OTTAWA -- The outgoing commander of the Canadian Army says budget restraint and under-spending at National Defence have badly wounded some crucial operations.
Lieutenant General Peter Devlin will end his three-year tenure as Canada's top soldier on Thursday, completing a 35-year career in the military -- much of which he spent in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Last December Devlin told a Senate committee the army's budget had been cut by 22 per cent.
He says it`s been a scramble to maintain not only training, but also what he called "softer skills" essential to fighting modern wars -- namely intelligence gathering and surveillance.
Devlin's comments come just days after the parliamentary budget office revealed that National Defence under-spent its budget by 2.3 billion dollars last year -- a figure disputed by defence officials.
