Brilliant! Unless the Conservatives prefer the approaches of one of the other candidates, and prefer to sulk in the Far-Right corner feeling angry and nursing mad conspiracy theories, this approach promises to be one of a group of policies which will give Trudeau and the Liberals a worthy competitor. Canada needs a viable choice in a party which could, indeed, form a government. This piece may start the ball rolling. Alternatively, it may get the Liberal party off its proverbial backside, and salvage our gutted Armed Forces.
I hope The Line will be giving equal space to each of the candidates for the conservative leadership as well as each of the leaders of the other parties. Especially if the current minority liberal government falls before the next scheduled federal election, a likely outcome from a brash new conservative leader looking to make their mark.
Actually, I don't subscribe to The Line to read election, any election, propaganda. I come here for the journalism, along with its insights and measured analysis.
Are you serious? This is an op-ed piece and they are very, very common in journalism. If you cannot tell the difference between an article and an op-ed you shouldn't be trusted to comment on anything having to do with Canadian politics. Politicians have been writing op-eds for newspapers for centuries.
Of course it’s a pitch. That’s what some op-eds are which I why I am not sure what the issue is here with this piece. Pretty wild your ignorance means something is wrong.
Sure, Ed spending is great, but you don't think we should revitalize defense spending? Especially considering the current Russian aggression and the fact that over the north pole were pretty much their neighbour. I've heard rumblings they're pretty interested in the arctic now that some of that ice is melting...
Don't knock spending on education. The feds don't weigh in on it tho after the ignorant convoy you can see why letting education slide in every province is a big mistake. People do not understand simple statistics.
The entire North Pole thing hasn't been in the news much lately. Maybe because it's not melting quickly enough to open up shipping lanes. I really don't think we, Canada, and Alaska have too much to worry about Russian aggression. 1. we are all of us, NATO. (Ukraine not so much tho we are all sympathetic) 2. Canada will decide this year whether to go with the F-35 (US) or the Gripen-E (Swedish). Things are in the works. 3. NATO countries have all fallen below their 2% GDP mark for decades. It's a peace thing. Since NATO was formed article 5 has been invoked once, by the Americans. Everyone turned out for that and we all got 20 years of war in the ME. The only country that hasn't dropped below 2% is the US and I hate to think about what they spend on their military. They have enough privately owned weapons to arm everyone for WW3. 4. Russia's military has proven to everyone, Putin included, to be somewhat less than advertised. If he didn't have nukes (and who knows what condition they are in) he'd have nothing.
Germany, year over year, spends somewhat less than Canada on defence. Getting excited now feels a little bit like shutting the barn door after the horse has gone.
You don't really think we'd get into a shooting war in the Arctic, do you? I suppose anything is possible but I'm hoping with a better-educated public we won't get taken for a ride by our pols.
John and E.J., I respectfully disagree - in a limited way.
Specifically, the main alternative to the federal Liberal Party (ugh!! - is my neutrality clear?) is the Conservative Party. The Conservatives are currently conducting a game of musical chairs to see who will lead them. Given that they are the main alternative, yada, yada, yada, I think it is in the public interest to allow us [i.e. we, the readers] to understand what the participants in said game of musical chairs stand for (like the mixed metaphor?).
I do not want to see these advertorials to be a continuing feature of The Line - with the exception of the other candidates for the leadership of the Conservatives. The leadership of the NDP or the Greens? Take a hike! Anyone else? Get lost.
Now, just to finish up. I am not a supporter of any party; indeed, in the last federal election I boycotted voting for the first time in my life as I felt that all the parties were too odious and absolutely explicitly and implicitly supported policies that would see Canada move further in the direction of harming my province, Alberta, simply for political gain.
Now, I will have to steel myself to read this piece of political junk mail.
I noticed that too. Interesting... he was only a consultant but I hope someone grills him on any ties that may still exist b/w him and his former employer
Nice platitudes, however the only thing a CPC member likes more than a military PR op is saving every dime possible. No fan of the current PM nor the LPC, but they have increased defense spending since they were elected and (re)started projects that had been shelved during the austerity dance of 2010-2014. The last couple of years under the Harper CPC saw the lowest defense spending as % of GDP since WW2. Don't anyone kid themselves there is not a single political party in Canada that will spend on the military what is required by a G7 & NATO country.
