Here are the main points of the Bank of Canada’s lessons in free trade. It starts off with a bang. “Trade is dominating the news these days. With the barrage of headlines and the talk about protectionism and tariffs, it’s easy to forget that much of our economic growth and prosperity comes from international trade.”
Below are the lessons, taken almost entirely verbatim from the bank’s online lesson (except where I’ve provided a bit of additional description). It’s a terrific lesson and all within a mere 1,400 words and a short video.
Lesson 1: All parties reap the rewards of free trade.
Specialization means focusing on what each country produces most efficiently and trading for the rest. And because specialization is more efficient, it creates more wealth than if each country tried to do it all on its own. International trade is no different from domestic specialization and internal trade — few of us grow our own food or do our own dry cleaning. Instead, we specialize and trade. The lesson includes a short cartoon video featuring “Mark and Lucy” — aimed at kids but worth a presidential view — that explains the concepts of comparative advantage and opportunity costs.
Lesson 2: Trade protectionism makes everyone worse off.
While freer trade — in both exports and imports — makes us better off, the opposite is also true. Barriers to free trade, such as tariffs, have a negative impact on our economic well being.
Lesson 3: The pie isn’t divided equally.
Freer trade has raised incomes across the global economy, but it has not benefited everyone. Countries engaged in free trade are better off overall, but some sectors and communities within countries have suffered. Governments have used policies such as ongoing learning and retraining programs to help affected workers adjust. This a better approach than shrinking the pie through trade protection. That would be worse for everyone.
Lesson 4: Trade deficits and surpluses are not a scorecard.
It’s important to debunk the myth that cheap imports are the cause of all the pain and that a trade deficit with another country is a bad thing. Looking at trade balances between a country and its trade partners, we should expect to see surpluses with some and deficits with others. This is specialization in action.
Terence Corcoran, “Amazing! Canada has one government department that actually comprehends free trade!”, Financial Post, 2018-10-04.
April 12, 2021
QotD: Four lessons on free trade
April 11, 2021
HMCS Warrior (R31) – Colossus-class Light Aircraft Carrier
canmildoc
Published 30 Mar 2013HMS Warrior (R31) was a Colossus-class light aircraft carrier which served in the Royal Canadian Navy from 1946 to 1948 (as HMCS Warrior). She was transferred to the Royal Canadian Navy, commissioned as HMCS Warrior and placed under the command of Captain Frank Houghton. She entered Halifax harbour on 31 March 1946, a week after leaving Portsmouth. She was escorted by the destroyer HMCS Micmac and the minesweeper HMCS Middlesex. The RCN experienced problems with the unheated equipment during operations in cold North Atlantic waters off eastern Canada during 1947. The RCN deemed her unfit for service and, rather than retrofit her with equipment heaters, made arrangements with the Royal Navy to trade her for a more suitable aircraft carrier of the Majestic class which became HMCS Magnificent (CVL 21) on commissioning. [Original text from Wikipedia]
Tags: Colossus Class Light Aircraft Carrier, HMCS Warrior, HMCS, RCN, Royal Canadian Navy, aircraft carrier, CV, Halifax
From the Wikipedia description of HMCS Warrior:
Warrior was a Colossus-class light aircraft carrier that was 630 feet 0 inches (192.0 m) long between perpendiculars and 695 feet 0 inches (211.8 m) overall with a beam at the waterline of 80 feet 0 inches (24.4 m) and an overall width of 112 feet 6 inches (34.3 m). The ship had a mean draught of 23 feet 3 inches (7.1 m). Warrior had a standard displacement of 13,350 long tons (13,560 t) when built and a full load displacement of 18,300 long tons (18,600 t). The aircraft carrier had a flight deck 690 feet 0 inches (210.3 m) long that was 80 feet 0 inches (24.4 m) wide and was 39 feet 0 inches (11.9 m) above the water. The flight deck tapered to 45 feet (14 m) at the bow. For takeoffs, the flight deck was equipped with one BH 3 aircraft catapult capable of launching 16,000-pound (7,257 kg) aircraft at 66 knots (122 km/h). For landings, the ship was fitted with 10 arrestor wires capable of stopping a 15,000-pound (6,804 kg) aircraft, with two safety barriers rated at stopping a 15,000-pound aircraft at 40 knots (74 km/h). Warrior had two aircraft elevators located along the centreline of the ship that were 45 by 34 feet (13.7 by 10.4 m) and could handle aircraft up to 15,000 pounds on a 36-second cycle. The aircraft hangar was 275 by 52 feet (83.8 by 15.8 m) with a further 57 by 52 feet (17.4 by 15.8 m) section beyond the aft elevator, all with a clearance of 17 feet 6 inches (5.3 m). The hangar was divided into four sections by asbestos fire curtains. The hangar was fully enclosed and could only be entered by air locks and the lifts, due to the hazardous nature of aviation fuel and oil vapours. The vessel had stowage for 98,600 Imperial gallons (448,244 l; 118,414 US gal) of aviation fuel.
