The fact that our armed forces needs a dedicated general officer's mess in Ottawa is emblematic of a top-heavy organization that's favoring bureaucracy over capabilities. The 15,000+ troops in a single US division is commanded by a single major general, compared with multiple generals commanding a Canadian Army with less numerical strength. There are too many officers without proper jobs, which either leads to sloth or people inventing unnecessary work and processes.
This ties into the other problem - I'm not sure that the Forces have been attracting and retaining the best people over the past 30 years. This isn't meant as a put down for the many good people serving today - I've got a number of friends who're serving. However, I do remember whole classes of RMC aerospace engineering grads being told "Sorry - we've no jobs for you, so you're discharged" in the '90s. A lot of the best, most capable people I knew in cadets had planned to join the Forces but turned to other things after witnessing the dysfunction of the early '90s. I've also had friends who wanted to join, but spent months or even years waiting for the recruitment office to process their applications. Some of the people I knew who stuck it out and became commissioned were not exactly the pick of the litter.
All in all, I think there's a profound leadership problem in the Canadian Armed Forces that's going to take tremendous effort to resolve. Even if the political will existed to build out a hollowed force, it may be difficult to get the people needed to lead the change.
Also, there is a profound leadership problem in the political masters who have massive bureaucracies that accomplish little, but vote appropriately for the party that brung them to dance. They in turn, aid and encourage the armed forces to become just like them, because that's all they know.
How embarrassed I feel after hearing you describe, with respect and credibility, the lose-lose scenario we would create if we pretended to be able to actually provide the kind of support Kyiv wants: "We might be welcome as a political gesture, but we might also just be in the way."
The media spends most of its time going on about the sex life of our generals and nothing on the operational condition of our troops. Then they write articles demanding we help all these countries with our soldiers as if all it takes is to show up. Unreal. Good timely article.
What are Canada's national defense priorities? Something akin to Israel's Iron Dome seems essential if we want to minimize the possibility of our annihilation. High manufacturing capacity is what wins major wars. Combat drones can wipe out any infantry , sniper, or aircraft, so obviously they should be acquired. Anti tank missiles should be pursued next. But actual troops? Why? Because they need a pay cheque? The men and women employed by the military should be paid for the education, training to develop those other things and then develop them.
Canadians who don't demand these things need a history lesson of June 1940 in France.
I am going to tell you all why I just decided to join the conversation on this website: I am sick of the Legacy Media; I am sick of voters who vote because some people vote because the so-called leader has nice hair and socks; I grew up and worked with the Greatest Generation who kept the Government in line because they were afraid of them; and I am fed up with the Legacy media and the Social media. This particular thread is what interested me because at this point the Canadian Military has to be going through the darkest times ever. I want to help you guys end that!!!
The legacy media is now a propaganda arm of the Government of Canada. Canadian business leaders gladly line up at the trough. It’s much easier than working for a living…
I've had a bit of spare time over the past two years to think about my country and I believe I'm coming to the sad conclusion that Canada, and it's current boundaries, won't be around much longer. We citizens, at least 60% of us, were declared inessential by our own governments and have been fined, arrested and incarcerated for violating laws that were never debated in a public forum. English Canada has never been more divided than it is today and most Canadians can't afford to live here. We have the most overvalued real-estate in the world in a country with a population density per square kilometer of 2. 5% of our housing is owned by criminals and PEPs (politically exposed people). 25% of homes in the GTA were bought by corporations whose owners can't be traced and yet our politicians refuse to enact beneficial ownership laws withany teeth. Our public officials can simply refuse to answer legitimate questions and tell us in all seriousness that we don't have the right to know. To date, there's been no public inquiry into the biggest mass killing in Canadian history. This happened almost two years ago and all we get are crickets. Our Country is now governed by unelected individuals. MPs are merely sycophants and Cabinet ministers have to go through Katie Telford (or Gerald Butts until he took the fall for his friend) if they want to meet with the Prime Minister. We are told that we have world class health care system yet, we spent the past two years locked up because it can't even handle the strain of the seasonal flu, let alone a global pandemic. It is, much like our military: top heavy with rent seeking bureaucrats more interested in lining their own pockets, than helping solve problems. Our charter of rights is treated like a roll of toilet paper by many elected officials and we're on the brink of eliminating free speech. Although we've never really had a free and open market economy, what little of it we have, is being destroyed or sold off to any foreign entity that wants to throw a little cash our way.