The funding level is not as important as its effectiveness. Canadian military procurement seems overly concerned with delivering industrial benefits to swing ridings. The Liberals have massively increased spending on everything. Has the government taken steps to promote the effectiveness of the spending in building military capacity rather than delivering votes?
I would be interested to see what spending Charest would cut in order to redirect money to the military.
Painful fail to haul out the "percent of GDP" metric. It's never used for a single other government budget that I can find. With every other problem, you assess the problem, devise your solution, cost that out, and budget. Only with the military do they say "you need to spend as much as economically possible, just name how high you can stand it, and then we'll decide what to spend it on".
But if you tried to assess the problem, what do we need? The ability to fight a nuclear power? Nope. The ability to prosecute aggressive war against a non-nuclear power, like the US did and Russia is now? Illegal. Only nuclear powers can get away with that; we refused, even with British and American support - and pressure.
The ability to execute a "UN Police Action", like Afghanistan is about the only legal, and non-suicidal, thing you can do with a modern military. And Afghanistan didn't work out well.
What we need a military for, is to impress America that we are an ally. Work forwards from that goal, and figure out what the smallest expenditure that will mollify them is, and spend only that.
And we have this problem because of oligarchs; including ours, who enable theirs. Charest has nothing to say about just tightening financial regulation and white-collar crime enforcement, which would do more to get rid of the next Ukraine (Taiwan, Moldova) than military threat. The people in charge of both Russia and China cannot be touched by our military, but they're afraid of our bankers.
Yes. I came here to write this and you beat me too it. The percent of GDP is only heard about on an international level and part of our NATO commitment but that isn't the entire picture of our defence spending. Thanks for your great comment.
Another thing that stood out for me along the same vein was his claim of " increase personnel to 100,000." The CAF has had a tremendously difficult time recruiting in order to just maintain what are already below requirements for personnel. This is true for all three service branches. There are a whole whack of things that contribute to this from a lack of proper HR within all of the CAF to the recent string of bad news around sexual misconduct. But regardless of the reasons, which are going to be complex and not solvable by any future PM, the fact is that the CAF cannot simply open the taps and recruit more people. They've been cranking and twisting the taps as hard as they could for the past 15 years and nothing but a drip has been coming in while the drain keeps opening larger and larger.
My snark about the "only government department" that works by money-first, comes from "The Spoils of War", Andrew Cockburn, 2019. I'm having trouble reading it (taken weeks) because I can't get through half a chapter without stomping off, fuming. An excerpt of the best chapter is in his column at Harper's:
I wholeheartedly support the positions laid out here. As for those who complain that this is an "advertorial", the proper term is an opinion piece. And it is utterly fair for The Line to be running such things.
Returning to the content of this op-ed, Mr Charest has raised the right issues with respect to our problems with procurement, our utter failure to secure the Canadian Arctic and longstanding failures to properly fund the military.
Finally, as others have pointed out, Mr Charest will likely have to account for his choice to shill for Huawei in recent years. Many others here have noticed this (and it is a serious issue).
I dunno if Jen and Matt will see this, they are truly busy. Look, I know two things, both of these people are very diligent, hard working people who say what they mean and mean what they say. They reject bullshit. This is why I hold them in such high regard.
I find it hard to believe that Jen Gerson and Matt Gurney could read this article and not see that it’s a campaign speech. Nor that they couldn’t see the implications of posting this on their feed. Are we financially supporting the propaganda wing of the federal Conservative Party?
You don’t even have to be polite about it but please tell me it ain’t so!
I am not going to stop supporting The Line for this one instance. The work y’all do is too damned important. Please do let us know if this is going to be a regular thing, though. This is not the kind of content I’m comfortable supporting.
Yes, I would say the same if this article were written by any politician.
