Former chief of defence staff Wayne Eyre says he believes that 'we are closer to global war than we have been since the end of the Cold War.'Keito Newman/The Globe and Mail
The Canadian military’s former top soldier says global war is closer than it has been for decades and that this country must focus on building new alliances, but also not discard existing ones such as that with the U.S.
Retired general Wayne Eyre, chief of the defence staff from 2021 to 2024, said he has seen no indication that Canada can’t trust its long-standing military relationship with Americans.
Mr. Eyre sat with The Globe and Mail for a wide-ranging interview this week in connection with his newly published memoir, called Into the Breach.
The book details his more than 40 years of active military service and frankly lays out the fiscal and strategic challenges faced by the Canadian Armed Forces over those years, as well as the ever-shifting perception of Canada on the global stage.
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Mr. Eyre said Canada’s standing now appears to be on the rise, as the Carney government fast-tracks billions of dollars in spending while trying to rejig the military procurement process and build new defence partnerships.
“I just hope it’s going to be quick enough for the dangerous future that is coming,” he said.
“I believe that we are closer to global war than we have been since the end of the Cold War.”
Mr. Eyre cited the threats posed by Russia and China and their governments’ efforts to destabilize the world order. And the U.S. administration’s current posture reflects a government working to shore up its own political power, not global stability, and Canada needs to hedge, he said.
“That means increasing the number of like-minded friends, partners, and allies that we work with, but at the same time, not discard existing alliances because of the many possible future scenarios out there,” he said.
Prime Minister Mark Carney told The New York Times in a September interview that he has considered the possibility that U.S. President Donald Trump would order a U.S. military invasion of Canada. The Globe and Mail has reported that the military has modelled a hypothetical U.S. military invasion of Canada and the country’s potential response.
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Mr. Eyre played down the potential of a U.S. invasion. “I’m far more concerned about disorder in the U.S. – because they are so polarized – going across our borders than anything else,” he said.
“And we can’t lose faith with those tens of millions of Americans that are still friendly to Canada.”
Canadian military leaders must keep direct relationships with their U.S. counterparts, he said, because it remains an essential way to keep the lines of communication open between the two countries.
The importance of interpersonal relationships between soldiers as well as between high-ranking officers and politicians is a running theme of his book. Mr. Eyre details numerous clashes with the Liberal government of then-prime minister Justin Trudeau over military spending and related decisions. He also reveals that there were times when he was ready to resign.
Among the conflicts is an incident he described as him being thrown “under the bus” by Mr. Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland, deputy prime minister at the time. The issue was Mr. Eyre’s decision to allow then-Navy commander vice-admiral Craig Baines to remain in his job after he attended a golf game with former chief of the defence staff Jon Vance in 2021.
Mr. Vance was under investigation at the time for sexual misconduct.
Mr. Eyre said he sought advice from a wide range of people and concluded that Mr. Baines should stay, as it would be a learning opportunity. The Privy Council Office and the then-defence minister were aware and supportive, he wrote in the book.
But Ms. Freeland and Mr. Trudeau were publicly critical. When Mr. Trudeau asked for a call about the issue, Mr. Eyre wrote that he was ready to quit.
“I wasn’t sure what to expect, and feeling I had nothing to lose, I prepared myself to tell him that in a democracy, if there was not trust between the nation’s political leader and its senior military commander, one would have to go, and it wouldn’t be the political leader.”
The call ended with Mr. Eyre not tendering his resignation.
In an earlier section of the book about his years prior to becoming chief of the defence staff, Mr. Eyre wrote that he was “naively oblivious” to the broader issue of sexual misconduct.
“I had spent most of my career up to then in predominantly a man’s world,” he said.
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“In later years, I discovered in discussions with several former subordinates that in my overarching focus on operational success in many of my commands, I had failed to pick up on cues that some were experiencing harassment and other misconduct.”
Mr. Eyre also writes of the struggle that Canada has had in being taken seriously on the global defence stage.
In the book, he says the Trudeau government’s slow decisions on boosting the military left Canada on the sidelines in the intelligence-sharing arrangement between Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Britain and the United States known as the Five Eyes.
In the interview, he said he was told directly by a British military commander that Canada would be left out of AUKUS Pillar II – a partnership between Australia, Britain and the U.S. – even after the Trudeau government released its updated defence policy in 2024 that laid out a long-term plan to boost spending to the 2-per-cent of GDP required by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
The commander, Mr. Eyre said, was complimentary of the strategic plans, but not the lengthy spending timeline.
“The sense that he was getting from his government was that Canada would not be invited into AUKUS Pillar II until we hit 2 per cent. So that’s one example of the fracturing of the Five Eyes.”
Under Mr. Carney, Canada has now hit the 2-per-cent benchmark; the Trudeau government had forecast meeting that target in 2032.