Col Michael Duhamel, CD

Canadian Forces Military Attaché (CFMA)

Colonel Duhamel joined the Canadian Armed Forces in 1977. Upon completion of basic officer training and graduating from the Combat Training Center as an Artillery Officer in 1978, he was posted in Lahr, Germany where he served as a Command Post Officer in a Field Artillery Regiment. It was during this tour that he was introduced to Air Defense during a short exchange with an Airfield Air Defense Battery. He was posted to Quebec City in 1981, was promoted Captain and occupied various Air Defense positions until 1983 when he was posted to the Combat Training Center in New-Brunswick to attend the first Canadian AD Instructor in Gunnery course since the 1950’s. After serving two years as an instructor in the Artillery School, he returned to Germany to command a battery. In 1988 he was promoted to the rank of Major and posted to the National Defense Headquarters in Ottawa as a Staff Officer in the Directorate of Recruiting and Selection. It is during this period that he completed his Bachelor Degree in Political Science before returning to Germany in 1990 to take command of 129 Air Defense Battery. He then attended the Command and Staff College in Quetta, Pakistan in 1993 before getting promoted to LCol in 1994 to serve as the administrative coordinator for the Deputy Chief of Defence Staff. From 1995 to 1999, he took command of 4th Air Defence Regiment to rebuild and prove the operational capability of this new Regiment to defend Army, Navy and Air assets.

From 1999 to 2003 he occupied a variety of staff positions in the Army HQ, before moving to the office of Regional Security and Peacekeeping of Foreign Affairs Canada and then to the Directorate of Peacekeeping Policy in the National Defence Headquarters. During this period, he was deployed to Mitrovica, Kosovo in 1999 as a Military Liaison Officer for the United Nations with the French Multi-National Brigade (North), and to Bagram, Afghanistan in 2002 as a Liaison Officer with the 18th US Airborne Corps Headquarters.

He was promoted to Colonel in June 2004 and appointed Directory of Military Human Resource Requirement where he began planning the force expansion announced by the Government. On 5 July 2005, Col Duhamel was deployed to Haiti as the MINUSTAH Military Force Chief of Staff and Commander of the Canadian Contingent/Task Force Port au Prince. Since his re-deployment to Canada in July 2006, he was first employed in the Army HQ as Director Land Personnel Management, before taking over the position of Director of the Land Staff. He completed the US Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania prior to taking the position of Military Attaché in Washington, DC in 2009.