Quotulatiousness

March 24, 2025

Canada could learn from the Finnish example

Filed under: Cancon, History, Military, USA, Weapons — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

US President Donald Trump tossed several grenades into the still waters of Canadian defence platitudes and forcefully called attention to the clear fact that Canada has been a world-leader in defence freeloading since the late 1960s. In The Line, Tim Thurley suggests that Canada should look more closely at how Finland has maintained its sovereignty with a larger, militarily dominant, and unpredictable neighbour for more than a century:

Map of Finland (Suomen kartta) by Oona Räisänen. Boundaries, rivers, roads, and railroads are based on a 1996 CIA map, with revisions. (via Wikimedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_Finland-en.svg)

Canadians pretended we didn’t need to take defence seriously. We justified it with fantasies — the world wasn’t that dangerous, threats were distant, and America would rescue us if needed. That delusion is dead. U.S. Republicans and some Democrats don’t trust us to defend our own territory. Trump openly floated annexation and made clear that military protection now comes at a price — potentially statehood. Canadian military leaders now describe our closest ally as “unpredictable and potentially unreliable”. And even when America was a sure bet, our overreliance was reckless. Sovereignty requires self-defence; outsourcing it means surrendering power.

We should take cues from nations in similar situations, like Finland. Both of us border stronger powers, control vast, harsh landscapes, and hold valuable strategic resources. We’re internally stable, democratic, and potential targets.

We also share a key strength — one that could expand our military recruitment, onshore defence production, rebuild social trust, and bolster deterrence: a strong civilian firearms tradition.

We should be doing everything we can to make that tradition a bigger part of Canadian defence, and a larger part of our economy, too.

That may sound absurd to some Canadians. It shouldn’t. Finland is taking full advantage by attempting to expand shooting and military training for civilians both through private and public ranges and the voluntary National Defence Training Association. Finland is seeking to massively upgrade civilian range capacity by building 300 new ones and upgrading others to encourage civilian interest in firearms and national defence, and is doing so in partnership with civilian firearm owners and existing non-government institutions.

Multiple other states near Finland are investing in similar programs. Poland is even involving the education system. Firearm safety training and target practice for school children are part of a new defence education curriculum component, which includes conflict zone survival, cybersecurity, and first aid training. Poland’s aim is to help civilians manage conflict zones, but also to bolster military recruitment.

Lithuania and Estonia encourage civilian marksmanship as part of a society-wide comprehensive defence strategy. The Lithuanian Riflemen’s Union, one of the small nation’s most recognizable institutions, is a voluntary government-sponsored organization intended to prepare civilians for resistance to an occupying power. It has 15,000 members in a population of 2.8 million. The Estonian Defence League trains mostly-unpaid civilian volunteers in guerrilla warfare. It has an 80 per cent approval rating in Estonia, where over one in every 100 men and women with ordinary jobs have joined to learn defence techniques, including mastering standard-issue military service rifles that they may keep at home, ready to fight on a moment’s notice.

These strategies are modern. These countries are no strangers to cutting-edge modern warfare, necessitated by a common border with an aggressive Russia. But technologies like drones are not a replacement for a trained and motivated citizenry, as the Ukraine conflict illustrates. Against a stronger and more aggressive neighbour, these societies deter and respond to aggression through organized, determined, and trained populations prepared to resist attackers in-depth — by putting a potential rifle behind every blade of grass.

Canada, meanwhile, is spending money to hurt our own capacity. It’s coming back to bite us. The Trudeau government misused civilian firearm ownership as a partisan political wedge and ignored the grave flaws of that strategy when they were pointed out, hundreds of times, by good-faith critics. Thousands of firearm models have been banned at massive and increasing expense since 2020 despite no evident public safety benefit. In the recently concluded party leadership race, Mark Carney pledged to spend billions of dollars confiscating them. Government policies eliminating significant portions of business revenue have maimed a firearm industry that historically contributed to our defence infrastructure. Civilian range numbers, which often do double-duty with police and even military use, plunged from roughly 1,400 to 891 in five years. Without civilians to maintain ranges for necessary exercises and qualification shoots, governments must assume the operating expenses, construct new ranges, or fly participants elsewhere to train.