I don't disagree with anything here and I get that the author -- and his decision to run for the Conservative leadership -- makes his opinion significant. But, there isn't a lot of significance here -- it's a pretty standard political platform statement. It honestly doesn't sound that different than the Liberal's criticism of the Harper government's record on millitary spending in 2014: http://espritdecorps.ca/defence-platforms-liberal.
No offense to the editors, but I've come to expect a bit more from pieces in The Line.
What's missing are some insights as to what we'd do differently under Mr. Charest. Canada's struggles regarding millitary spending and procurement have existed under both Conservative and Liberal governments, during times when millitary spending was both not a priority and a priority. So, what's going to be different if Mr. Charest is leader? What's his unique insights as to how we got here that can convince me that he understands how to solve this problem? If you don't have some new insights to bring to the problem, I'm a bit skeptical anything is going to change.
I don't expect a detailed plan for a leadership campaign -- that's not reasonable or smart tactially. But, some sense that the author has greater credibililty on this file than both his competitors and the other parties would make this a bit more worthy of The Line.
Please make sure you give space to real candidates as well, and not just unelectable media creations like Mr. Charest. Or maybe, even better, no candidates - they probably all have web sites.
wow...you would think that after the 2 years of Covid exposing the fragility of the health care system, we are going to spend money on the military, so that we can "contain" China? Talk about misguided priorities.
Sadly, it looks like the old "cold war" is back. The peace dividend from the 1990s is over. Canada & other members of NATO will have to spend more on the military whether we like it or not. Canada will have to defend the arctic against Russia interference in the arctic.
Charest has my member vote this September. Progressive and pragmatic is what that party needs to set a path and shake off all of the silly accumulated since barbaric cultural practices hotlines and Donald Trump turned them into morons.
It’s about time a leader addressed our woefull military decisions of the last 7 yrs. Now we just need to get Mr. Charest elected to a majority….,and walk the talk.
I'm no fan of the Trudeau government, but I also recognize that Harper talked a lot but didn't 'do' much either on this file. The reality is that pretty much every government over the past 30+ years has failed badly on this issue. There was, maybe, some excuse in the years immediately following the end of the Cold War, but successive governments have ignored repeated 'wake-up calls' from September 2001, the operation in Afghanistan, Russian incursions in Georgia, Crimea and on and on. And as much as I personally like Mr. Charest, even if he does become Conservative leader and, eventually, Prime Minister (and both are pretty big 'ifs') I suspect that Ukraine will be long forgotten and domestic policy priorities will be front and centre again.
Mr. Croskery, you deserve more than an abbreviated LOL for your reply. I LAUGHED OUT LOUD.
I am glad to see Jean Charest in the race primarily because he is an actual mature human being, with unparalleled experience and excellent communication skills. I will learn a lot instead of just wincing and looking away.
It does sound like he dusted off one of Harper's old speeches. Harper promised 3 icebreakers we got one. 100,000 troops (70K + 30K reservists) still lots of openings. Still waiting on the jets, helicopters, surface vessels, pistols... Perhaps the ships will arrive when the next government is sworn in. In fairness to Trudeau, he has increased spending as a percent of GDP, but it seems to be mostly spend in studies, inquiries, lawyers and ministerial travel. Sorry state of affairs. Good luck M. Charest.
Brilliant! Unless the Conservatives prefer the approaches of one of the other candidates, and prefer to sulk in the Far-Right corner feeling angry and nursing mad conspiracy theories, this approach promises to be one of a group of policies which will give Trudeau and the Liberals a worthy competitor. Canada needs a viable choice in a party which could, indeed, form a government. This piece may start the ball rolling. Alternatively, it may get the Liberal party off its proverbial backside, and salvage our gutted Armed Forces.
I hope The Line will be giving equal space to each of the candidates for the conservative leadership as well as each of the leaders of the other parties. Especially if the current minority liberal government falls before the next scheduled federal election, a likely outcome from a brash new conservative leader looking to make their mark.
Actually, I don't subscribe to The Line to read election, any election, propaganda. I come here for the journalism, along with its insights and measured analysis.
