A top U.S. military officer has warned that the delivery of F-35 aircraft ordered by Canada and other allies could be delayed because of ongoing technical problems.
If that happens, depending on the length of the delay, Canadian taxpayers could have to spend between $400 million and $700 million extra for the stealth fighters.
h/t Mauser
Active-duty military personnel in Nova Scotia are experiencing an “epidemic” of homelessness and housing vulnerability while others are turning down postings in the province because housing is either unaffordable or unavailable, provincial MLAs heard Tuesday.
Several groups that provide community-level supports and services to members of the Canadian Armed Forces and to veterans were invited to a legislative standing committee Tuesday to provide insight into how the province’s cost-of-living crisis is affecting Forces members and veterans.
After more than two decades of debate, discussion and policy dissection, Canada’s air force finally has the green light to acquire armed drones.
A fleet of 11 MQ-9B Reaper drones, built by U.S. defence contractor General Atomics, will be purchased in a $2.49 billion package, Liberal MPs announced Tuesday on behalf of Defence Minister Bill Blair.
As CBC News reported in October, delivery of the remotely piloted aircraft won’t take place until 2028 and the air force doesn’t expect to have the full fleet up and running until 2033.
This seems like a very small return on a huge investment in useless chatter.
The Department of National Defence says some menstrual product dispensers in male washrooms have been vandalized, as members of the Canadian Armed Forces question the necessity of the new government policy.
“Unfortunately, vandalism has already been observed on some dispensing/disposal units installed in DND occupied buildings,” wrote Colonel A.J. Delhommeau in an internal email obtained by The Epoch Times.
I was disappointed, but hardly surprised, that the Trudeau Liberals recently bucked the NATO trend and decided to go ahead with a series of cuts to our already emasculated Canadian Armed Forces. This comes after revelations that Trudeau quietly informed NATO that Canada will “never” be able to boost its GDP spending on defence to the promised NATO minimum of two per cent. All this while our Chief of the Defence Staff recently declared that Canada is “at war” with Russia and China.
But Canada’s perennially derelict military funding in an increasingly volatile world is not ultimately the fault of our defence-dollar-averse politicians or their voting public.
The problem, frankly, is the United States.
The Canadian Forces quietly decided against proceeding with a court martial for an army officer who called on police and military personnel to rise up against the federal government over COVID-19 pandemic regulations.
Just how low can a Canadian prime minister go when dealing with the needs of military and RCMP veterans?
Certainly, I once thought it was then-prime minister Paul Martin’s decision in 2005 to eliminate disability pensions in favour of meagre lump sum payments. A policy since reversed after much public complaint.
For most of our history Canada’s defence policy could be described as: oceans, cold and the Americans. On three sides, thousands of miles of blue water separated us from the nearest predator; on the fourth was the world’s friendliest superpower. To boot, most of the territory we had to defend was frozen tundra, uninhabitable to all but the world’s hardiest people.
OTTAWA – A new report from Statistics Canada suggests the problem of sexual misconduct in the military is getting worse.
The survey suggests 3.5 per cent of Canadian Armed Forces personnel say they were sexually assaulted by another military member in 2022.
… Victims of these assaults were more likely to be women, the survey found, and they were disproportionately younger, Indigenous, members of the LGBTQ+ community or people with disabilities.
Maybe the CAF needs to go to a healing lodge.
Defence Minister Bill Blair has rolled back previous comments that the Canadian military had finally stopped losing more soldiers than it recruits.
“Unfortunately, I want to report to this committee, because it’s important that we be candid, that [recruitment and retention] continues to persist as a challenge for us,” Mr. Blair told the House of Commons defence committee on Nov. 23.
Do young Canadians, and I refer to white males who until recently made up the bulk of CAF’s recruiting pool, really want to defend Hamas supporters? Or Khalistan seperatists? Or cross-dressers who want to dance in lingerie in front of children? Or put up with the anti-white racism of the CAF’s DEI regime?
Canada not only trained suspected Iraqi war criminals in 2018, it distributed western-made weapons and protective equipment to them — likely coming from U.S. stockpiles — says a former soldier who was among the first to blow the whistle on videos that implicate the trainees in atrocities.
The Canadian soldiers who were conducting the training in northern Iraq complained at the time to their superiors on the ground. They warned that their Iraqi students — many of them veterans of combat against Islamic State militants — had videos on their cellphones of torture and extra-judicial killings. Those warnings took three full years to make their way to senior military leaders in Ottawa.
When Justin Trudeau spoke at the NATO summit in Lithuania in July, he trumpeted Canada’s future defence investments, from the $38.6 billion earmarked to upgrade NORAD to the $19-billion purchase of 88 F35 fighter jets.
“Canada is safeguarding freedom and security around the world,” he said.
But it is always better to judge politicians by their results, rather than their intentions.
There was a revelatory moment on the weekend as Defence Minister Bill Blair attempted to bridge the gap between rhetoric and reality in the Liberal government’s spending plans for his department and the Canadian military.
Asked about an anticipated (and long overdue) update to the country’s defence policy (supposedly made urgent two years ago by Russia’s full-on invasion of Ukraine), Blair acknowledged that the reset is now being viewed through a fiscal lens.
But the cut off your dick or tits budget will remain untouched.
With the Canadian military already staring down millions of dollars in cuts, Defence Minister Bill Blair says Canada still needs to spend more on key areas to boost military readiness and capacity.
In an interview on Rosemary Barton Live airing Sunday, Blair said the federal government would focus any budget cuts away from areas like ammunition and equipment, weapons platforms and training.
“We need to spend more on the right things,” Blair told CBC chief political correspondent Rosemary Barton.
I bet the CAF will still pay to cut off your dick.
A Canadian soldier has pleaded guilty to two counts of conduct to the prejudice of good order and discipline in relation to videos posted on social media that criticized vaccine requirements for military personnel.
Warrant Officer James Topp, who faces a maximum punishment of dismissal with disgrace, told the start of his court martial in New Westminster, B.C., that he’s making his guilty pleas voluntarily.
