Nearly 60,000 of Canada’s 68,000 troops are now in isolation in advance of COVID-19 operations, Canada’s top soldier says.

Many of them have been ordered to do so to be ready to deploy across Canada to assist civil authorities to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, said Gen. Jon Vance said in an interview Thursday with Global News.

Others are on alert for critical operations such as the NORAD mission to defend North America with fighter jets or to prepare to assist governments with natural disasters such as springtime floods.

“The vast majority of troops — about 85 per cent — are not at their usual place of work,” Gen. Vance said.

“Their orders are to stay home and to stay healthy.”

Vance likened what was happening to the military now to how armies responded when under artillery attack.

“You disperse the force,” the chief of the defence said. “That fits with what we are doing about COVID. We are taking extreme precautions.”

The general, who first came to widespread public notice during his two combat tours in Afghanistan, said he was unaware of an increase in cyberattacks on Canada’s critical military, government and civilian infrastructure during the coronavirus crisis.

“But what is out of the ordinary is an increase in the use of cyberspace to spread false information,” he said.

Without saying which country or countries might be responsible, he added: “There is a real uptick in the use of COVID information to attack the response of some countries.” The disease was being used “as an opportunity” he said, to advance certain points-of-view.

However, as a precaution, he and the vice chief of the defence staff, Lt. Gen. Jean-Marc Lanthier, were working from different buildings. Many meetings with Lanthier and other senior commanders that normally took place face-to-face were now taking place via video conferences.

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Though most of the troops are not together, the Canadian Forces’ key operations have not stopped, Vance said.

Looking ahead, the general said that the military could not shut down its training and recruiting for long.

“We have to keep the pipeline open and that’s a challenge,” he said. “We are looking at addressing that in strategic planning, to restore training within a COVID environment.”

What is taking place in Ottawa and at regional commands at the moment is contingency planning and looking at requests for assistance to deal with the coronavirus pandemic, he said.

The general said he and his staff are in hourly contact with senior federal officials. When his troops might be called out by the government to render aid is unknown at this time and is heavily dependent, he said, on whether Canadians headed the advice that they had been getting from governments and from and health care professionals to isolate themselves from others and to observe safe hygienic practices.

“My hope is that Canadians will heed this advice to protect themselves and ‘flatten the curve’ so we do not have to deploy our force,” the general said.

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