Mediascout on Hillier's replacement

CHANGING OF THE GUARD
What $45 billion buck$. Canada is already broke - just like the US, but then we wait for both currencies to CRA$h.

V


The Post and the Citizen report on Canada’s new chief of defence staff, Lieutenant-General Walt Natynczyk, who will be sworn in today after the well-liked and charismatic General Rick Hillier steps down from the post he held for three-and-a-half years. The media has lauded Natynczyk for his military prowess, and claim that his past experience, including the rare opportunity he was handed to fight in Iraq and his skill in leading forces through the Balkans in the 1990s, makes him a good match for the position. Natynczyk cut his teeth in Ottawa as Hillier’s number-two soldier, carrying out Hillier’s task of transforming the Canadian military, now immersed in a mission in Afghanistan and planning to spend $45 billion in the coming years to revamp its arsenal of military equipment. Natynczyk says he does not want to be known as a “bureaucratic bean counter,” in the words of Canwest’s Mike Blanchfield, but he may find that he struggles to keep up with the image of his predecessor, who is labelled as a bright “comet” in a comment in today’s Citizen. It seems that Natynczyk will have to work hard to fill the shoes of Hillier, who stepped out of office at the right time, leaving Natyncyzk to deal with a protracted and controversial war in Afghanistan that threatens to tax Canada’s military forces well into the future.