Actually it does but you have to properly define what "Integration" is.
"Integration" took place under Hellyer with a 1964 amendment to the National Defence Act. This amendment got rid of the three "service chief" in favour of one Chief of Defence Staff. At the same time the three service headquarters were "integrated" into one headquarters CFHQ. Subordinate to CFHQ there now were six commands: Maritime, Mobile, Air Defence, Air Transport, Materiel and Training.
Prior to that, and through it, NDHQ existed and continued to exist as a separate entity.
In 1966, "unification" took place as the result of The Canadian Forces Reorganization Act (still under Hellyer). This legislation was responsible for getting rid of the three services themselves and abolishing the titles Royal Canadian Navy, Royal Canadian Air Force and Canadian Army and replacing then with ones service, the Canadian Armed Forces. This was accompanied by the adoption of a single uniform and rank structure and a reorganization of commands and people and base structures etc etc.
Again, NDHQ stood separate as an entity.
The subsequent merging of NDHQ and CFHQ in 1972 was "an integration" of sorts but not "THE INTEGRATION" which had happened 8 years earlier under Hellyer.
I'm going to disagree. There are and were, in the 1960s, precise (and agreed) definitions of "
unification" and "i
ntegration." Many countries, led by the USA but including the UK had already
unified their armed forces: they had a single Chief of the Defence Staff (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), they had
unified joint staffs; some had
unified commands like the US' EuropeanCommand, Atlantic Command and Pacific Command within which there were single service components like US Army Europe (USAREUR) and US Air Force Europe (ASAFE). Canada went one (quite large) step in that direction with commands like Maritime Command within which there were two fleets and a Maritime Air Group with units in support of each fleet. Mobile Command had army brigades (in Canada and in Germany) and a mix of tactical (fixed wing) fighter and transport squadrons and rotary wing squadrons, too.
The big problem with a
unified force for Canada was that Canada lacked navy admirals and army generals with enough vision to understand that their air assets were as important as their ships and tanks and bayonets. Canada had equally weak air force generals but they saw an opportunity and, in 1975, they executed a nonsensical military travesty of the highest order: Air Command.
I was told, by which I am 99% certain is an unimpeachable source that when Mr Hellyer and his CoS, Group Captain Bill Lee, an RCAF Public Relations specialist, went to Washington in the mid 1960s the Americas said" "
Unify the bejeezus out of your navy, army and air force but be very, Very, VERY carful about
integration 'cause we've tried it, with a few organizations like the Defence Communications Agency and an integrated Transport Command, and it ~ putting people from quite different backgrounds into the same units ~ is more trouble than it's worth."
But we did try it; i
ntegration ~ one single, service, the "jolly green jumper" and all that ~ was the sizzle that Mr Hellyer and GC Lee were selling to the public;
unification was the steak which Mike Pearson, the bureaucrats and the admirals and generals all wanted because, US and UK experience suggested,
unified forces could do more with less. We threw out the baby in 1975, the bathwater didn't follow until the 2000s.