This does not make for a very positive future, but I will put my name on a ballot, not because I believe I can win ( I'm sure I won't), but because its the only place I will be able to challenge this train wreck we've created for ourselves(although I'm sure we'll want to eliminate these pesky elections soon enough).
Historically speaking, the CAF has always been underfunded, as Government only diverts money when there is a crisis. The population as a whole rarely thinks of the CAF until they are deemed necessary.
You have said what I have felt was true for decades. It's sickening, and criminally negligent to allow our country to have become so pathetically useless in terms of defending itself, never mind defending fellow democratic countries in other parts of the world. This country needs to set some minimum standards, by legislation, for certain areas of major importance, like defense. That legislation should include automatic prison terms for any prime minister who fails to abide by the standard, eg. minimum 2% GDP for defense (and how its broken down by category within defense so the majority doesn't go towards the hoards of bureaucrats in Ottawa rather than the people who do the fighting).
All you want is another $1000 per household? I'm sure everybody can scrape that up, knowing we'll have additional warships and planes out there, ready to kill our enemies. Who is it that needs an additional $16B/year worth of killing? Anything less than 16,000 per year is over a million dollars per defeated enemy, of course.
It's obvious you need to do some serious reading of history, especially the 1930's. You think I actually LIKE spending money on war material? Those who ignore the lessons of history are doomed to repeat the pain of those lessons. The U.S. has provided Europe and us with a curtain of protection since WW2, while we have not contributed our fair share of providing deterrent. The world right now is worse off than during the cold war when China was self crippling itself and having skirmish warfare with the Soviet Union. Now we have two dictatorial super powers aligned against the west. The same principle of might neutralizing might during the cold war applies. We are not talking about just defending our own borders; it's about defending democracy. If you don't think that's important, read the following by Martin Niemoller:
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Now, in first verse, substitute 'the socialists' with Ukraine.
In second verse, substitute 'the trade unionists' with Taiwan.
In the third verse, substitute' the Jews' with Finland.
In the last line, substitute 'me' with Canada.
Now do you get it? It's about more than us in our nice cozy protected North American bubble.
I started learning 1930s history about 55 years ago, at my father's knee, so I'd know why he fought. I also got some 1910s history from his Dad, a WW1 vet and Boer War vet. Their cynical attitudes would best be learned these days from Gwynne Dyer's book, "Canada and the Great Power Game, 1914-2014", a history that I recommend unreservedly.
I'm wondering how you write an article charging others with denial of reality, and the charge does not contain the word "nuclear". When discussing war with Russia. (Call it what it is.)
(If you want *complete* contempt for reality, you'd have to look to American "reasons" for going to war, like the conspiracy theory that a paranoid dictator was going to invent a nuke, and promptly conspire with foreign religious fanatics to deliver it 8,000 km away. Or that 9/11 was planned anywhere but Bremen, Germany. Delusional thinking is very common in military affairs, though not as common as lying to your civilian masters, even for 20 years straight, about how well, say, Afghanistan, was going.)
Their modern military 'capability' is fantastically expensive. The add up Pentagon, DOE, CIA, NSA, foreign DHS and DEA assets, and they drop a trillion a year on it. $7000 per household. About a $120B/year budget if it was the Canadian population. I bet Mr. Conway could get 'er done with that budget, no? (We give the CAF just $1300 per household, $20B/year)
America's been spending that $7000/house now for over 20 years, and what they have to show for it is the utterly contemptible embarrassments of Iraq and Afghanistan.
It's possible you won't have to "tell Afghanistan" about winners and losers: they were losing 400 civilians to drone strikes per year, another 600 injured. (Remember the 10 killed on the way out of town?)
...so, add all that up, it's why military spending is not in good favour with the generation that has watched it bring only death, failure, and moral humiliation. Torture, furcrissake.