The ship was powered by steam created by four Admiralty 3-drum type boilers driving two Parsons geared turbines, each turning one shaft. The machinery was split into two spaces, each containing two boilers and one turbine, separated by 24-foot (7.3 m) spaces containing aviation fuel. The spaces were situated en echelon within the ship to prevent a single disabling torpedo strike. The engines were rated at 42,000 shaft horsepower (31,319 kW) and the vessel had a capacity for 3,196 long tons (3,247 t) of fuel oil, with an range of 8,300 nautical miles (15,372 km) at 20 knots (37 km/h). The ship’s maximum speed was 25 knots (46 km/h). There was no armour aboard the vessel save for mantlets around the torpedo storage area. There were no longitudinal bulkheads, but the transverse bulkheads were designed to allow the ship to survive two complete sections of the ship being flooded.
Warrior was designed to handle up to 42 aircraft. The aircraft carrier carried a wide range of ordnance for their aircraft from torpedoes, depth charges, bombs, 20 mm cannon ammunition and flares. For anti-aircraft defence, the aircraft carrier was initially armed with four twin-mounted and twenty single-mounted 40 mm Bofors guns. The original radar installation included the Type 79 and Type 281 long-range air search radars, the Type 293 and Type 277 fighter direction radar and the “YE” aircraft homing beacon. The ship had a maximum ship’s company of 1,300, which was reduced in peacetime.
After service with the RCN, Warrior was returned to the Royal Navy, and subsequently sold to Argentina, entering service as ARA Independencia until 1971 when she was struck from the Argentinian navy list and scrapped.
QotD: Canada’s “Natural Governing Party”
Checks and balances? Canada? Third parties can’t even participate fully in electoral campaigns here. Checks and balances are very few in this centralized, caucus whipped, PMO-run federal government. Let us pass on quickly lest the good doctor/statesman becomes completely embarrassed by his own rhetoric.
John the Mad, “Lloyd’s Unworthy Letter”, John the Mad, 2005-03-05.
April 10, 2021
The monarchy is a weird anachronism from our history … but it’s better than any likely replacement
I’m a very soft monarchist myself, largely for the same reasons that The Line articulates here:
Queen Elizabeth II signs Canada’s constitutional proclamation in Ottawa on April 17, 1982 as Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau looks on.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Stf-Ron Poling
A little more seriously, though your Line editors wouldn’t describe themselves as ardent monarchists, we do believe that we shouldn’t invest much time and energy into trying to fix what ain’t broke. Canada’s system of government doesn’t always deliver optimal outcomes — we mean, look around, folks — but it is stable, reliable and proven. Given our track record at big new policies, those are three things we have absolutely zero confidence any successor system to the monarchy would be, even in the fantastically unlikely chance we could design and implement one.
Is it weird putting a ton of our reserve powers and our very sovereignty inside the living essence of an old woman on an island across the ocean? Yes. Does it work? Also yes. Would we botch any effort to replace said old lady with literally any other system? A resolute yes. The monarchy is weird, and it’s not how we’d design Canada if we were starting Canada from scratch today, but it works, folks, and these days, there’s not much else we can say that about. Further, it’s hard not to like Her Majesty. Our thoughts are with her today. Whatever your qualms with royalty or the royals may be, surely you can spare a thought to a woman who lost her husband … oh, who are we kidding? Lots of people can’t or won’t.
April 9, 2021
HRH Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, 1921-2021
Sad, but not unexpected news this morning as His Royal Highness Prince Philip has died. Along with all of his many earthly titles and awards, he was considered divine by villagers in Vanuatu. Janet Davison reports for the CBC:
HRH Prince Philip was the Colonel-in-Chief of the Royal Canadian Regiment. In April 2013, he presented the Regimental Colours to the 3rd Battalion.
Photo by Jamie McCaffrey via Wikimedia Commons.
Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh and husband of Queen Elizabeth, died today at 99. He was the longest-serving royal consort in British history.
His death, announced by Buckingham Palace, came more than three-and-a-half years after Philip formally stepped back from public life, a retreat that had been happening gradually for several years.
In an interview in June 2011 with the BBC, the no-nonsense Philip spoke about “winding down” and reducing his workload as a member of the Royal Family.
“I reckon I’ve done my bit so I want to enjoy myself a bit now, with less responsibility, less frantic rushing about, less preparation, less trying to think of something to say,” he said.