March 6, 2025

HMCS Bonaventure – The Pride of Canada’s Fleet

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, History, Military — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Skynea History
Published 22 Oct 2024

For today’s video, we’ll be looking at the last of Canada’s aircraft carriers. Not typically a navy you associate with that kind of ship, but the Canadians actually operated three during the Cold War.

The third, HMCS Bonaventure, is an interesting one. A small ship, that operated aircraft at the very edge of her capability. And routinely baffled American pilots in the process.

Yet, she was also a ship that came to an end before her time. Decommissioned and scrapped, right after an expensive (and extensive) mid-life overhaul. In what is generally seen as a bad political move, more than anything to do with her capabilities.
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February 12, 2025

Poilievre’s outlined plan for the Canadian Arctic gets the CDR Salamander seal of approval

Filed under: Cancon, Military, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Although most of the attention is on the still ongoing Trump tariff tantrum, there is still the required battle-space preparations going on for the next federal election. Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre discussed his proposals for improving national security in the Arctic, and CDR Salamander is enthusiastic:

Pierre and Ana Poilievre at a Conservative leadership rally, 21 April, 2022.
Photo by Wikipageedittor099 via Wikimedia Commons.

… here are the highlights as I see them.

  • Canada’s Arctic is under threat. 75% of Canada’s coastline is in the far north, and 40% of her landmass. Canada needs to become self-sufficient.
  • In the fall of 2022, the Canadian military found Chinese monitoring buoys in the Arctic.
  • A Royal Canadian Navy frigate shadowed a Chinese research vessel in the Bering Strait off Alaska last year (thank you RCN friends, we don’t have any frigates nor naval bases in Alaska because … our leaders don’t understand much outside Norfolk, San Diego, or the Potomac).
  • Russia is building new bases and infrastructure in the Arctic.
  • Canada will take back control of Canadian waters, sky, and land.
  • The Canadian military today is weakened and her allies no longer respects her.
  • Canada does not have a permanent military presence in the Arctic.
  • When Prime Minister, he will increase Canadian forces by:

    • – Doubling the size of the Canadian Rangers from 2,000 to 4,000 Rangers.

    – Acquire two additional polar heavy icebreakers for the Royal Canadian Navy by 2029 on top of the two current icebreakers being built for the Canadian Coast Guard.

    – Will build Canada’s first permanent Arctic military base since the Cold War. It will be CFB Iqaluit. 100% of the cost of the base will come out of the Canadian foreign aid budget and will be up and running within two years of Poilievre becoming Prime Minister.

    – New submarines.

  • Bringing wasted foreign aid back to Canada.
  • If Canada wants to be a sovereign, self-reliant nation, it must take control of their north, secure its borders, and stand on its own two feet.
  • Canada cannot count on the Americans to do it for them.

Further on in this speech, Poilievre speaks out strongly against some of the statements of President Trump and his administration, and that is fine for me. Were I Canadian, I would say very similar things. This is OK. Friends can have disagreements now and then, but for every one item that causes friction, we will always have nine items that bring us together.

It’s all good.

February 4, 2025

The FN C1A1 – Workhorse of the Cold War Canadian Army

Filed under: Cancon, History, Military, Weapons — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

On Target Canada
Published 20 Jan 2020

Time to get a closer look at a rifle I have spent a lot of time with in the past. The FN C1A1, used by the Canadian Army from the mid 1950s to the late 1980s.

Enjoy!
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January 18, 2025

Buying military surplus is often a bargain, but buying new military equipment is usually a financial black hole

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Government, Military, Weapons — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

The Canadian government has — since at least 1968 — always viewed major equipment purchases for the Canadian Armed Forces first and foremost as “regional economic development” projects which channel federal dollars into vote-rich areas in need of jobs or to reward provinces and regions for their support of the party in power. This virtually always requires getting all or most of the manufacturing/construction/assembly done in Canada.