What is the CAF for? Not for defending our land, it's never come up, (since 53 years before Confederation). Our only use is what Mr. Conway is wishing we could do better right now: serve our Big Brother countries, America and Britain, to please them. My granddad was in our first one, the Transvaal, helping Britain put Boers in concentration camps.
Warriors love war-planning scenarios, and a good one can bring about some budget. You just need a war-planning scenario that does not involve:
a) fighting people in their home countries, where they could apply the 16-char formula to us;
b) fighting nuclear powers, for reasons 75 years old.
Remaining scenario? Fight to defend other countries from non-nuclear invaders, (Korea, 1951, Gulf, 1991) except non-nuclear powers hardly ever invade anybody any more, so budgets have been moribund.
We wouldn't have to defend Ukraine against a nuclear power if we hadn't helped convince them to give up their own nukes in 1994. The solution for that is easy, obvious, and frightening.
John Todd Why is it difficult to donate money or send you guys an email suggestion via standard email or provide you a suggestion for and article or investigation. I tried to give you money the other day and the system won't work It tried to get me to open a "Mail Account etc I don't want a mail account I like what I got. This seems to be my only hope of contacting you
Robert you say, "We are spending a third of a trillion dollars on new ships and net aircraft ..."
I do think that you are inaccurate. Oh, the government may SAY we are spending that amount but a) the contracts have not been signed; b) the expenditure would be over many, many, many years - indeed, decades, particularly if you look at the proposed replacement of handguns from the Second World War that are still PROPOSED to be replaced.
So, I cannot accept your assertion that we are spending anything like the amount you state.
About half of the US military budget is spent on pay and benefits for current and retired service members and their families. It's tilted even more heavily in that direction for other NATO militaries, including Canada. In contrast, the numerically large Russian and Chinese militaries make extensive use of poorly paid conscripts.
The fact that our armed forces needs a dedicated general officer's mess in Ottawa is emblematic of a top-heavy organization that's favoring bureaucracy over capabilities. The 15,000+ troops in a single US division is commanded by a single major general, compared with multiple generals commanding a Canadian Army with less numerical strength. There are too many officers without proper jobs, which either leads to sloth or people inventing unnecessary work and processes.
This ties into the other problem - I'm not sure that the Forces have been attracting and retaining the best people over the past 30 years. This isn't meant as a put down for the many good people serving today - I've got a number of friends who're serving. However, I do remember whole classes of RMC aerospace engineering grads being told "Sorry - we've no jobs for you, so you're discharged" in the '90s. A lot of the best, most capable people I knew in cadets had planned to join the Forces but turned to other things after witnessing the dysfunction of the early '90s. I've also had friends who wanted to join, but spent months or even years waiting for the recruitment office to process their applications. Some of the people I knew who stuck it out and became commissioned were not exactly the pick of the litter.
All in all, I think there's a profound leadership problem in the Canadian Armed Forces that's going to take tremendous effort to resolve. Even if the political will existed to build out a hollowed force, it may be difficult to get the people needed to lead the change.
Also, there is a profound leadership problem in the political masters who have massive bureaucracies that accomplish little, but vote appropriately for the party that brung them to dance. They in turn, aid and encourage the armed forces to become just like them, because that's all they know.
How embarrassed I feel after hearing you describe, with respect and credibility, the lose-lose scenario we would create if we pretended to be able to actually provide the kind of support Kyiv wants: "We might be welcome as a political gesture, but we might also just be in the way."
The media spends most of its time going on about the sex life of our generals and nothing on the operational condition of our troops. Then they write articles demanding we help all these countries with our soldiers as if all it takes is to show up. Unreal. Good timely article.
What are Canada's national defense priorities? Something akin to Israel's Iron Dome seems essential if we want to minimize the possibility of our annihilation. High manufacturing capacity is what wins major wars. Combat drones can wipe out any infantry , sniper, or aircraft, so obviously they should be acquired. Anti tank missiles should be pursued next. But actual troops? Why? Because they need a pay cheque? The men and women employed by the military should be paid for the education, training to develop those other things and then develop them.
Canadians who don't demand these things need a history lesson of June 1940 in France.
