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This is just capitualtion to the USA. Most of this money will be going to US weapons manufacturing. We really learned nothing from 2020 and COVID about where the real national security threats come from. Those F35s and submarines will be really useful when the next virus hits and North America is defunding biomedical research. Including Canada.
Why the hell does Russia want to invade anyone? It’s the largest country by landmass already, it’s not like they need land, water, resources, mining, oil or even living space.
Over the past hundred years, there’s only been one country in the world that has invaded, coerced, affected, changed or controlled or even invaded another nation, more often than any other … the US.
I’m not saying the bombastic rhetoric of some that Russia is eager to take over Europe holds much water, but there’s definitely other resources available outside of Russia that they’d like to have. Like labour. Or access to better ports on warmer waters. Or access to shorter trade routes. Or access to the political capital that comes with winning a war. So I do understand why they’d want to chunk off extra territory.
There’s also the security value of increasing the distance to the closest NATO border. From their perspective the NATO countries are one bad election away from military confrontation. Which given the current state of affairs isn’t devoid of logic. I’m not saying we have to comply with their demands regarding NATO’s borders or that this justifies their invasion of Ukraine. Just that there’s some material reasons to the madness.
Look at all services for people getting worst for a non existant threat just because trump told us to increase our military
Yeah I mean we can’t afford food or rent but sure, this is a top priority! This is Canada after all, what are our politicians supposed to do, take care of their constituents?
How are we feeling about this?
Bad.
There is no amount we could spend on defence that would stop the US. Any annexation would would be immediately over and instead be fought as a long expensive civil resistance at best. I think we spend enough on defence to know, cry about it, and help out around the world.
Instead of spending our money on making Canada a better place to live we are going to give it to a few corporations that make weapons, we’ll probably sell them to israel to kill kids with.
Like there’s just so many better places to spend this: housing, hospitals, infrastructure, transport, environmental projects.
Annoyed. The only realistic military threat we face is to the south of us and investing a whole lot of money into conventional weapons is about as good as lighting it on fire in the scenario where we fight a conventional war against the US. If you want an actual effective deterrent to a hot war against them invest in WMDs. Then use the money we don’t blow uselessly on tanks and fighter jets to develop Canada into something that one day could afford to develop something competitive.
The cost of failing to deter aggression is incredibly high, look at Ukraine. We are in a similar situation, but we are even worse off. There is much less conventional parity between us and the hostile dictatorship next door. As an example, Ukraine started the war with a layered air defense network and thousands of interceptors to keep it in the fight, that led to Russian caution with their air assets and allowed a front to form. Canada has precisely 0 air defense batteries.
Ultimately there is no reasonable amount we can spend to gain conventional deterrent against the new United States. The money needs to yield a fast track to nuclear deterrence.
Unfortunately for us Canadians, we are staring at the choice between spending and sacrificing financially to hedge against the risk of invasion. If we don’t, and the worst happens, we’ll spend much, much more, and a lot of the cost will be blood.
This is not for military defense against the US. All the investment is focused on the Arctic and on deepening military alliance with Arctic states and states that border Russia.
Which border do we share with the US? Any hardening of that? Nope.
We are basically all-in on supporting the US defense strategy. We are part of the team to face Russia so the US can focus on China. Also, we are basically investing in defense infrastructure to provide security for the resource supply chain between our far north and the US.
We may not love them right now, but we’re still team USA. We are still basically a resource colony, and we are doing as the empire’s strategy demands of us.
This all makes sense. If we’re getting a nuclear deterrent with this, that would be money well spent. If it does not and we endure any significant austerity as a result, then Canadians might straight up replace Carney with someone who welcomes annexation. This might call for debt-spending to avoid that, but I’m feeling Carney might like austerity instead. I hope I’m wrong.
There is no way the USA will allow nukes that close to their country. Did we forget about what happened when nukes were going to be located to Cuba?
Oh yeah, I think so too. We could possibly pull that off during a Democratic US government. But it’s still unlikely.
This is not about defending against the US or Russia, it’s about extortion to force Canada to buy US munitions.
nuclear deterrence
Absolutely not. Nuclear weapons are an existential threat to humanity itself. I’m fine with more defence spending but building a bomb that can destroy the planet is to defence as building a coal plant is to energy. It’s destroying the future to protect the present.
The other comments in this thread (almost) all talk about any amount of spending being useless in the face of the extreme might of the US army, so I’m curious how you see more spending as being ok? Genuine question, not trying to attack you or anything.
You can’t convince other countries to form a military alliance with your country unless it has a half decent military. France isn’t going to agree to protect our country unless we can convince them we can protect theirs. In an ideal word, nobody would spend on defence but we don’t live in that world. Some amount of defence spending is unfortunately required. At least it sometimes does lead to societal improvements like GPS.
I also don’t believe the idea that the US can just instantly win a war. Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq held their own. Russia thought they’d take over Ukraine in 3 days and it’s been 3 years and counting. These super powers like to claim they could take on the entire planet and win but then get embarrassed by a bunch of farmers.
US dropped 89 kilotons of bombs on Iraq, over twice the power of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.
I don’t get the argument here… Countries should just be nuking each other all the time because it’s not that bad? The US should have just dropped some nukes on Iraq and it would have been better?
Nukes kill children. Nukes destroy hospitals. Nukes give whole body third degree burns to everyone who isn’t immediately obliterated. Nukes irradiate the land and sky so much that we can date paintings based on the presence of isotopes spread by nukes in the ink. Nuclear warfare is a war against humanity.
Good as long as the money doesn’t go to our enemy to the south.
It is. We are going to buy the F35’s. Why I have no fucking idea but here it is.
Here I am boycotting US products by avoiding spending hundreds/thousands of my dollars and then my government goes and wastes billions there.
Fuck Carney. He’s better than that other weasel but fuck Carney.
The only thing about Carney is about calling for a review for that (already planned) purchase, and that the review will be ready at the end of the summer.
There are a lot of bad things you can say about Carney, but I don’t see this as one of them. Yet.
Incidentally, according to Mark Carney’s declaration of assets he’s invested in Lockheed-Martin.
The US can remotely turn them off so they are DOA
Exactly. We should not even be thinking about buying the child rapist’s stuff no matter for the countries safety and jets.
Even the US Navy rejected F35s as useless, expensive and unreliable.