His final official public engagement came on Aug, 2, 2017, when he attended a parade of Royal Marines at Buckingham Palace and met servicemen who had taken part in a charity race.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau issued a statement Friday calling Philip “a man of great service to others” who maintained a special relationship with the Canadian Armed Forces and was a patron to more than 40 Canadian organizations.
“Prince Philip was a man of great purpose and conviction, who was motivated by a sense of duty to others,” he said. “He will be fondly remembered as a constant in the life of our Queen – a lifelong companion who was always at her side offering unfailing support as she carried out her duties.”
Through the Queen’s 69 years on the throne, the man whom she had called her “strength and stay” carried out more than 22,000 solo engagements and made nearly 5,500 speeches. He attended events periodically with the Queen and other members of the Royal Family after stepping back from official duties.
Update: Colby Cosh recounts a story about Prince Philip’s WW2 naval career that I’d never heard before:
Socially he was entitled to the style of “royal highness” in his own right, yet he was looked down on by mere aristocrats, and even commoners, who had superior public-school credentials and polish. Marriage to a princess might have been impossible if Philip hadn’t impressed George VI personally. As a junior officer he was well-liked, but strict about shipboard order and neatness. He was said to have a natural intuition for command. If he wanted something done, his word put everything in motion at once.
The Royal Navy destroyer HMS Wallace in December, 1942.
Imperial War Museum photo FL 10546 of collection 8308-29 via Wikimedia Commons.He performed well throughout the war, but his finest moment as an officer was not common knowledge until Harry Hargreaves, a Royal Navy yeoman who ended up in Westport, Ont., published a memoir of his own service in 1999. Hargreaves served with Philip aboard HMS Wallace, an old “flotilla leader” ship that had been finished in 1919 and modified for speed. Its original shore-bombardment hardware was pulled in favour of anti-aircraft guns and submarine-killing equipment.
Wallace’s and the prince’s great moment came in July 1943 when the ship was assigned to escort Convoy KMF18 from the Algerian harbour of Bône to the beaches of Sicily. As it happens, this convoy carried the First Canadian Division, which Mackenzie King had lobbied to put in action for the first large-scale amphibious invasion of occupied Europe. Wallace was to ward off U-boats on the trans-Mediterranean journey and then protect the landing party from German air attacks.
On the evening of July 8, Wallace was spotted on a clear, bright night and attacked by flights of Stuka dive-bombers. One damaging near-miss, Hargreaves wrote, had everybody prepared to die when the Stukas came back. Philip, the ship’s first lieutenant, quickly cooked up a plan to build a raft and set it afloat with smoke floats attached, hoping it would look enough like the wreckage of a destroyed ship to distract the returning planes.
“It had been marvellously quick thinking,” Hargreaves said, “conveyed to a willing team and put into action as if rehearsed.” But it required Wallace to steam away from the decoy and await its fate in silence and darkness. When the Stukas came back into earshot, the yeoman “screwed up (his) shoulders in anticipation of the bombs.”
The Germans took the bait and attacked the decoy. “Prince Philip,” Hargreaves concluded, “saved our lives that night.” He also saved the ship, which went on to cover the British-Canadian landing near Pachino.
Having survived the scrape, the prince was alive and intact to attend the Royal Family’s Christmas pantomime at Windsor Castle. Princess Elizabeth’s governess, Marion Crawford, found that combat had turned a “bumptious boy” into a “grave and charming man.” But the princess’s already longstanding crush on her distant cousin had not flagged, and never would.
April 2, 2021
The science must bow to the political narrative yet again
In Quillette, Bruce Bourque outlines some fascinating archaeological discoveries on Canada’s east coast and how the scientific findings are being actively blocked to avoid offending First Nations people for undermining or even contradicting their beliefs:
One of the major North American archaeological discoveries of the 20th century was made in 1967 by a bulldozer crew preparing a site for a movie theater in the small fishing village of Port au Choix (PAC), on Newfoundland’s Northern Peninsula. It was a vast, 4,000-year-old cemetery created by a complex maritime culture known among researchers as the Maritime Archaic. The graves contained beautifully preserved skeletons covered in a brilliant red powder called red ocher (powdered specular hematite). Buried with the skeletons were many finely crafted artifacts. A few similar ones had previously turned up in earlier field surveys on the island, but no archaeologist had suspected that such a large and magnificent ceremonial site existed in the North American subarctic.
Had the discovery been made only a few years earlier, it is likely that no trained archaeologist would have taken over from the bulldozer crew. But fortunately, Memorial University in St. Johns had just added archaeologist James (“Jim”) Tuck (1940–2019) to its faculty. The American-born scholar set out to explore the cemetery, eventually excavating more than 150 graves spread over three clusters (which he referred to as loci).
