For decades, "we" has been denied, as Canada brings in more and more immigrants loyal to foreign countries. And our state certainly denies there is such a thing as a Canadian people.
In the age of land acknowledgements, Canada explicitly disavows ownership of the territory. Why would we spend money to defend stolen land?
The ideology of the modern Canadian state makes major efforts to defend Arctic sovereignty absurd.
Far too many people seem to think we can solve the problems created by contradictions in our official Canadian ideology without resolving the contradictions.
No other country's voters would let a sitting government get away with denigrating and essentially denying the existence of their own nation, territory and people, and then re-elect them multiple times.
This madness should have been over and done with years ago. People need to stop making excuses for these saboteurs who occupy our Parliament.
I didn't. I was tempted by Pierre Trudeau the originator of this decline..... when I was 17 in 1968, but realized what was happening by the time I reached voting age (then 21).
Exactly. The bulk of the Canadian electorate is the root of the problem, not the idiots they elect. When you give the franchise to people who care nothing about the nation's defense, care nothing about government waste and bloat, have never so much as glanced as an Auditor General's report, care more about handouts that the growing debt burden being passed onto our children, squeal like stuck pigs whenever our "sacred cow" health care system is criticized and the subject of fundamental health care reform is broached, and cheer and support policies contrary to economic growth, today's Canada is what you get. So what to do? How about written examinations so that the franchise must be earned as a privilege (like a driver's license, or a license to own a gun) rather than given to all, regardless of how ill-informed, innumerate and, sorry, stupid, they are? Bad driving has consequences. Misuse of firearms has consequences. Ill-informed and ignorant voting has consequences, considerably more severe than the preceding two.
>> Why were we relying on others to defend our own territory? Or fuel our economy? Why were we not taking full responsibility for defending our sovereignty? How did that even happen?<<
Canadians are cheap. Think about it, we are a country that is too cheap to tear down the rat infested prime minister's house. We buy used submarines. We are half-assed and with government's help over the decades, we started to believe our only job was to wear a blue beret and do peacekeeping. That's the image Canada loves to cling to.
It never was real.
This is a country that is too cheap to take care of its veterans. Now with $4.2 billion being slashed from VAC which is perpetually broken and everyone knows it is broken.
Best people I ever worked with.. Veterans deserve better. Why join up in the middle of a recruiting crisis when the government doesn't have your back when you are injured and get out.
I joined the infantry in 1985. I was trained at the height of the cold war when we could get nuked before breakfast
We were cheap then and we are cheap now. I remember going to clothing stores regularly to exchange my worn out combat fatigues for a used set that was only slightly less worn. No blank rounds because of cuts and grown men running around the back forty in their fighting order shouting 'Bang Bang".
Everything Matt pointed out is bang-on 100%.
Self reflection sounds great but we would have to get everyone's eyes off their smart phones for a few minutes.
Every party has treated our veterans abominably, going back to WW1. It's almost as if ignoring them will make the horrors of what they've experienced go away. It's a national disgrace. But the government is always happy to commit and brag about how great the military is, ignoring that they've systematically betrayed it at every level.
I'm convinced why "Canadians see health care as the heart of being Canadian" is because we are in aggregate cheap. We see free as good. Other cultures have "you get what you pay for" as a lesson. Not here.
Once you realize how cheap Canadians are you can't not see it. Ask anyone in international sales. Our wealthy by the way are the cheapest of all.
And the awfulness of the fact we have carried on as described for as long as we have is surpassed only by the fact that so many of us did it with the smug self-satisfaction referred to by Matt (particularly vis-a-vis the USA).
"Why are we still fighting certain veterans groups in court? Because they're asking for more than we are able to give right now," Trudeau, February, 2018.
There was money to be squandered on affordable housing, venture capital, public procurement contracts for young, innovative firms and to develop an intellectual-property strategy. How did those investments work out?
Not to mention... (get your coffee and be ready for my rant of today...)
