committed to those concepts. This isn't talking about cost, or crewing, which is a problem I have with any Navy Polars, but there are hooks there that might be of interest to the navy.

I don't support Navy Polars myself. I have yet to see a good breakdown to why they're needed compared to, say, more JSS, funding Submarines, or CMMC. All of which I rank higher in a situation where money is limited, and we already have big crewing demands coming.

Overall, this is a decent mix of very curious policies, with a few that confuse me. There really isn't much to go off of here thanks to a lack of concrete information. We have basic promises, but nothing to really go off of.

I am happy to see it be one if the first things discussed, and to have both parties committed to costed platforms, which I hope includes two detailed timelines to get things done. These would be very nice to have for when I do comparisons.

Very rarely I trust platforms, but I hope this is the start of big things. We have commitment, and a few new angles being thrown in, but we need to see something more concrete. It's still early though, the Conservatives haven't talked about defence yet, though I expect them to within the next week.

Until then, we wait.