[…]
In regard to the Red Paint People, Reich’s lab at Harvard Medical School analyzed material from the Nevin site in Blue Hill, Maine — the only known Red Paint cemetery that is likely ever to produce well-preserved human remains. Reich’s analysis was not confined to mDNA (which, unlike nuclear DNA, is transmitted through the maternal line, and so cannot address paternal ancestry), and focused instead on autosomal DNA (aDNA) found in cell nuclei, thereby adding information on the paternal line. (This addition can be critically important because, as Reich’s lab had demonstrated, a population can be founded by males and females with very different origins.) The Reich team has yet to publish comprehensive results of its Nevin site analysis. But from what I have heard, their work will confirm the existence of genetic discontinuities between the Red Paint People and later populations in the region, much as with Duggan’s work in regard to the Maritime Archaic.
But this is where events took a strange turn: It was when Duggan’s group announced that they’d gained the capacity to analyze aDNA, and made known their plans to apply this technology to the male genome of their Labrador/Newfoundland skeletal sample, that a sense of apprehension seemed to spread through some quarters of the paleogenetic community.
During the summer of 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests, Duggan’s project went noticeably quiet. I inquired among team members with whom I regularly communicated, but received oblique and evasive responses about the pace of research and publication. Suspecting that this might be related to sensitivities surrounding Indigenous populations (a topic that has consumed Canadian academia in recent years), I contacted Duggan directly, expressing concern that her valuable work might not be published.
[…]
When the Maritime Archaic tradition vanished, it was replaced, as noted earlier, by unrelated Paleoeskimos, an Arctic people who had then recently derived from Siberia. Following their own disappearance, more recently arrived inhabitants migrated from Labrador, these probably being ancestors of the historic Beothuk, who still lived in the region when Europeans arrived. The last surviving Beothuk, a woman named Shanawdithit, died of tuberculosis in 1829. And since that time, there has been no descendant Beothuk community with whom Duggan, or anyone else, could engage in the “discussions and agreements” she’d described to me.
And even if there were, moreover, Duggan’s own research has demonstrated that the Beothuk were not descended from the Maritime Archaic people of Port au Choix. The only community Duggan might be referring to is the (genealogically unrelated) Newfoundland Mi’kmaq community, whose ancestors arrived on Newfoundland from Nova Scotia in the 18th century, several hundred years after the arrival of Europeans.
March 31, 2021
“Rosalie”: Trench Art SMLE with a Most Improbable Story
Forgotten Weapons
Published 21 Dec 2020http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
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Henri Lecorre was a French immigrant to Canada who enlisted in the 22nd Regiment of the Canadian Army in April, 1915. He had a knack for carving things in his rifles, which he started right in basic training, with a Ross rifle he named “Josephine”. That got him sternly rebuked by his Colonel, but he would take up the habit again in 1916 when he arrived in France and began to see combat. At this point the Canadians were issuing SMLE rifles, and Lecorre named his “Rosalie”, after the French bayonet’s nickname.
Lecorre served through 14 major campaigns, and carved each name into his rifle as the years of the war dragged on. He was twice caught and punished for destruction of government property and fined for the cost of the rifle, although he managed to avoid more serious punishment both times. He only embellished the left side of Rosalie, so that his work would be hidden against his leg when standing at attention. By the summer of 1918, Rosalie’s service record included Vimy, Kemmel, St. Eloi, Hoodge, Zellebeck, Courcelette, Bully Grenay, Neuvilles Vaade, Mericour, Lievin, Lens, Cote 70, Passchendaele and Arras.
Fate eventually caught up to Private Lecorre, and in mid-1918 he was seriously wounded in an attack, and woke up in a military hospital in Dieppe. Rosalie was long gone, and Lecorre did not return to combat again.
The story is far from over, however. Rosalie was recovered from the battlefield, and sent back to Enfield with a batch of damaged rifles for refurbishment and reissue. Someone in the factory noticed the carving on it, and it was set aside. The arsenal commander took a liking to it, and it was hung in his office — where it remained for some 30 years. A Canadian officer from the 22nd Regiment noticed it at Enfield — thanks to Lecorre carving his unit’s name into it — during the Second World War, and thought it would be appropriate to return it to the unit’s home town, where the Citadelle Museum was established in 1950, with Rosalie as one of its original exhibits.
In 1956, Lecorre himself happened to visit an exhibition near Quebec City where the museum had set up, and was shocked to see his own Rosalie on display. After some understandable difficulty convincing the officer on duty that it was actually *his* rifle (which Lecorre did by reciting back its serial number unseen), a remarkable reunion took place. The rifle remained with the museum, but now with its full story known. It remains there to this day, on permanent display.