Adopting UNDRIP 100%, "land acknowledgements" and new unreadable street-signs in your face everywhere, tearing down statues, burning down churches, physical confrontations on our streets against Jews, out-of-control ongoing made-up "Human Rights", IRGC militants living peacefully in Canada after running from their crimes in Iran, condescendingly insulting Canadians by calling them systemically racist without basis while simultaneously turning a blind eye to actual Islamic racism on our streets and in our universities, funding an ever-growing list of made-up sexual anomalies, ostracizing sensible normal parents, adding "feel good" statutory holidays without good cause, criminalizing speech, funding state-propaganda, lying to the public, gerrymandering laws to shield Liberals from the law and from scrutiny, encouraging Chinese political interference in Canada, allowing foreign buy-up of land, businesses and IP, subsidizing destructive activist groups to agitate and protest, to provide the illusion of public support, encouraging out-of-control professional licensing bodies to regulate speech at penalty of de-licensing (law, medicine, psychology, etc), padding the courts with WOKE judges who run revolving door justice at the peril of innocent Canadians, replacing merit with DEI, implementing insane changes to criminal law and refusing to reverse said changes, all while attacking law-abiding Canadian gun owners in a campaign to defang the public. And coming soon, central bank digital currency, with all of its horrors and communist-style control over the population.
This is only part of the Liberal plan for Canada...
Pretty much everything has been turned ass-backwards & upside down, all in the cause of "feelings"and an incompetent, lying, cry-baby Prime Minister and a handful of globalist fools in the background advising on fiscal and cultural policy... Carney is part of this globalist cabal.
Now Carney is bamboozling Canadians with his bafflegab, as he villanizes President Trump, takes the helm and steers us toward a 2 trillion dollar national debt, with ever-increasing financial commitments.
I encourage the reader to do their own math, and find out how much that works out to, per adult taxpayer or family... Next we'll see +2% added to GST, and capital gains tax applied to at least 2/3 of capital gains, then expect a sneaky new inheritance tax. There will be no stopping this insanity...
Canadians will eventually start learning a hard life lesson... FACTS AND COMMON SENSE DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS!...
Problem is that the list you gave, which is 100% accurate by the way, is so outlandish that many people can't acknowledge or accept it.
This was all predictably going to go very very wrong when each of these policies were introduced but opposition got shouted down at the time or ignored in favour of ridiculous distractions.
Don't, Jerry, unless you're also adding in Harper's "we have no moral obligation to our veterans", before he cut their funding, and gutted their support network, and closed their offices. It's an all-party failure.
Actually, it was Federal lawyers who said that Canada has no moral obligation, but point taken. It's the same Federal lawyers who are arguing that the decision to enact the Emergency Act against a bunch of annoying truckers requires 'clarification' instead of just admitting that the decision to enact was an egregious overreach and suggest to the Canadian Parliament, the people who make the laws, that some work needs to be done (i.e., amendments - clarification).
The government is hoping to avoid all that if the SCoC rules their interpretation of the Emergencies Act was valid. The court can invoke a "reasonable hypothetical" again. They only need to focus on a single word, like they did with "firearm" in R. v. Hill.
People that were around in the early 1970's watched as the government ruined (yes that's a harsh word) federal administration. IMO the Trudeau pere Liberals faced a real, pressing problem of poor economic development in some regions. Instead of economic development, they chose the quick fix of hiring lots of people into the civil service.
Administration was the easiest area to grow quickly; layers were added. By the 1980's a huge number of federal civil servants were able to hinder anything they found threatening, such as efficiency and effectiveness. Procurement dysfunctionally required ever increasing delays. A new paper trail supported each new layer. Costs sky rocketed. That's how we got to now.
Is it possible this is what the majority of Canadians want? If we continue to elect governments that create these situations it can only mean we are getting what we have asked for?
Both major parties have contributed to this but after about 10 years of Trudeau Liberal policy the majority of Canadians (primarily Central Canda) asked for more of the same.
At least Harper's Conservatives didn't completely botch the fighter jets file, and foreign policy file. Trudeau's tenure was one clusterf**k after another. It'll take generations to repair, if that's even possible.