I am going to tell you all why I just decided to join the conversation on this website: I am sick of the Legacy Media; I am sick of voters who vote because some people vote because the so-called leader has nice hair and socks; I grew up and worked with the Greatest Generation who kept the Government in line because they were afraid of them; and I am fed up with the Legacy media and the Social media. This particular thread is what interested me because at this point the Canadian Military has to be going through the darkest times ever. I want to help you guys end that!!!
The legacy media is now a propaganda arm of the Government of Canada. Canadian business leaders gladly line up at the trough. It’s much easier than working for a living…
I've had a bit of spare time over the past two years to think about my country and I believe I'm coming to the sad conclusion that Canada, and it's current boundaries, won't be around much longer. We citizens, at least 60% of us, were declared inessential by our own governments and have been fined, arrested and incarcerated for violating laws that were never debated in a public forum. English Canada has never been more divided than it is today and most Canadians can't afford to live here. We have the most overvalued real-estate in the world in a country with a population density per square kilometer of 2. 5% of our housing is owned by criminals and PEPs (politically exposed people). 25% of homes in the GTA were bought by corporations whose owners can't be traced and yet our politicians refuse to enact beneficial ownership laws withany teeth. Our public officials can simply refuse to answer legitimate questions and tell us in all seriousness that we don't have the right to know. To date, there's been no public inquiry into the biggest mass killing in Canadian history. This happened almost two years ago and all we get are crickets. Our Country is now governed by unelected individuals. MPs are merely sycophants and Cabinet ministers have to go through Katie Telford (or Gerald Butts until he took the fall for his friend) if they want to meet with the Prime Minister. We are told that we have world class health care system yet, we spent the past two years locked up because it can't even handle the strain of the seasonal flu, let alone a global pandemic. It is, much like our military: top heavy with rent seeking bureaucrats more interested in lining their own pockets, than helping solve problems. Our charter of rights is treated like a roll of toilet paper by many elected officials and we're on the brink of eliminating free speech. Although we've never really had a free and open market economy, what little of it we have, is being destroyed or sold off to any foreign entity that wants to throw a little cash our way.
This does not make for a very positive future, but I will put my name on a ballot, not because I believe I can win ( I'm sure I won't), but because its the only place I will be able to challenge this train wreck we've created for ourselves(although I'm sure we'll want to eliminate these pesky elections soon enough).
Historically speaking, the CAF has always been underfunded, as Government only diverts money when there is a crisis. The population as a whole rarely thinks of the CAF until they are deemed necessary.
You have said what I have felt was true for decades. It's sickening, and criminally negligent to allow our country to have become so pathetically useless in terms of defending itself, never mind defending fellow democratic countries in other parts of the world. This country needs to set some minimum standards, by legislation, for certain areas of major importance, like defense. That legislation should include automatic prison terms for any prime minister who fails to abide by the standard, eg. minimum 2% GDP for defense (and how its broken down by category within defense so the majority doesn't go towards the hoards of bureaucrats in Ottawa rather than the people who do the fighting).
All you want is another $1000 per household? I'm sure everybody can scrape that up, knowing we'll have additional warships and planes out there, ready to kill our enemies. Who is it that needs an additional $16B/year worth of killing? Anything less than 16,000 per year is over a million dollars per defeated enemy, of course.
It's obvious you need to do some serious reading of history, especially the 1930's. You think I actually LIKE spending money on war material? Those who ignore the lessons of history are doomed to repeat the pain of those lessons. The U.S. has provided Europe and us with a curtain of protection since WW2, while we have not contributed our fair share of providing deterrent. The world right now is worse off than during the cold war when China was self crippling itself and having skirmish warfare with the Soviet Union. Now we have two dictatorial super powers aligned against the west. The same principle of might neutralizing might during the cold war applies. We are not talking about just defending our own borders; it's about defending democracy. If you don't think that's important, read the following by Martin Niemoller:
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Now, in first verse, substitute 'the socialists' with Ukraine.
In second verse, substitute 'the trade unionists' with Taiwan.
In the third verse, substitute' the Jews' with Finland.
In the last line, substitute 'me' with Canada.
