Shooting down high achievers
Shaun Francis
National Post
27 Sept 2011
Who knew that amortization could be so dangerous? If we've learned any lasting lessons over the past week, it's that accounting hyperbole can do as much damage to our military's reputation as a weapon wielded by an Afghan insurgent. The media keeps telling us that a Challenger jet - the type used by General Walter Natynczyk to attend a 2010 gala in Toronto for the True Patriot Love Foundation, the organization I lead as chair of the board - costs $10,000 per hour to operate. The actual figure, once you strip off the fixed capital costs, is $2,630.
And that's just the first of many media misrepresentations. The 2010 event was portrayed as an opportunity for Gen. Natynczyk to hobnob with the elites. But the truth was that Gen. Natynczyk was there to raise money for his rank-and-file soldiers. He gave a stirring, captivating speech, then worked the room tirelessly, pausing for a photo with anyone who asked, and always stopping to thank a soldier or the soldier's family.
Thanks in part to Gen. Natynczyk's personal appearances at this fundraiser and others, we were able to raise more than $6-million to send the children of deployed soldiers to summer camp, fund military community centres, renovate homes and cars for our amputees and provide funding to train them for the Paralympics.
Canadians tend to want their leaders to be just like them. We are a nation that flies economy, drinks Tim Hortons and wears khaki and plaid. We want leaders to follow our leads - to wait in the same queues as the rest of us. Think of how hard the Prime Minister's Office works to make Stephen Harper seem like a regular guy. He's someone who drops his kids off at school, and whose home at 24 Sussex Drive still doesn't have central air conditioning.
But Gen. Natynczyk's situation is, and should be, different. Since he became the military's top soldier in 2008, he has had what must be one of the planet's toughest jobs. He needs to be a walking paradox - a warrior and a diplomat, a genius with a common touch, a workaholic who never seems tired. If there's anyone who should be allowed to use a government jet, it's him. That's why even Liberal leader Bob Rae wondered whether the whole thing was overblown - chalking it up to "politics within politics."
In the three-and-a-half years that he's led our military, Gen. Natynczyk has distinguished himself in Ottawa. The problem isn't whether he was right to use a Challenger jet to join his family for Christmas holidays for the first time in three years. The problem is that Gen. Natynczyk's remarkable job performance has made him stand out in a country where we like to tear down high achievers.
Our antipathy toward excellence is a vestige of our colonial past, and it would behoove us to shake it. We don't celebrate the best among us. Instead, we criticize them as queue-jumpers or "high-flyers" (to quote CTV's Lisa LaFlamme, who decried Gen. Natynczyk's "highflying travel arrangements").
Perhaps this national trait once made sense. When Canada was a sleepy resource-rich quadrant of Her Majesty's empire, we kept our heads down, in quiet deference to Britain, our colonial master, and America, our confident and powerful neighbour. But those days are long past. Amid global economic chaos, we have emerged as one of the most stable and respected of Western nations. We can compete with anyone. When are we going to stop acting like the nervous colony? When are we going to let the Prime Minister get his central air?
Tradition suggests Gen. Natynczyk is heading into the final months of his term as Chief of the Defence Staff. He led our Canadian Forces through the successful completion of our combat mission in Afghanistan - one that elevated Canada's military reputation around the world. We should allow him to bask in the afterglow that follows a job well done.
Shaun Francis is the founder of the True Patriot Love Foundation, which is dedicated to improving the well-being of Canadian military families.
