Date of publication: June 10, 2022 • 7 hours ago • 3 minutes reading • 108 comments Photo by National Post Graphics
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A new report by the Parliamentary Budget Officer found that if Canada were to come close to meeting our minimum NATO commitments, we would have to spend at least $ 13 billion more on defense each year. Canada has neglected its military for more than a generation at this point, with the inevitable result that uniforms are unrivaled, outdated ships pushed into service until they catch fire, and allies constantly talking about being eternal freighters. .
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But it was never like that. Watch the “Everything Must Be Better” video or read the recording below to find out when Canada took “guarding you seriously” seriously. If you’re a Canadian, you’re used to the idea that our military is not that good at things. Our only supply boat caught fire, so we had to put together a spare part from an old container ship. If our soldiers show up at a shooting match, their World War II pistols block so much that everyone has to share one. MV Asterix, the Royal Canadian Navy’s only supply ship. It does its job, but we are not allowed to travel it to war zones. Photo by Andrew Vaughan / The Canadian Press But there was a time, not so long ago, when the Canadian Armed Forces was not an embarrassment. And I’m not talking about world wars. Yes, we all know that Canada had the third largest navy in the world at the end of World War II. this happens when you sink most of the others.
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I’m talking about the early Cold War. Canada was a founding member of NATO in 1949 and for the first 20 years of the alliance, it was something we took very seriously. This is the HMCS Bonaventure, one of three aircraft carriers operated by Canada in the 1950s and 1960s. We had a naval base in Bermuda and five air bases in Europe: three in Germany, one in France and one in the United Kingdom. In the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Americans asked Canada to patrol their East Sea to focus on the Caribbean. Four European-based Canadian fighter jets fly over the HMCS Bonaventure, a Canadian aircraft carrier, in this 1968 photo. Photo by the Canadian Armed Forces We also designed and built our own things. This is the Canadian-made CF-100 Canuck, patrolling the Iron Curtain until 1981. And this is the Canadair Saber: It was pretty good that we sold it in the UK, Germany and the United States.
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Even when countries around the world are stepping up military spending as opposed to Russia, Canada still has one of the proportionately smaller defense budgets in NATO. Even after some modest increases in the military budget, we still spend only about 1.5 percent of GDP. But back in the 1950s, the military budget was typically 4 percent of GDP or higher. In 1970, you had more than 100,000 active members of the Canadian Armed Forces. Today, Canada has 15 million more people, but the regular force has shrunk to 68,000. For the framework, the UK pays about 2.2 percent. Photo from the Budget Office of the Parliament So what has changed? It is popular to blame Pierre Trudeau. Although it kept most of Canada’s Cold War infrastructure intact, it gradually reduced military spending as a share of GDP. But it was the 1990s where things really went south. The Cold War ended just as Canada was experiencing a public debt crisis. So while frantically balancing the budget, we decided it would be okay if many of our armed forces kept us together with bungee cords (literally, in some cases). And honestly, the conservative Stephen Harper was not that different: he liked the military, but he liked the budget constraint even more.
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Stephen Harper in the Arctic in 2010. It’s not a great sign when you show off your power to the cameras and it consists of a dinghy, a Coast Guard boat and a flying aircraft. Photo by Sun Media In any case, a strong army can be a part of it because people used to listen to Canada a few times. We never tire of romanticizing the 1956 era when Prime Minister Lester Pearson proposed the use of peacekeeping forces to end the Suez Crisis. But Pearson was not just a negotiator. he actually had a well-equipped army that was strong enough to act as an intervener in a major conflict in the Middle East. It turns out that world leaders are less willing to answer your calls when all you have is ideas about what their soldiers could do, because yours is too busy to catch fire.
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