The Citadelle Museum commissioned a reproduction of Rosalie to be used for demonstrations, and it is this rifle which was graciously made available to me for filming, as the original is inaccessible on short notice because of its display case. Many thanks to the Citadelle for the opportunity to present it to you! If you are in Quebec City, make sure to take time to visit them:
https://www.lacitadelle.qc.ca/en/
Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
6281 N. Oracle #36270
Tucson, AZ 85740
March 28, 2021
“Canadians are largely full of shit on climate change”
The Line wraps up the week with, among other things, an explanation of why they didn’t cover anything to do with the “Conservative” Party’s virtual convention:
We said in last week’s dispatch that we were monitoring the Conservative Party of Canada’s virtual convention, and that we’d bring you any commentary that it warranted. We brought you no such commentary this week. Draw your own conclusions.
We will say, this, though. We think the kerfuffle about the party delegates’ vote to not affirm their belief in climate change is overblown, for two big reasons. The first is that Canadians are largely full of shit on climate change. Yes, it’s true that polls indicate we are concerned about the issue — Very Concerned, even. But polls also show how much we’re actually willing to do about it, and the answer is, not a fuck of a lot.
The second point we’d make is that every Conservative convention comes with warnings of deep splits within the party, with long features by Toronto- or Ottawa-based writers explaining how out of touch Tories are with “mainstream Canadians” like them, how unelectable they are outside their western base, and so on and so on. We agree that the Tories have problems, and it’s clear that not everybody is happy inside that big blue tent (or any big tent). But the Conservatives won the popular vote last time, and though Brownface Trudeau did a lot of the heavy lifting don’t forget: Andrew Scheer was the CPC leader. Can we suggest that one comes out a wash?
Don’t read too much into the doom and gloom that surrounds every CPC convention. There are always stories just like the climate change one, and if you don’t believe us, just recall that long-ago era of, ahem, one week ago, when all the coverage was warning that pro-life insurgents in the party were going to hijack the agenda and cause a meltdown by chanting about abortion all weekend.
Didn’t happen. Went nowhere. We suspect the coverage of the climate change issue, though unhelpful and awkward, will vanish just as quickly now that the chattering classes, ourselves included, have filed the obligatory quota of “convention stories” and moved on to something more interesting (which is almost anything).
March 27, 2021
“Unfortunately for the RCMP, obstruction of justice and tampering with evidence is very much a criminal offence and it looks like the boys in red should lawyer up”
An investigation into the conduct of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) shows an organization that firmly believes — and acts — as though it is above the law:
To its credit, RCMP leadership accepted the findings of the CRCC [Civilian Review and Complaints Commission]. But the rank and file membership, the actual police officers who interact with the public, and their union, have rejected the report, calling it biased.
All of this is a stain on Canada’s top law enforcement agency, and part of a deeper failure by the RCMP to meaningfully address its own reluctantly acknowledged systemic racism toward Indigenous peoples, but it is far from criminal misconduct.
Unfortunately for the RCMP, obstruction of justice and tampering with evidence is very much a criminal offence and it looks like the boys in red should lawyer up.
In the course of the CRCC investigation, the commission requested all recordings, transcripts, and radio communications from the day of the shooting. These communications would have undoubtedly been important to the investigation and could have provided a window into why the RCMP engaged in illegal and discriminatory conduct.
But the RCMP destroyed those records. They claimed that it was part of a routine procedure and that records with no evidentiary value have a shelf life of two years. Except the RCMP knew that there was an ongoing CRCC investigation and a civil lawsuit by the Boushie family when they destroyed the records.
If you or I destroyed relevant records, while staring down a barrel of a civil lawsuit or investigation, we would end up before a judge on charges.
Every time I ask the RCMP to destroy records relating to my clients who have been acquitted at trial, even after years have passed, I am met with a wall of resistance. So it seems a bit convenient when relevant documents are so easily destroyed when it is the RCMP who are being investigated.
The CRCC report also discloses that the RCMP conducted a parallel investigation into the Boushie incident — with officers questioned and evidence gathered. This RCMP investigation not only potentially contaminated the CRCC inquiry, but the RCMP kept their investigation a secret and failed to disclose the fruits of their internal investigation to the CRCC.
This all reeks of a cover up and an attempt to obstruct justice.
March 24, 2021
“By now it has dawned on even the most glossy-eyed internationalists that we are well into another sides-picking era of global geopolitics”
Like it or not, we’re already a few years into a new Cold War, this time with the Chinese Communist Party. The Canadian government seems to be among the last in the world to recognize this change in the geopolitical situation. In The Line, Andrew Potter shows why Justin Trudeau must stop trying to cuddle up to Xi:
The outrageous secret trials in China of Michael Spavor last Friday and Michael Kovrig this Monday are nothing more than punctuation marks on a storyline that has been obvious for some time now.