Don’t get me started on the damned Avro Arrow mythology. Loved the plane and the story as a kid. Studying more about the details in university history classes and seeing the project through the eyes of a practicing engineer disabused me of a lot of the legend. The plane’s mission was obsolete before it went into production; it was extremely expensive, and its advanced features were going to be hideously difficult to mature and support in service. Finally, it didn’t even have a weapons system at the time of cancellation after the intended system was found to be unworkable with ‘50s technology. As for Avro Canada, it was the epitome of a connected Liberal pork barrel company that most people on this site excoriate if it’s named SNC-Lavalin or Bombardier.
I'm surprised a resurrected Arrow isn't being seriously talked about as Canada's "new" fighter jet.
It would kick the ball down the road for far longer than the US/non-US source conundrum will, require billions to be funneled into Quebec and Maritime ridings where it will undoubtedly be "built", and swell the nostalgia heartstrings of boomer Canadians like just about nothing else would!
At best we'd get as far as the landing gear before the country defaults on its debt in 10 years. But who cares, no fighters is about as effective as using a 1950's interceptor presumably with a heads up display grafted on and a couple of sidewinders duct taped to the wings.
Just spit-balling some design options: A piston gas engine would emit less CO2. Fixed landing gear would reduce costs. An open cockpit would be safer for the pilot. And, if it had two sets of wings, it would have more lift and could carry more armaments.
We'll agree to disagree then, since the overall discussion is about how successive Canadian governments allowed our defense infrastructure to be reduced to insignificance over generations since the Second world war.
Well thought out and well written article Matt. I would have used much harsher words, but I understand why you didn't. I may be one of the few who always pay attention to the world around us. Recently retired, I'm now seriously considering leaving Canada. I don't believe Carney has any capacity to fix the destruction caused by Trudeau, Chretien and their ilk. Canadians don't think they like Poilievre, but they don't know reality. It's sad, really; "Poilievre Derangement Syndrome" (PDS).
Trump was right. As usual. If only Canadians could pull their heads from their a$$es... But then, there are no real "Canadians" anymore, are there?...
You need only look at the National Defence Act to see why defence spending was allowed to languish to the point of atrophy. There are no active verbs in the NDA. It basically says you can have a military but does not define what it should do in policy. Things like sovereignty, defence of national interests abroad, etc. This has allowed politicians to do nothing as they have no policy definition to hold their feet to the fire. Without that kind of direction, you cannot define size of a force needed, what type of forces, readiness, etc. Its not complicated: no policy, no force requirements.
LoL. We're rapidly becoming a highly censored banana republic with newspeak and thought police to make it more Orwellian. I didn't serve for 32 years, got wounded and shot at numerous times for this. If I didn't have Stage 4 cancer, I would leave. Do you realize there are 145 General Officers in the CF.....for a force of maybe 63,000
Hot take time. Could it be the weaponized theatre kids that got their hands on power for a decade simply had a world view that didn't comprehend the necessity of a well provisioned armed forces?
The idea of "progress" was one that held such things were largely unnecessary in a "post-national" state. That talking shops like the UN, WTO, the international criminal court were all that were needed in the new reality offered from a naive reading of Fukuyama's end of history. Somehow the arc of history bending towards justice is incompatible with procurement of radar systems and vector-thrust fighter bombers.
The truly cynical part was the lip-service paid by 'announcing' the resources needed for military equipment and training, which they knew would never be spent from the public purse under their watch. They had elections to win ya know.
Meanwhile, the Liberals were more than ready to spend tax and debt dollars in real time to aggressively go after the NDP, thereby further securing seats in urban areas. Not a bad strategy when you are trying to appeal to only 30% of the electorate.
And then the rules-based international order, which your world view took as a given, starts to collapse and your country gets punched in the face.
IMO all of the comments herein, including Canada's needed mea culpas, apply to decisions over the past 50 years that ignored or denied the need to build economic strength. IMO our under developed economy is our biggest weakness.
IMO it's not time to build the economy under the rubric of the military, it's time to build the military as a service in a country that values and builds our economy. A country's strength comes in part from organizing so that dysfunction in one service does not doom another. (For example, search and rescue should be a separate service from the military. Ports with an economic development component should be build by port authorities with the economy in mind, and the military can support and use the port. Etc.)
Focus on building the economy and lots else falls into place.