Now do you get it? It's about more than us in our nice cozy protected North American bubble.
I started learning 1930s history about 55 years ago, at my father's knee, so I'd know why he fought. I also got some 1910s history from his Dad, a WW1 vet and Boer War vet. Their cynical attitudes would best be learned these days from Gwynne Dyer's book, "Canada and the Great Power Game, 1914-2014", a history that I recommend unreservedly.
I'm wondering how you write an article charging others with denial of reality, and the charge does not contain the word "nuclear". When discussing war with Russia. (Call it what it is.)
(If you want *complete* contempt for reality, you'd have to look to American "reasons" for going to war, like the conspiracy theory that a paranoid dictator was going to invent a nuke, and promptly conspire with foreign religious fanatics to deliver it 8,000 km away. Or that 9/11 was planned anywhere but Bremen, Germany. Delusional thinking is very common in military affairs, though not as common as lying to your civilian masters, even for 20 years straight, about how well, say, Afghanistan, was going.)
Their modern military 'capability' is fantastically expensive. The add up Pentagon, DOE, CIA, NSA, foreign DHS and DEA assets, and they drop a trillion a year on it. $7000 per household. About a $120B/year budget if it was the Canadian population. I bet Mr. Conway could get 'er done with that budget, no? (We give the CAF just $1300 per household, $20B/year)
America's been spending that $7000/house now for over 20 years, and what they have to show for it is the utterly contemptible embarrassments of Iraq and Afghanistan.
It's possible you won't have to "tell Afghanistan" about winners and losers: they were losing 400 civilians to drone strikes per year, another 600 injured. (Remember the 10 killed on the way out of town?)
https://reliefweb.int/report/afghanistan/40-all-civilian-casualties-airstrikes-afghanistan-almost-1600-last-five-years
The Americans were defeated in Afghanistan and Vietnam, as the French were defeated in Algeria, by what Mao called "The Sixteen Character Formula":
https://gwynnedyer.com/2010/afghanistan-in-sixteen-characters/
...so, add all that up, it's why military spending is not in good favour with the generation that has watched it bring only death, failure, and moral humiliation. Torture, furcrissake.
What is the CAF for? Not for defending our land, it's never come up, (since 53 years before Confederation). Our only use is what Mr. Conway is wishing we could do better right now: serve our Big Brother countries, America and Britain, to please them. My granddad was in our first one, the Transvaal, helping Britain put Boers in concentration camps.
Warriors love war-planning scenarios, and a good one can bring about some budget. You just need a war-planning scenario that does not involve:
a) fighting people in their home countries, where they could apply the 16-char formula to us;
b) fighting nuclear powers, for reasons 75 years old.
Remaining scenario? Fight to defend other countries from non-nuclear invaders, (Korea, 1951, Gulf, 1991) except non-nuclear powers hardly ever invade anybody any more, so budgets have been moribund.
We wouldn't have to defend Ukraine against a nuclear power if we hadn't helped convince them to give up their own nukes in 1994. The solution for that is easy, obvious, and frightening.
John Todd Why is it difficult to donate money or send you guys an email suggestion via standard email or provide you a suggestion for and article or investigation. I tried to give you money the other day and the system won't work It tried to get me to open a "Mail Account etc I don't want a mail account I like what I got. This seems to be my only hope of contacting you
I had a problem too, but I finally was able to pay them ( I forget how now)...
Robert you say, "We are spending a third of a trillion dollars on new ships and net aircraft ..."
I do think that you are inaccurate. Oh, the government may SAY we are spending that amount but a) the contracts have not been signed; b) the expenditure would be over many, many, many years - indeed, decades, particularly if you look at the proposed replacement of handguns from the Second World War that are still PROPOSED to be replaced.
So, I cannot accept your assertion that we are spending anything like the amount you state.
About half of the US military budget is spent on pay and benefits for current and retired service members and their families. It's tilted even more heavily in that direction for other NATO militaries, including Canada. In contrast, the numerically large Russian and Chinese militaries make extensive use of poorly paid conscripts.
Yes, however is a co-ordinate conjunction. It requires a semi-colon before and a comma after, though.