Which is why it was enormously gratifying to see more than two dozen diplomats show up to seek admittance to Kovrig’s trial. The fact that none was admitted is unfortunate but largely beside the point — what matters is the public display of solidarity. Even more gratifying perhaps is the announcement (by Canadian officials) that the U.S. has promised to treat the two Canadians as if they were American citizens. After all, it was our acquiescence to a U.S. request to arrest Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou at Vancouver International Airport in 2018 that prompted Beijing to nab Spavor and Kovrig in retaliation. While Chinese officials have denied that what this amounts to is hostage diplomacy, they’ve also made it clear that the fate of the Michaels is tied to that of Meng.
What makes the public support from all of these countries so remarkable is that a lot of them — the Czechs, the Finns, the Romanians — have very little to gain from sticking their neck out for Canada. More to the point, every one of these countries has good reason to wonder just how committed Canada itself is to this show of collective strength. After all, it was only five years ago that senior members of the Liberal party were freely — privately, but freely — saying that as far as the Liberal government was concerned, the U.S. was yesterday’s news and China was the horse Canada was going to ride into the future.
And while a lot has changed over the last five years (not least of which is the fact that Donald Trump has come and gone as president of the United States), it remains incomprehensible that it was just last year the Canadian National Research Council placed its disastrous COVID-19 vaccine bet with CanSino Biologics, a Chinese company with close ties to the Chinese military. What are our allies to make of the fact that only last month, the federal granting agency NSERC partnered with Huawei to sponsor computer engineering at Canadian universities. Or that Canada’s visa office in Beijing is owned and staffed by a Chinese police force?
Whether it is a matter of naïveté, bad faith, or outright cravenness, Canada continues to give every indication that it is a country that is still hedging its bets.
March 21, 2021
“Speaking of military affairs […] the sexual misconduct scandals continue to rock the senior leadership of the Canadian Armed Forces”
The weekend round-up at The Line includes a bit more on the ongoing scandal where over a third of the senior military leadership of the Canadian Forces are currently under investigation for sexual impropriety:
Canadian Defence Minister (at least for the moment) Harjit Sajjan in better times.
We noted with interest Steve Saideman, who holds the Paterson Chair in International Affairs at Carleton, has called for National Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan’s resignation — and Saideman is no partisan alarmist.
We agree with Saideman. Sajjan should quit or be sacked, frankly, pour encourager les autres. He should be epically sacked for birthing one of the stupidest possible excuses for inaction that we’ve ever heard from a minister of the Crown. Sajjan, under sharp questioning at committee, said — he really said this, we shit you not — that it wasn’t his place to get involved when allegations of sexual misconduct by retired army general Jonathan Vance were brought to his attention because, since Sajjan is an elected official, his involvement would politicize the matter.
Think about that for a minute. The entire goddamned basis of our system of government is ministerial accountability. Once upon a time, before it became awkward and inconvenient for him personally, Prime Minister Trudeau used to even boast about how he was bringing back government by cabinet, in contrast to that nasty, evil, centralizing Harper fellow. But according to Minister Sajjan, ministers are actually the wrong people to get involved in these serious issues … because they’re politicians. This completely inverts the way our government is supposed to work, though it might actually be a depressingly accurate summary of how Trudeau’s cabinet ministers interpret their roles.
But think about the message it sends to to our women (and men!) in uniform who’ve been the victim of abuse and harassment, sexual or otherwise: sorry, guys, I’d love to help and all, but I’m too busy being a fucking Liberal politician to step in as minister of National Defence.
Sajjan’s gotta go. Now. If he doesn’t quit he should be fired. And as we’ve been saying for weeks now, this is only getting worse — the sexual misconduct scandal that was frantically ignored by Canada’s self-styled feminist government has now made The New York Times, which means, if you’re an Ottawa Liberal, this is about as real as it gets. All that media attention was nice when it was fawning, with nice photo spreads, but … this? This isn’t fun for the Liberals at all.
March 17, 2021
Rebuilding the Royal Canadian Navy
I somehow missed this article by Sir Humphrey when he posted it a few weeks back. He’s looking at the Australian and Canadian governments’ respective decisions to use the British Type 26 design to replace their current anti-submarine fleets and considering some of the economic and military concerns that led to the decision.
In both cases there have been media articles in the last week over the programmes and concerns. In Canada, the challenge has been that the cost has grown to a total of $77bn for 15 escorts. There has been cost growth from an originally scheduled $14bn many years ago, and the first of class will not now be delivered until 2031. This has led to suggestions in some media quarters that Canada could do things faster and more cheaply if it simply bought an off the shelf foreign design now and got on with things.
An artist’s rendition of BAE’s Type 26 Global Combat Ship, which was selected as the Canadian Surface Combatant design in 2019, the most recent “largest single expenditure in Canadian government history” (as all major weapon systems purchases tend to be).