Totally agree with this well written column. Sadly though, the last 25 at least years,have eroded the capability of the bureaucracy to manage large projects. One just has to look at the announcement today on Phoenix ,the federal pay system. At the centre of the problem is a total weakening of the senior levels of the bureaucracy’s ability to speak truth to power. Carney is showing he can listen, but without a significant change in the culture we may be stuck limping along.
It’s mostly a case of lack of government capacity, and even that can be overcome at times. After flooding took out big stretches (including bridges) of the Coquihalla Highway in BC in 2021, the BC government was able to get it repaired and re-opened within a few months.
Sometimes Canadian government is also smart enough to get out of its own way, as with the privatization of air traffic control as Nav Canada and putting airports under the control of local airport authorities. That’s a stark contrast with the supposedly free enterprise US, where both air traffic control and airports remain under the control of their federal government as part of the FAA. Both Nav Canada and the FAA have experienced staffing challenges over the past few years, but the FAA has been worse *and* their technology modernization program has been a long-running protracted failure. Canada’s privately operated system has done well by contrast, freed from a lot of the politics hobbling American efforts. The difference in airport infrastructure is even more profound: Canadian airports have continuously upgraded and expanded, competing for traffic. The centrally-managed and federally funded American airports have often become badly dated and seriously congested, such as La Guardia and Newark in New York.
Our military is in the state it is because it became a political bauble, to be used to garner votes from whatever side or perspective the government of the day required to maintain power. Then it succumbed to the primary Canadian industry - creating, growing and maintaining sclerotic, impenetrable and immobile bureaucracies whose reason to exist appears only to be self-perpetuation. It's the result of political parties led by politicians that seek power only for it's own sake, not to pursue specific goals or outcomes for the benefit of the citizenry at large as opposed to carefully defined voting blocs.
Guess I’ll jump into this fray (pity party?) (Must be getting an attack of FOMO)
Canada attitude to the arctic seems to be either pretentiousness or being dog in the manger. How else can it justify claiming dominion over such a huge territory and resources with so little commitment and resources?
Waving pieces of paper written almost 200 years ago impresses no one. Especially the original inhabitants whose white lawyers say that whitey stole the land from them in the first place and who are the only ones who have a dog in the fight every day.
When the Red Chinese snd Russians start building resource extraction facilities and “research” stations (all owned by nominally Canadian but Chinese controlled companies) will there be enough equipment and mukluks (hopefully more effective in preventing the massive frostbite recently encountered by Canadian troops in Alaska) to control them?
Well said. We are not safe, full stop. Canadians need to get themselves psychologically prepared for that realization. Right now, most aren't prepared for when the wifi is out, I suspect.
"Our" "own" territory?
For decades, "we" has been denied, as Canada brings in more and more immigrants loyal to foreign countries. And our state certainly denies there is such a thing as a Canadian people.
In the age of land acknowledgements, Canada explicitly disavows ownership of the territory. Why would we spend money to defend stolen land?
The ideology of the modern Canadian state makes major efforts to defend Arctic sovereignty absurd.
You aren't supposed to connect those dots. Please keep every announcement in its own silo.
Far too many people seem to think we can solve the problems created by contradictions in our official Canadian ideology without resolving the contradictions.
Our government apologizes for settling Canada while bringing in record numbers of settlers.
In fairness, the new people are mere immigrants. They aren't generally doing the tough job of creating a developed economy from the wilderness.
No other country's voters would let a sitting government get away with denigrating and essentially denying the existence of their own nation, territory and people, and then re-elect them multiple times.
This madness should have been over and done with years ago. People need to stop making excuses for these saboteurs who occupy our Parliament.
Quebec and urban Ontario voted for this in coalition. They care more about handouts and dunking on the Americans than the future of the country.
I didn't. I was tempted by Pierre Trudeau the originator of this decline..... when I was 17 in 1968, but realized what was happening by the time I reached voting age (then 21).
The most recent time they sort of cut off their own nose to spite the Americans' face, didn't they?