To most people this sounds sensible: big military equipment acquisitions mean vast sums of taxpayer money, so why shouldn’t as much of that money as possible be spent in Canada? The answer, in almost every case, is that it will usually be VASTLY more expensive because Canadian industry doesn’t regularly produce these exotic, spendy items, so new factories or shipyards will need to be built, all kinds of specialized equipment will need to be acquired (usually from foreign sources), companies will need to hire and train new workforces, etc., and no rational private industries will spend that kind of money unless they’re going to be guaranteed to be repaid (plus handsome profits) — because CAF equipment purchases come around so infrequently that by the time the current batch need to be replaced, the whole process needs to start over from the very beginning. It would be like trying to run a car company where every new model year means you shut down the factories, fire the workers, destroy the tools and jigs and start over from bare ground. Economic lunacy.

Items like clothing, food, non-specialized vehicles (cars, trucks, etc.) may carry a small extra margin over run-of-the-mill stuff, but it will generally be competitive with imported equivalents.1 Highly specialized items generally won’t be competitively priced exactly because of those specialized qualities. The bigger and more unusual the item to be purchased, the less economic sense it makes to buy domestically. As a rule of thumb, if the purchase will require a whole new manufacturing facility to be built, it’s almost certainly going to be cheaper — and usually faster — to just buy from a non-domestic source.

How much more do Canadian taxpayers have to shell out? Carson Binda has some figures for current procurement boondoggles:

Take the new fleet of warships being built for the Royal Canadian Navy – the River Class Destroyers. The Canadian River Class is based on the British Type 26 Frigates.

The Brits are paying between $1.5 and $2.2 billion in Canadian dollars per ship. Meanwhile, Canada is paying upwards of $5.3 billion per ship, according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer.

That means we’re paying double what the Brits are, even though we are copying their existing design. That’s like copying the smart kids’ homework and still taking twice as long to do it.

If we paid the same amount per ship as the British did for the 15 ships of the River Class, we’d save about $40 billion in procurement costs. That’s twice as much money as the federal government sends to Ontario in health-care transfer payments.

[…]

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government bungled F-35 fighter jet procurement is another example of taxpayers losing out on military procurement contracts.

In 2010, the Harper government announced plans to buy 65 F-35 fighter jets for an inflation-adjusted cost of $190.8 million per unit.

The Liberal government canceled that procurement when it came to power. Fast forward to 2023 and the Trudeau government announced the purchase of 88 F-35s at an inflation-adjusted cost of $229.6 million per unit.

That massive increase in cost was totally avoidable if the Liberals would have just kept the Harper-era contract.

[…]

Because so much budget is wasted overpaying for big ticket items like ships, jets and trucks, soldiers aren’t getting the basics they need to keep Canadians safe.

The defence department bureaucrats can’t even figure out how to buy sleeping bags for our soldiers. National Defence spent $34.8 million buying sleeping bags that were unusable because they were not warm enough for Canadian winters.

Recently, Canadian soldiers sent to Ottawa for training had to rely on donated scraps of food because the military wasn’t able to feed them. Soldiers have gone months without seeing reimbursements for expenses, because of bureaucratic incompetence in our cash-strapped armed forces.

    1. Note, however that during the 1980s, the Canadian army wanted to buy Iltis vehicles that were built in Germany at a $26,500 cost per unit. Getting the work done under license in Canada by Bombardier more than tripled the per-vehicle cost to $84,000.

    January 13, 2025

    Muttering something about “manifest destiny” while glancing north

    Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

    The Line‘s weekly dispatch is, as usual, mostly behind the paywall but the portion visible to cheapskates contains much of interest:

    Manifest Destiny, 2025? Big Serge’s updated map for the old US War Plan Red for a military invasion of Canada.

    It’s no coincidence that as Canada’s leadership devolved into its own navel, the very-soon-to-be-inaugurated Donald Trump escalated his provocations. This week, Trump threatened to use “economic force” to push Canada to bend the knee. Meanwhile, we cannot help but notice that the idea of a Canadian state is starting to gain significant traction in even moderate and mainstream American conservative circles. Meanwhile, we’ve got Alberta Premier Danielle Smith supping with Kevin O’Leary and Jordan Peterson down in Mar-a-Lago.