(BAE Systems, via Flickr)[…]
The issue now is that Canada will need to establish, almost from scratch, a frigate construction programme and workforce for a finite period of time without a clear plan of what follows on when the last hull is completed. At the same time it will need to run on ships that are becoming increasingly elderly – it is likely that most of the Halifax class will see more than 40 years of service, and some may approach their 50th birthdays before being replaced – something that will pose an increasing maintenance and resource challenge.
Could things be done more cheaply or quickly? Almost certainly yes, but only if you are willing to make massive compromises. It could be possible, for example, to look to licence build an existing design that is already in service. There are plenty of designs out there that could be licence built and brought into service in the next few years — probably at less cost than the T26 programme.
But while this may sound easy, its also a recipe for disaster. It’s easy to look at country X and say “they’re buying this ship for that much” and assume that Canada is getting a bad deal. But Country X is likely to have a very different set of requirements, and their design will reflect it.
For example, Canada needs a ship able to operate with NATO and 5 EYES as a fully integrated player – this adds cost to fit specific systems and equipment that is compatible. Canada will also want to fit bespoke systems to meet national needs – again this will require design changes, that come at a price. Bolting on all manner of different requirements that Canada needs to meet the unique operational circumstances adds price and complexity to the design.
While you probably could take an off the shelf design and build it now, it would be just that, an off the shelf design. It wouldn’t be optimised for local needs, and it wouldn’t have the right equipment, comms, meet local design standards, or be certified for use with national equipment.
You are then faced with two choices – either bring a cheap ship into service that is entirely unsuitable and not designed for your needs, but is a lot cheaper, or spend an enormous amount of money shifting the design to better reflect your needs. If you choose the latter, then suddenly you are adding cost and time in, and the 2031 date will slip even further.
If you choose the former, then you have to accept that the design is “as it comes” and will have minimal Canadian input – so limited industrial offsets, very little economic benefit, and the long-term support solutions will firmly be tied into the country of origin and not Canada. In other words, Canadian taxpayer dollars will be spent to support a foreign economy.
That last point is really the key. Canadian governments, in my lifetime at least, never look at the military requirement as the top priority and sometimes not even the second or third priority. The economic spin-offs, especially in those cases where the benefits can be allocated to marginal parliamentary constituencies, will be the top priority. As is always a talking point in the case of any major military hardware acquisition, this is going to be the “single largest expenditure in Canadian government history”. Just as the replacement of the RCAF’s aged CF-18 fighters will be the largest expenditure in its turn.
The long-gone economic framework of print newspapers
In The Line, Peter Menzies explains the economic underpinnings of the newspaper world back in the “good old days” before first radio, then TV, and finally the internet took all the profits out of their model:
“Newspaper Boxes” by Randy Landicho is licensed under CC BY 2.0
We will hear a lot in the months ahead about who’s making money from news, so let’s get something straight: Even in the profit-soaked heyday of Canadian newspapers, no one made money from news.
That all ended about 100 years ago when radio — and then television — began delivering it for free.
Oh sure, the occasional ongoing news story would inspire people to buy more newspapers. But in my 30 years in that business the only event that did so in any significant way was the death and funeral of Princess Diana. Even then, after the extra cost of newsprint and distribution, the financial return was insignificant.
But mythologies die hard. People in newsrooms believed news made money — and apparently some still do — even when year after year, surveys of readers showed that there were lots of other things that sold and sustained newspapers.
Some people bought them because they were looking for a job. For others, it was a house, a plumber, a companion, a pet, a car or, really, almost anything else you can think of that might be needed. Classified pages were every town and city’s marketplace. That’s where you found stuff you had to get and bought an ad when you had something to sell or tell people about. It was where you announced the births of your babies, the graduations, engagements and weddings of your children and the deaths of your parents. The lives of communities were recorded in the classified pages of their newspapers.
After a glance at the headlines, many other readers’ first and sometimes only stops were the horoscope, comics, crossword (an error there generated far more calls than a rogue columnist ever could) and other pleasant distractions. For still more, it was the stocks listings, sports scores or recipes to which they were primarily drawn.
There were movie and entertainment listings — even a TV guide so you’d know where and when to find Seinfeld. On Thursdays, you might buy a paper just for the Canadian Tire flyer. On weekends, specialty sections discussed books and told tales of travel adventures well-supported by the latest deals advertised by travel agencies. Housing developers pitched their latest home designs in special real estate sections. And there were magazines. Honestly, there were.
It’s been literal decades since we last subscribed to a print newspaper, and nearly as long since I picked one up from a news stand. My mother is the last person I recall still depending on buying a physical newspaper — she only stopped buying a Saturday Toronto Star in the last year or so — but that was mainly for the TV listings. Back when I still occasionally travelled on business (also more than a decade ago, now), it was a nostalgic treat to find a copy of USA Today at the door of my hotel room in the morning.