Exactly. The bulk of the Canadian electorate is the root of the problem, not the idiots they elect. When you give the franchise to people who care nothing about the nation's defense, care nothing about government waste and bloat, have never so much as glanced as an Auditor General's report, care more about handouts that the growing debt burden being passed onto our children, squeal like stuck pigs whenever our "sacred cow" health care system is criticized and the subject of fundamental health care reform is broached, and cheer and support policies contrary to economic growth, today's Canada is what you get. So what to do? How about written examinations so that the franchise must be earned as a privilege (like a driver's license, or a license to own a gun) rather than given to all, regardless of how ill-informed, innumerate and, sorry, stupid, they are? Bad driving has consequences. Misuse of firearms has consequences. Ill-informed and ignorant voting has consequences, considerably more severe than the preceding two.
Unfortunately some of the technically most educated people in the country are part of the problem according to polling data.
I think a simple requirement to have paid at least $1 in net income taxes in the last 5 years in order to vote would clear up a lot of this though.
>> Why were we relying on others to defend our own territory? Or fuel our economy? Why were we not taking full responsibility for defending our sovereignty? How did that even happen?<<
Canadians are cheap. Think about it, we are a country that is too cheap to tear down the rat infested prime minister's house. We buy used submarines. We are half-assed and with government's help over the decades, we started to believe our only job was to wear a blue beret and do peacekeeping. That's the image Canada loves to cling to.
It never was real.
This is a country that is too cheap to take care of its veterans. Now with $4.2 billion being slashed from VAC which is perpetually broken and everyone knows it is broken.
Best people I ever worked with.. Veterans deserve better. Why join up in the middle of a recruiting crisis when the government doesn't have your back when you are injured and get out.
I joined the infantry in 1985. I was trained at the height of the cold war when we could get nuked before breakfast
We were cheap then and we are cheap now. I remember going to clothing stores regularly to exchange my worn out combat fatigues for a used set that was only slightly less worn. No blank rounds because of cuts and grown men running around the back forty in their fighting order shouting 'Bang Bang".
Everything Matt pointed out is bang-on 100%.
Self reflection sounds great but we would have to get everyone's eyes off their smart phones for a few minutes.
And yet our governments spend a fantastic amount of money on all kinds of ridiculous things.
The Canadian state and Canadian voters aren't cheap. They just don't want to spend money on certain things.
Every party has treated our veterans abominably, going back to WW1. It's almost as if ignoring them will make the horrors of what they've experienced go away. It's a national disgrace. But the government is always happy to commit and brag about how great the military is, ignoring that they've systematically betrayed it at every level.
Accurate.
I'm convinced why "Canadians see health care as the heart of being Canadian" is because we are in aggregate cheap. We see free as good. Other cultures have "you get what you pay for" as a lesson. Not here.
Once you realize how cheap Canadians are you can't not see it. Ask anyone in international sales. Our wealthy by the way are the cheapest of all.
There is no value to free.
Agreed, but free > good is the culture.
And we don't like paying taxes.
We might feel better about taxes if what we're paying for #$% worked.
It's like it disappears down a black hole.
EVERY. WORD. OF. THIS.
And the awfulness of the fact we have carried on as described for as long as we have is surpassed only by the fact that so many of us did it with the smug self-satisfaction referred to by Matt (particularly vis-a-vis the USA).
Outstanding piece, Matt.
"Why are we still fighting certain veterans groups in court? Because they're asking for more than we are able to give right now," Trudeau, February, 2018.
There was money to be squandered on affordable housing, venture capital, public procurement contracts for young, innovative firms and to develop an intellectual-property strategy. How did those investments work out?
Not to mention... (get your coffee and be ready for my rant of today...)
Adopting UNDRIP 100%, "land acknowledgements" and new unreadable street-signs in your face everywhere, tearing down statues, burning down churches, physical confrontations on our streets against Jews, out-of-control ongoing made-up "Human Rights", IRGC militants living peacefully in Canada after running from their crimes in Iran, condescendingly insulting Canadians by calling them systemically racist without basis while simultaneously turning a blind eye to actual Islamic racism on our streets and in our universities, funding an ever-growing list of made-up sexual anomalies, ostracizing sensible normal parents, adding "feel good" statutory holidays without good cause, criminalizing speech, funding state-propaganda, lying to the public, gerrymandering laws to shield Liberals from the law and from scrutiny, encouraging Chinese political interference in Canada, allowing foreign buy-up of land, businesses and IP, subsidizing destructive activist groups to agitate and protest, to provide the illusion of public support, encouraging out-of-control professional licensing bodies to regulate speech at penalty of de-licensing (law, medicine, psychology, etc), padding the courts with WOKE judges who run revolving door justice at the peril of innocent Canadians, replacing merit with DEI, implementing insane changes to criminal law and refusing to reverse said changes, all while attacking law-abiding Canadian gun owners in a campaign to defang the public. And coming soon, central bank digital currency, with all of its horrors and communist-style control over the population.
