In the face of global adversaries like Russia and China bent on hegemony and conquest, Canada’s hands-off approach to defence and security is no longer tenable. While the country itself has seemingly not woken up to this realization, its NATO and Western allies certainly have.
They come from as far afield as Comox, B.C., Grande Prairie, Alta., and Guelph, Ont.
Once strangers, these new Canadian Armed Forces recruits are now seldom more than a few metres from one another — eating, sleeping and exercising as a unit — all part of the bonding process designed to create the soldiers, sailors and airmen (and women) of tomorrow.
They’re among the first cohort to pass through Basic Military Qualification, or basic training, under new guidelines aimed at removing hurdles and boosting numbers — changes the Department of National Defence (DND) hopes will solve a personnel crisis that Defence Minister Bill Blair called a “death spiral” for the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF).
Canada is the only one of 32 member nations not to publicly release a plan to meet the target
One of the country’s leading business voices is warning that Canada faces “diplomatic isolation” if it’s not prepared to deliver a concrete plan next month to raise defence spending to meet NATO’s benchmark.
The Business Council of Canada — which has been wading more and more into the debate on national security lately — made the assessment in a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
The letter comes as both NATO defence ministers and G7 leaders prepare to gather at separate meetings in Europe, and as leaders of the NATO alliance nations get ready for a summit in Washington, D.C. next month.
We are a Clown State.
Reported Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) vaccine injuries spiked 800% in 2021 and dramatically rose again in 2023, according to documents the Western Standard received.
Despite the known injuries, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government — backed by Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Wayne Eyre — continued to mandate vaccines, threatening military members who objected with dismissal or suspension without pay.
Last week was another public relations fiasco for the senior leadership of the Canadian Armed Forces. Ottawa Citizen defence reporter David Pugliese released a story headlined, “Soldiers leaving Canadian Forces over ‘toxic leadership’, top adviser warns.”
The Citizen article was based upon video footage of an April 23 virtual townhall hosted by Chief of Defence Staff General Wayne Eyre. This virtual event was for the CAF’s top military leaders to discuss the Liberal government’s recently released defence policy update.
Documents obtained by LifeSiteNews show that the number of vaccine injuries in the Canadian Armed Forces rose over 800 percent in 2021, with the majority being attributed to Moderna’s experimental COVID vaccine.
According to Access to Information (ATIP) documents shared with LifeSiteNews, the CAF’s COVID vaccine injury figures skyrocketed from 14 cases in 2020 to a whopping 128 in 2021, representing an increase of over 800 percent. According to the data, the majority of events, over 100 of them, happened after receipt of Moderna’s COVID vaccine.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced a plan to bring back mandatory national service for 18-year-olds last week. The plan would require British teens to partake in a 12-month full-time military placement or spend one weekend a month carrying out community service. The program, which the Tories insisted shouldn’t be described as “conscription,” could be dismissed as an outlandish idea from a government likely on its way out – if, that is, you hadn’t been tuned in to the changing mood about mandatory military service in the West in recent months.
“Canada, you are freeloading!” That’s how businessman and former Canadian soldier Lawrence (Larry) Stevenson interprets last week’s letter from 23 U.S. Democratic and Republican senators to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The American lawmakers urged Canada to uphold its NATO commitments, and speed up efforts to increase defence spending to two per cent of GDP.
Politicians are justly criticized for always voting at their party’s call, and never thinking for themselves at all, to paraphrase the musical HMS Pinafore.
Yet there are still freewheeling, free-thinking MPs who put the public interest ahead of their party.
Veteran Liberal MP John McKay, a parliamentarian for 27 years and current chair of the House defence committee, is one such.
Canada’s announcement of an $11.2-billion contract to improve training platforms for the military is getting a lukewarm reception at the country’s largest defence trade show, as allies and military industry companies want to see more investment from the federal government.
Bill Blair detailed the contract, which includes the purchase of 70 training aircraft, in a keynote speech at the Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries’ annual defence industry tradeshow (CANSEC) in Ottawa.
Canada’s soldiers are leaving the ranks because of toxic military leadership, a top adviser to the chief of the defence staff has warned.
Canadian Forces Chief Warrant Officer Bob McCann highlighted his warning April 23 during an appeal for changes in how leaders dealt with lower ranks.
The day after the federal government announced it would suspend its vaccine mandates in June 2022, military leaders were taking stock of their own related policy, with some saying making a similar announcement would impact the Canadian Armed Forces’ (CAF) “credibility.”
“If we rescind the CDS Directive, the credibility of the institution is weakened, particularly the relationship between the strategic and tactical levels,” read minutes from a Strategic Operations Planning Group (SOPG) meeting on June 15, 2022.
OTTAWA — The Liberal government’s new defence policy has landed with a resounding thud in Washington and it could be a sign that U.S. politicians are losing patience with Canada’s stinginess on defence spending, analysts say.
A letter released Thursday by 23 Democrat, Republican and independent United States senators took Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to task for Canada’s defence spending, demanding that Canada meet NATO benchmarks requiring members to commit at least two per cent of their GDP to defence spending.
The United States’ ambassador to Canada, David Cohen, says Canada is becoming “the outlier” in NATO following a bipartisan letter from 23 American senators calling on Ottawa to meet the two per cent of GDP defence spending target.
“At the end of 2024, the way projections are looking, Canada will be the only country in NATO that is not spending at least two per cent of its GDP on defence and does not have a plan to get there,” Cohen said in an interview with The West Block host Mercedes Stephenson.
“Canada has moved within NATO from being a bit of an outlier to being the outlier in the entire alliance.”
But we have Trannies galore in the pipeline! Don’t we?
The Canadian military never evaluated how operational readiness would be affected by the expulsion of soldiers refusing COVID-19 vaccination before imposing its mandate, internal records indicate.
“The CAF did not conduct a pre-policy risk analysis since CDS, based on solid medical advice, decided to accept any impacts this policy would/could have brought to bear,” wrote then-Brigadier-General Erick Simoneau in a May 2022 email.