March 14, 2021
“You mean Justin Trudeau might have not lived up to his own self-branding and may have even — this is hard to even type — fallen short of the standard he sets for others?!”
Over at The Line, they’ve had to double the number of fainting couches available for overwhelmed and emotionally depleted staff members after discovering that the ongoing military leadership scandal goes up to the man at the top, Justin Trudeau himself:
We told you a week ago about the sexual misconduct scandal(s) at the very top of the Canadian Armed Forces. Army General Jonathan Vance recently retired after serving as the chief of the defence staff, the highest post in the military. Shortly after, Global News reported that he had faced two allegations of inappropriate sexual conduct during his career. Then, Vance’s successor was also required to step aside while being investigated for allegations of a sexual nature.
This is embarrassing for the military, but as we noted last week, there’s danger here to the government — Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan was told about the allegations against Vance, and passed that up the chain of command … meaning the PM knew, and did nothing.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. You mean Justin Trudeau might have not lived up to his own self-branding and may have even — this is hard to even type — fallen short of the standard he sets for others?!
OK, OK. We had to sit down a minute there and catch our breath. It’s all just so much to take in. The government clearly knows it’s in trouble. Sajjan gave some testy testimony in which he said that it would have been inappropriate for him take an active role in any investigation. This is an awfully god-damned novel interpretation on ministerial responsibility that we’re excited to see become even dumber as this unfolds. The PM, for his part, has adjusted his ass covering; where once he said that he was not aware of the allegations against Gen. Vance, he now admits he was told in 2018, but says he did not know the details.
Think about that for a minute. The prime minister of Canada, the self-styled feminist prime minister of Canada, was told that the country’s top soldier, a man in a position of incredible power and authority, was accused of sexual misconduct, and … that’s it? Like he didn’t ask any questions? Give the old general a buzz and ask what’s up? A government that tried to sink an admiral in a case so flimsy it collapsed once readily available facts came to light couldn’t be bothered to find out if all that smoke around the general may have been from a fire?
This is, remarkably, not even the funny part. Everything above is embarrassing and awful and pathetic, but it actually gets worse.
March 13, 2021
As of today, one third “of the most senior admirals and generals (four and three star officers) in the Canadian Armed Forces have been accused of some sort of impropriety”
Ted Campbell regards this new fig leaf of appointing some sort of “watchdog” for the Canadian Armed Forces — in light of the ongoing investigations into impropriety on the part of too damned many senior officers — as worse than a waste of time:
Another “watchdog” is going to do exactly nothing. The former Ombudsman did his job, he did the right thing. The problem was that the political leadership ~ specifically Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan ~ decided to ignore him and then to shut him out of the process. I have no idea why Minister Sajjan decided to put the interests of the most senior military officers ahead of those subordinate to them, but he did. The Ombudsman was the watchdog we needed. He did all the right things. Defence Minister Sajjan failed the men and women in the Canadian Armed Forces, he failed the institution and he failed Canada. Another watchdog will not fix that.
Some years ago I said that our military needed to be seen in human terms. Our men and women in uniform, I said, needed to be tough, superbly disciplined, well trained, adequately equipped and also properly organized and well led, too. I believe that the Canadian Armed Forces are not well enough led and that has led to a breakdown in discipline which I said, back in 2016, “is the sine qua non of soldiering.” I stand by that. Nothing, not firepower, not leadership, not fighting spirit, not huge budgets and the finest hardware, nothing else matters as much as discipline. I will not be moved off that position because I know that I have 3,000 years of history to back me up.
I remember, in 1961, reading an article, I’m pretty sure it was in Time magazine, but Google doesn’t help me out there, which noted that Lieutenant General Geoffrey Walsh had taken over (as Chief of the General Staff) (and I’m about 99% sure I have the words correct) “the small but superbly disciplined Canadian Army.” I showed the little article to an older soldier who said something like “this is some [expletive] Yank magazine, eh? Well, it figgers; they look at us and they think we’re the [expletive] Grenadier [expletive] Guards. All they see is the marchin’ and the drill and we look great ’cause they’re a sloppy bunch of [expletive]. But you remember, kid, what I tell ya. The real discipline ain’t on the parade square, it’s in the field and you listen to what I [expletive] tell ya’ and then you do like I [expletive] tell ya’.” (It was that kind of [expletive]😉 army 60 years ago.) And he was right of course. Yes, our Regiment was a thing of beauty when we trooped the colour ~ as good as any other regiment in the world ~ but what made us better than any of the rest was self-discipline, learned the proper way by the examples set by good, tough leaders. Somehow the Canadian Armed Forces seems to have lost too much toughness, too much discipline and far too much leadership.