Are you serious? This is an op-ed piece and they are very, very common in journalism. If you cannot tell the difference between an article and an op-ed you shouldn't be trusted to comment on anything having to do with Canadian politics. Politicians have been writing op-eds for newspapers for centuries.
Really? You’re arguing semantics? Fine then. This isn’t a newspaper.
An op-ed? Hardly. "If elected as the leader, my Conservative government will blah blah blah" That's a pitch.
Of course it’s a pitch. That’s what some op-eds are which I why I am not sure what the issue is here with this piece. Pretty wild your ignorance means something is wrong.
When you disagree with someone you insult them so we will all be impressed by your big brain? /s
I'll explain it to you slowly. This is not an opinion/editorial. This is a pitch to sell you an old used car. And I do believe you are buying it.
Education. That's where money needs to be spent.
Sure, Ed spending is great, but you don't think we should revitalize defense spending? Especially considering the current Russian aggression and the fact that over the north pole were pretty much their neighbour. I've heard rumblings they're pretty interested in the arctic now that some of that ice is melting...
Don't knock spending on education. The feds don't weigh in on it tho after the ignorant convoy you can see why letting education slide in every province is a big mistake. People do not understand simple statistics.
The entire North Pole thing hasn't been in the news much lately. Maybe because it's not melting quickly enough to open up shipping lanes. I really don't think we, Canada, and Alaska have too much to worry about Russian aggression. 1. we are all of us, NATO. (Ukraine not so much tho we are all sympathetic) 2. Canada will decide this year whether to go with the F-35 (US) or the Gripen-E (Swedish). Things are in the works. 3. NATO countries have all fallen below their 2% GDP mark for decades. It's a peace thing. Since NATO was formed article 5 has been invoked once, by the Americans. Everyone turned out for that and we all got 20 years of war in the ME. The only country that hasn't dropped below 2% is the US and I hate to think about what they spend on their military. They have enough privately owned weapons to arm everyone for WW3. 4. Russia's military has proven to everyone, Putin included, to be somewhat less than advertised. If he didn't have nukes (and who knows what condition they are in) he'd have nothing.
Germany, year over year, spends somewhat less than Canada on defence. Getting excited now feels a little bit like shutting the barn door after the horse has gone.
You don't really think we'd get into a shooting war in the Arctic, do you? I suppose anything is possible but I'm hoping with a better-educated public we won't get taken for a ride by our pols.
John and E.J., I respectfully disagree - in a limited way.
Specifically, the main alternative to the federal Liberal Party (ugh!! - is my neutrality clear?) is the Conservative Party. The Conservatives are currently conducting a game of musical chairs to see who will lead them. Given that they are the main alternative, yada, yada, yada, I think it is in the public interest to allow us [i.e. we, the readers] to understand what the participants in said game of musical chairs stand for (like the mixed metaphor?).
I do not want to see these advertorials to be a continuing feature of The Line - with the exception of the other candidates for the leadership of the Conservatives. The leadership of the NDP or the Greens? Take a hike! Anyone else? Get lost.
Now, just to finish up. I am not a supporter of any party; indeed, in the last federal election I boycotted voting for the first time in my life as I felt that all the parties were too odious and absolutely explicitly and implicitly supported policies that would see Canada move further in the direction of harming my province, Alberta, simply for political gain.
Now, I will have to steel myself to read this piece of political junk mail.
Not the guy I want looking after Canada's cybersecurity considering his ties to Wauwei (sp?)and all....
I noticed that too. Interesting... he was only a consultant but I hope someone grills him on any ties that may still exist b/w him and his former employer
Anybody who had any connection with Huawei should be out. Even if he only had a Huawei phone.
Mr. Charest would have a bit more credibility if he hadn't spent the last few years shilling for Huwei aka the Chinese Communist Party.
Nice platitudes, however the only thing a CPC member likes more than a military PR op is saving every dime possible. No fan of the current PM nor the LPC, but they have increased defense spending since they were elected and (re)started projects that had been shelved during the austerity dance of 2010-2014. The last couple of years under the Harper CPC saw the lowest defense spending as % of GDP since WW2. Don't anyone kid themselves there is not a single political party in Canada that will spend on the military what is required by a G7 & NATO country.