This is only part of the Liberal plan for Canada...
Pretty much everything has been turned ass-backwards & upside down, all in the cause of "feelings"and an incompetent, lying, cry-baby Prime Minister and a handful of globalist fools in the background advising on fiscal and cultural policy... Carney is part of this globalist cabal.
Now Carney is bamboozling Canadians with his bafflegab, as he villanizes President Trump, takes the helm and steers us toward a 2 trillion dollar national debt, with ever-increasing financial commitments.
I encourage the reader to do their own math, and find out how much that works out to, per adult taxpayer or family... Next we'll see +2% added to GST, and capital gains tax applied to at least 2/3 of capital gains, then expect a sneaky new inheritance tax. There will be no stopping this insanity...
Canadians will eventually start learning a hard life lesson... FACTS AND COMMON SENSE DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS!...
Problem is that the list you gave, which is 100% accurate by the way, is so outlandish that many people can't acknowledge or accept it.
This was all predictably going to go very very wrong when each of these policies were introduced but opposition got shouted down at the time or ignored in favour of ridiculous distractions.
My list is only a tiny sample...
Wow.
Your rebuttal?
Not worth it.
100%
Don't, Jerry, unless you're also adding in Harper's "we have no moral obligation to our veterans", before he cut their funding, and gutted their support network, and closed their offices. It's an all-party failure.
Very true. I can cut Harper some slack because he was trying to balance the budget. Trudeau was doing the opposite.
See, two people who agree on little can agree that Trudeau was utterly useless :)
Worse than useless; malevolent.
Actually, it was Federal lawyers who said that Canada has no moral obligation, but point taken. It's the same Federal lawyers who are arguing that the decision to enact the Emergency Act against a bunch of annoying truckers requires 'clarification' instead of just admitting that the decision to enact was an egregious overreach and suggest to the Canadian Parliament, the people who make the laws, that some work needs to be done (i.e., amendments - clarification).
The government is hoping to avoid all that if the SCoC rules their interpretation of the Emergencies Act was valid. The court can invoke a "reasonable hypothetical" again. They only need to focus on a single word, like they did with "firearm" in R. v. Hill.
People that were around in the early 1970's watched as the government ruined (yes that's a harsh word) federal administration. IMO the Trudeau pere Liberals faced a real, pressing problem of poor economic development in some regions. Instead of economic development, they chose the quick fix of hiring lots of people into the civil service.
Administration was the easiest area to grow quickly; layers were added. By the 1980's a huge number of federal civil servants were able to hinder anything they found threatening, such as efficiency and effectiveness. Procurement dysfunctionally required ever increasing delays. A new paper trail supported each new layer. Costs sky rocketed. That's how we got to now.
It's patronage politics gone national.
My goodness, I cant disagree with a single word. Well written Matt. !
Is it possible this is what the majority of Canadians want? If we continue to elect governments that create these situations it can only mean we are getting what we have asked for?
Both major parties have contributed to this but after about 10 years of Trudeau Liberal policy the majority of Canadians (primarily Central Canda) asked for more of the same.
Given the conservatives didn't feel the need to offer more in this area, yeah, it is on voters in the end.
At least Harper's Conservatives didn't completely botch the fighter jets file, and foreign policy file. Trudeau's tenure was one clusterf**k after another. It'll take generations to repair, if that's even possible.
It's not looking good these days.
Fighter jet file? Wasn't it Diefenbaker who destroyed the Arrow? Let's not cherry pick along partisan lines, there's enough blame to go around.