    Tap tap. May we suggest that you peruse the safety cards tucked into the back of your seat, buckle up, and take note of your nearest emergency exits?

    Whether we are talking about some kind of economic union, or a full-blown annexation, the fact that at least some in America are reviving the term “Manifest Destiny” is a possibility that we can no longer afford to dismiss as mere trolling. While we hope that the Trump administration is going to be so bogged down with other policy priorities that “Canada 51” is soon overshadowed, your Line editors have been game theorying out a host of possible scenarios and … none of them look great. If Trump et al get serious about this idea — and, again, we have no way to know if they will get serious about this idea — then we at The Line fear that Canada is in for some serious turmoil in the coming few months.

    As I said in an email to Severian the other week, “… Canada will have very little ability to react to whatever Hitler, er, I mean “Trump” will do as soon as he’s inaugurated. It was clear before this that Trudeau cared very little about ordinary Canadians’ lives, but this really is dereliction of duty on a cosmic scale. If Trump does follow through with that huge tariff, the Canadian economy is likely to collapse, as we’re so deeply intertwined with the US on so many levels. Sadly, this might make it even more attractive to Trump, as it would absolutely encourager les autres on a global scale. If the BOM is willing to destroy the economy of his closest trading partner, what might he do to France? Or Germany? Or South Korea?” Back to the dispatch:

    To explain our alarm, let’s first look at another news item to cross the desk. This week, Justin Trudeau travelled south to attend the funeral of Jimmy Carter, and stopped at the CNN studios for a quick interview with Jake Tapper on the way through.

    On the whole, we think his interview was fine. Look, Trudeau’s been through a lot in the last few days, and considering the circumstances, it’s not reasonable to expect a breakthrough performance. So we’re being a bit unkind to nitpick, but something he said during that interview deserves scrutiny.

    Justin Trudeau got far too comfortable with being treated as a progressive superstar, not only among the sycophants with CBC nametags but even on the international stage … perhaps especially on the international stage. Trudeau was always inclined to the performative in everything he did, and he might well only feel fully alive when cameras are rolling. The evidence certainly seems to point in that direction.

    The “most prolific Canadian actor” meme was mildly amusing during Trudeau’s first term in office, as he went out of his way to put on elaborate costumes and to perform for the audience. This sort of thing was understandable if not particularly welcome to those who wanted Canada to be taken seriously by our allies and trading partners. It was clichéd to joke about what novelty socks Trudeau was wearing at any given international event … because it was his trademark. As was the clearly diminished respect he got as his time in office went on.

    When asked about Trump’s provocations, Trudeau affirmed Canadians’ pride in their own sovereignty by noting — half jokingly, we presume — that we fundamentally define ourselves as “not American”.

    Firstly, this is not a particularly diplomatic jibe to be launched at actual ordinary Americans; it made us wince to consider how it must have landed to CNN’s ordinary watching audience.

    Secondly, if the only way in which Canadians can define themselves nowadays is “not-American”, Jeez, that’s an extraordinarily thin peg upon which to hang a hat.

    This stuff matters.

    It is to wince. However, even that pathetic response was better than launching into yet another diatribe about Trudeau’s firm conviction that Canadians are all genocidal white supremacist morons, I guess.

    The ability of a population to withstand neighbourly aggression — “economic force”, if you will — depends on two things. The first is internal social cohesion and identity. The second is what the aggressor is willing to do or offer in order to secure capitulation.

    In this case, the second part of that equation is outside our control. So we look to the first: does Canada have a strong sense of self right now? Do its leaders command the moral authority necessary to create the social cohesion required to withstand a period of sustained material sacrifice?

    If we are “not Americans”, it rather asks the question why aren’t we Americans? And, more crucially, what are we actually willing to give up in order to preserve that independence?

    A people can be rallied to make extraordinary sacrifices for a greater ideal, including the ideal of independent nationhood. Look at the sacrifices of blood and treasure made every day in Ukraine, for example.