The funding level is not as important as its effectiveness. Canadian military procurement seems overly concerned with delivering industrial benefits to swing ridings. The Liberals have massively increased spending on everything. Has the government taken steps to promote the effectiveness of the spending in building military capacity rather than delivering votes?
I would be interested to see what spending Charest would cut in order to redirect money to the military.
Painful fail to haul out the "percent of GDP" metric. It's never used for a single other government budget that I can find. With every other problem, you assess the problem, devise your solution, cost that out, and budget. Only with the military do they say "you need to spend as much as economically possible, just name how high you can stand it, and then we'll decide what to spend it on".
But if you tried to assess the problem, what do we need? The ability to fight a nuclear power? Nope. The ability to prosecute aggressive war against a non-nuclear power, like the US did and Russia is now? Illegal. Only nuclear powers can get away with that; we refused, even with British and American support - and pressure.
The ability to execute a "UN Police Action", like Afghanistan is about the only legal, and non-suicidal, thing you can do with a modern military. And Afghanistan didn't work out well.
What we need a military for, is to impress America that we are an ally. Work forwards from that goal, and figure out what the smallest expenditure that will mollify them is, and spend only that.
And we have this problem because of oligarchs; including ours, who enable theirs. Charest has nothing to say about just tightening financial regulation and white-collar crime enforcement, which would do more to get rid of the next Ukraine (Taiwan, Moldova) than military threat. The people in charge of both Russia and China cannot be touched by our military, but they're afraid of our bankers.
Yes. I came here to write this and you beat me too it. The percent of GDP is only heard about on an international level and part of our NATO commitment but that isn't the entire picture of our defence spending. Thanks for your great comment.
Another thing that stood out for me along the same vein was his claim of " increase personnel to 100,000." The CAF has had a tremendously difficult time recruiting in order to just maintain what are already below requirements for personnel. This is true for all three service branches. There are a whole whack of things that contribute to this from a lack of proper HR within all of the CAF to the recent string of bad news around sexual misconduct. But regardless of the reasons, which are going to be complex and not solvable by any future PM, the fact is that the CAF cannot simply open the taps and recruit more people. They've been cranking and twisting the taps as hard as they could for the past 15 years and nothing but a drip has been coming in while the drain keeps opening larger and larger.
My snark about the "only government department" that works by money-first, comes from "The Spoils of War", Andrew Cockburn, 2019. I'm having trouble reading it (taken weeks) because I can't get through half a chapter without stomping off, fuming. An excerpt of the best chapter is in his column at Harper's:
https://harpers.org/archive/2019/06/the-pentagon-syndrome/
I agree with you that more has to be done about money laundering. It is creating chaos in the real estate markets.
I wholeheartedly support the positions laid out here. As for those who complain that this is an "advertorial", the proper term is an opinion piece. And it is utterly fair for The Line to be running such things.
Returning to the content of this op-ed, Mr Charest has raised the right issues with respect to our problems with procurement, our utter failure to secure the Canadian Arctic and longstanding failures to properly fund the military.
Finally, as others have pointed out, Mr Charest will likely have to account for his choice to shill for Huawei in recent years. Many others here have noticed this (and it is a serious issue).
I dunno if Jen and Matt will see this, they are truly busy. Look, I know two things, both of these people are very diligent, hard working people who say what they mean and mean what they say. They reject bullshit. This is why I hold them in such high regard.
I find it hard to believe that Jen Gerson and Matt Gurney could read this article and not see that it’s a campaign speech. Nor that they couldn’t see the implications of posting this on their feed. Are we financially supporting the propaganda wing of the federal Conservative Party?
You don’t even have to be polite about it but please tell me it ain’t so!
I am not going to stop supporting The Line for this one instance. The work y’all do is too damned important. Please do let us know if this is going to be a regular thing, though. This is not the kind of content I’m comfortable supporting.
Yes, I would say the same if this article were written by any politician.