Don’t get me started on the damned Avro Arrow mythology. Loved the plane and the story as a kid. Studying more about the details in university history classes and seeing the project through the eyes of a practicing engineer disabused me of a lot of the legend. The plane’s mission was obsolete before it went into production; it was extremely expensive, and its advanced features were going to be hideously difficult to mature and support in service. Finally, it didn’t even have a weapons system at the time of cancellation after the intended system was found to be unworkable with ‘50s technology. As for Avro Canada, it was the epitome of a connected Liberal pork barrel company that most people on this site excoriate if it’s named SNC-Lavalin or Bombardier.
Thanks for adding your historical perspective to the conversation George. There goes my last fairytale about Canadian innovative prowess
I'm surprised a resurrected Arrow isn't being seriously talked about as Canada's "new" fighter jet.
It would kick the ball down the road for far longer than the US/non-US source conundrum will, require billions to be funneled into Quebec and Maritime ridings where it will undoubtedly be "built", and swell the nostalgia heartstrings of boomer Canadians like just about nothing else would!
At best we'd get as far as the landing gear before the country defaults on its debt in 10 years. But who cares, no fighters is about as effective as using a 1950's interceptor presumably with a heads up display grafted on and a couple of sidewinders duct taped to the wings.
Just spit-balling some design options: A piston gas engine would emit less CO2. Fixed landing gear would reduce costs. An open cockpit would be safer for the pilot. And, if it had two sets of wings, it would have more lift and could carry more armaments.
F35. Arrow was several generations ago, absolutely irrelevant to this discussion.
We'll agree to disagree then, since the overall discussion is about how successive Canadian governments allowed our defense infrastructure to be reduced to insignificance over generations since the Second world war.
Well thought out and well written article Matt. I would have used much harsher words, but I understand why you didn't. I may be one of the few who always pay attention to the world around us. Recently retired, I'm now seriously considering leaving Canada. I don't believe Carney has any capacity to fix the destruction caused by Trudeau, Chretien and their ilk. Canadians don't think they like Poilievre, but they don't know reality. It's sad, really; "Poilievre Derangement Syndrome" (PDS).
Trump was right. As usual. If only Canadians could pull their heads from their a$$es... But then, there are no real "Canadians" anymore, are there?...
What is a real Canadian?
Obviously not someone from rural Alberta.
"Trump was right"?????
Yes. Repeatedly.
Ditch CBC, CTV, CNN, MSNOW. Open your mind and consider better, more honest information sources.
And who should my information sources be?
Let’s not do this.
Actually Trump was right about a lot of stuff: too bad he is too stupid to properly implement the fixes.
You need only look at the National Defence Act to see why defence spending was allowed to languish to the point of atrophy. There are no active verbs in the NDA. It basically says you can have a military but does not define what it should do in policy. Things like sovereignty, defence of national interests abroad, etc. This has allowed politicians to do nothing as they have no policy definition to hold their feet to the fire. Without that kind of direction, you cannot define size of a force needed, what type of forces, readiness, etc. Its not complicated: no policy, no force requirements.
But I thought ... I thought we were a 'middle power'?
Echoes of Lloyd Axworthy??
LoL. We're rapidly becoming a highly censored banana republic with newspeak and thought police to make it more Orwellian. I didn't serve for 32 years, got wounded and shot at numerous times for this. If I didn't have Stage 4 cancer, I would leave. Do you realize there are 145 General Officers in the CF.....for a force of maybe 63,000
Do you remember when we had more corporals than privates during the force reduction program of the late 80s?
Yes very well, plus the pay freezes incentive freezes, do more with less horsesh..
AS an 85 year old Canadian I totally agree with you. Well said
Hot take time. Could it be the weaponized theatre kids that got their hands on power for a decade simply had a world view that didn't comprehend the necessity of a well provisioned armed forces?
The idea of "progress" was one that held such things were largely unnecessary in a "post-national" state. That talking shops like the UN, WTO, the international criminal court were all that were needed in the new reality offered from a naive reading of Fukuyama's end of history. Somehow the arc of history bending towards justice is incompatible with procurement of radar systems and vector-thrust fighter bombers.
