Potentially we could lose sovereignty over our own territorial waters if we’re not proactive in artic defense. This is certainly a policy I can get behind.
Instead of spending millions on financing military personnel and material in the Arctic north and creating budgets to invest, support and manage personnel to live and work in the Arctic and high Arctic … why not just provide more supports for the Indigenous Inuit people that already live up there? Wouldn’t it be cheaper and more economical to just fund and support that people that already want to live up there and call it their home rather than in spending millions and possibly billions on paying people to go and work up there for a few years or months. If Canada spent millions and even billions on supporting, training and financing the Inuit people up there … you’d end up with a group of people that would live and work up there all their lives.
So the option is … spend millions or billions on temporary workers to go up there
Or spend millions or billions on people that already live up there and could become Canada’s permanent northern defense force as well as make their lives more comfortable.
On the other side of that argument … it shouldn’t take military ideologies and economic considerations to even think about helping out people who desperately need the help from the rest of Canada.
I’m wholly supportive of northern development. If all of the proposed economic activity comes to fruition in the future in terms of resource extraction and shipping then we’ll need the people and infrastructure in place to facilitate that. It’d only make sense for defense and development to go hand in hand. After all a more heavily populated area is much more easily defensible.
Looking back at the article I’m surprised it didn’t touch on that subject. I guess my brain just filled in that obvious gap.
Real talk: The only country that could feasibly invade Canada is the USA.
If we’re legitimately worried about being invaded we should not be supporting the US Defense Industrial Complex in any way shape or form.
Now if we’re not worried about being invaded by the US, then we should focus on supporting countries that are actually on the front lines against adversaries like Russia and China. So that means we spend money supporting Ukraine and Taiwan.
And taking a more strategic approach could mean more focus on defense production. Guys like Putin and Xi aren’t worried about some Canadian F-35s parked on runways in Poland or Japan. Because they have nuclear weapons. They are very concerned about countries that have a capability to send missiles, drones, and other support to countries like Ukraine and Taiwan. So I can support spending money on developing this kind of capability.
If we’re being honest about things here, Armed Forces guys want the taxpayers to spend a lot of money on buying new toys to play with and don’t have any real concern about any kind of strategic defence of Canada.
Besides that, the toxic work environment in the Armed Forces is negatively impacting recruitment. I think the military needs to get it’s house in order before looking to tax payers to spend a lot of money on new equipment when there’s not enough personnel to actually operate.
But first and foremost, don’t piss down my leg and tell me it’s raining. Canada’s north isn’t under threat by Russia or China. Come up with a real justification for getting my tax dollars. I don’t respect dishonesty from people that are trying to get my money.