He's not wrong. And he might be the only candidate with a shot at being PM.
Mr. Charest would have a bit more credibility if he hadn't spent the last few years shilling for the Huwei aka the Chinese Communist Party.
I don't disagree with anything here and I get that the author -- and his decision to run for the Conservative leadership -- makes his opinion significant. But, there isn't a lot of significance here -- it's a pretty standard political platform statement. It honestly doesn't sound that different than the Liberal's criticism of the Harper government's record on millitary spending in 2014: http://espritdecorps.ca/defence-platforms-liberal.
No offense to the editors, but I've come to expect a bit more from pieces in The Line.
What's missing are some insights as to what we'd do differently under Mr. Charest. Canada's struggles regarding millitary spending and procurement have existed under both Conservative and Liberal governments, during times when millitary spending was both not a priority and a priority. So, what's going to be different if Mr. Charest is leader? What's his unique insights as to how we got here that can convince me that he understands how to solve this problem? If you don't have some new insights to bring to the problem, I'm a bit skeptical anything is going to change.
I don't expect a detailed plan for a leadership campaign -- that's not reasonable or smart tactially. But, some sense that the author has greater credibililty on this file than both his competitors and the other parties would make this a bit more worthy of The Line.
Please make sure you give space to real candidates as well, and not just unelectable media creations like Mr. Charest. Or maybe, even better, no candidates - they probably all have web sites.
wow...you would think that after the 2 years of Covid exposing the fragility of the health care system, we are going to spend money on the military, so that we can "contain" China? Talk about misguided priorities.
Sadly, it looks like the old "cold war" is back. The peace dividend from the 1990s is over. Canada & other members of NATO will have to spend more on the military whether we like it or not. Canada will have to defend the arctic against Russia interference in the arctic.
Maybe if we are just nice to them they will leave us alone.
I doubt it. Canada will have to spend billions to get our military capability up to normal.
I was being sarcastic, but do you think we will actually defend the arctic?
No, but Canada should step up & rebuild the military.
I agree, but we won't.
Charest has my member vote this September. Progressive and pragmatic is what that party needs to set a path and shake off all of the silly accumulated since barbaric cultural practices hotlines and Donald Trump turned them into morons.
It’s about time a leader addressed our woefull military decisions of the last 7 yrs. Now we just need to get Mr. Charest elected to a majority….,and walk the talk.
I'm no fan of the Trudeau government, but I also recognize that Harper talked a lot but didn't 'do' much either on this file. The reality is that pretty much every government over the past 30+ years has failed badly on this issue. There was, maybe, some excuse in the years immediately following the end of the Cold War, but successive governments have ignored repeated 'wake-up calls' from September 2001, the operation in Afghanistan, Russian incursions in Georgia, Crimea and on and on. And as much as I personally like Mr. Charest, even if he does become Conservative leader and, eventually, Prime Minister (and both are pretty big 'ifs') I suspect that Ukraine will be long forgotten and domestic policy priorities will be front and centre again.
Still, it is pleasing to see a potential leader who writes like a leader, not like a mud- throwing peasant from a Hardy novel.
Mr. Croskery, you deserve more than an abbreviated LOL for your reply. I LAUGHED OUT LOUD.
I am glad to see Jean Charest in the race primarily because he is an actual mature human being, with unparalleled experience and excellent communication skills. I will learn a lot instead of just wincing and looking away.
It does sound like he dusted off one of Harper's old speeches. Harper promised 3 icebreakers we got one. 100,000 troops (70K + 30K reservists) still lots of openings. Still waiting on the jets, helicopters, surface vessels, pistols... Perhaps the ships will arrive when the next government is sworn in. In fairness to Trudeau, he has increased spending as a percent of GDP, but it seems to be mostly spend in studies, inquiries, lawyers and ministerial travel. Sorry state of affairs. Good luck M. Charest.
This has been the empty cry of every conservative politician for decades, and has never come true.
The RCN was brutalized under Harper. It amounts to Sound and Fury signifying Nothing. If it does not come with specifics I'm not buying it anymore.