The truly cynical part was the lip-service paid by 'announcing' the resources needed for military equipment and training, which they knew would never be spent from the public purse under their watch. They had elections to win ya know.
Meanwhile, the Liberals were more than ready to spend tax and debt dollars in real time to aggressively go after the NDP, thereby further securing seats in urban areas. Not a bad strategy when you are trying to appeal to only 30% of the electorate.
And then the rules-based international order, which your world view took as a given, starts to collapse and your country gets punched in the face.
This was all unforeseen!!!! WE MEANT WELL!!!
IMO all of the comments herein, including Canada's needed mea culpas, apply to decisions over the past 50 years that ignored or denied the need to build economic strength. IMO our under developed economy is our biggest weakness.
IMO it's not time to build the economy under the rubric of the military, it's time to build the military as a service in a country that values and builds our economy. A country's strength comes in part from organizing so that dysfunction in one service does not doom another. (For example, search and rescue should be a separate service from the military. Ports with an economic development component should be build by port authorities with the economy in mind, and the military can support and use the port. Etc.)
Focus on building the economy and lots else falls into place.
Today's Canada and today's "Liberal" party of "Canada" do not care and will not care about CANADA.
Get the hint people. Look at what they actually are doing in their wokeist haze.
Some bafflegab word for Carney blarney. Paaahhhh....
Totally agree with this well written column. Sadly though, the last 25 at least years,have eroded the capability of the bureaucracy to manage large projects. One just has to look at the announcement today on Phoenix ,the federal pay system. At the centre of the problem is a total weakening of the senior levels of the bureaucracy’s ability to speak truth to power. Carney is showing he can listen, but without a significant change in the culture we may be stuck limping along.
Well said. This country can't get things done. Great at announcements but crap on the follow through.
And too much reliance on polls when they do do something.
It’s mostly a case of lack of government capacity, and even that can be overcome at times. After flooding took out big stretches (including bridges) of the Coquihalla Highway in BC in 2021, the BC government was able to get it repaired and re-opened within a few months.
Sometimes Canadian government is also smart enough to get out of its own way, as with the privatization of air traffic control as Nav Canada and putting airports under the control of local airport authorities. That’s a stark contrast with the supposedly free enterprise US, where both air traffic control and airports remain under the control of their federal government as part of the FAA. Both Nav Canada and the FAA have experienced staffing challenges over the past few years, but the FAA has been worse *and* their technology modernization program has been a long-running protracted failure. Canada’s privately operated system has done well by contrast, freed from a lot of the politics hobbling American efforts. The difference in airport infrastructure is even more profound: Canadian airports have continuously upgraded and expanded, competing for traffic. The centrally-managed and federally funded American airports have often become badly dated and seriously congested, such as La Guardia and Newark in New York.
Excellent piece as usual.
Our military is in the state it is because it became a political bauble, to be used to garner votes from whatever side or perspective the government of the day required to maintain power. Then it succumbed to the primary Canadian industry - creating, growing and maintaining sclerotic, impenetrable and immobile bureaucracies whose reason to exist appears only to be self-perpetuation. It's the result of political parties led by politicians that seek power only for it's own sake, not to pursue specific goals or outcomes for the benefit of the citizenry at large as opposed to carefully defined voting blocs.
Goes back to the Ross Rifle methinks.
Guess I’ll jump into this fray (pity party?) (Must be getting an attack of FOMO)
Canada attitude to the arctic seems to be either pretentiousness or being dog in the manger. How else can it justify claiming dominion over such a huge territory and resources with so little commitment and resources?
Waving pieces of paper written almost 200 years ago impresses no one. Especially the original inhabitants whose white lawyers say that whitey stole the land from them in the first place and who are the only ones who have a dog in the fight every day.
When the Red Chinese snd Russians start building resource extraction facilities and “research” stations (all owned by nominally Canadian but Chinese controlled companies) will there be enough equipment and mukluks (hopefully more effective in preventing the massive frostbite recently encountered by Canadian troops in Alaska) to control them?
Well said. We are not safe, full stop. Canadians need to get themselves psychologically prepared for that realization. Right now, most aren't prepared for when the wifi is out, I suspect.