    If necessary, Canadians can band together and survive on lentils and supply managed dairy and eggs for many months or years. We can pull together through a period of inconceivable material hardship — but only if we’re doing it for something. Canadians, as per usual, can talk a big game, but how many of us are willing to suffer a real collapse of our quality of life to preserve a quasi-ironic, tautological, or negative self-identity?

    Before Trudeau’s time in office, I wouldn’t have thought to question Canadians’ pride in their country and willingness to defend it. Nearly ten years later, Trudeau and his minions have done a fantastic job of undermining any kind of patriotic enthusiasms in our “post-national state”, haven’t they?

    We at The Line don’t believe there is even a vanishingly small chance of the Americans using martial force to secure Canada — and if they choose to amass a brigade at the border on Monday morning, we’re all taking the Pledge of Allegiance by noon, so let’s not grace this fantasy with a lot of real consideration.

    I’d love to refute that, but it’s probably true, at least in the more densely populated areas of southern Canada … the US could send a brigade north to Vancouver, another to Calgary, another to Winnipeg, and one to Montreal. Thanks to the lower lakes, it’d take a bit more to secure Toronto and Ottawa but not a lot more. We literally couldn’t stop them, both because our very limited troops are not positioned to stop an invasion from the south and because they’re not even close to being in a ready-to-move condition. Even our local reserves would have to be notified, travel to their local armouries, be issued weapons and the very limited amount of ammunition kept in local storage and by the time they were ready, there’s a foreign flag waving over Queen’s Park and Parliament hill.

    Big Serge’s map at the top of this post vastly overstates the number of US troops necessary to secure the major population areas.

    However, it is worthwhile to imagine it as a pure thought experiment: what would you really be willing to give up in order to continue to be “not-American”.

    Your investment savings? Your property? Your house? Would you sacrifice the life of your child, or your grandchild, to preserve the legal independence of Canada?

    We ask this question not because we think it’s going to come to that, but rather because these questions test the integrity of our national concept. They allow us to examine our resilience, and our willingness to withstand an assault of an economic or moral nature. And, folks, we’re just not convinced that our national resilience is very high at the moment.

    Well, I’m sure a lot of new Canadians would want the rest of us to defend the place while they take advantage of all the government and corporate positions that need to be “diversified” … surely us evil white supremacists are willing to lay it all on the line for a more diverse society, right?

    It was interesting to us to note, this week, that the most powerful moral appeal for the concept of nationhood was proposed in a Globe and Mail oped by Jean Chrétien. While we salute the old patriot, we can’t help but point out that he’s, well, very old — 91, to be precise.

    We at The Line have a sneaking suspicion that Canadian patriotism and, more importantly, a willingness to make serious sacrifices to preserve that patriotism, is going to decline precipitously by age cohort in any well-constructed survey of the topic.

    Would the young fight to preserve Canada against the Russians or the Chinese? Yes, we think our fellow Canadians could absolutely be called upon to make serious sacrifices to circumvent the rule of autocrats and dictators. But to prevent being subsumed by the — checks notes — wealthiest and most powerful democratic nation on earth (presuming America stays that way)? A nation that shares almost all of our essential values; one that looks and sounds just like us, and would probably provide a better set of opportunities to our kids? The place an increasing number of us are going to do start business and receive timely medical care?

    Why?

    Why would we do that? Can someone — anyone — please articulate a vision, here? Is anyone in our leadership class even trying?

    It’s been noted many times that people are willing to charge even bare-handed into machine guns and cannons for things like “Liberté, égalité, fraternité“, but nobody is going to man the ramparts for “peace and good government”.

    We put a lot of the blame for this on Justin Trudeau, and on the identitarian politics that consciously sought to undermine national legitimacy in the pursuit of progressive ends. But, if we’re being honest, we think this complacency of identity predates these social movements by many decades.

    The Liberal Party as an institution owns a lot of it for the ways in which the “Natural Governing Party” has tied national identity to its preferred partisan policy options, at the direct expense of more transcendental and bi-partisan national self concepts. The Liberals have usurped “Canada” into a party brand

    The national flag is effectively the Liberal Party flag … thanks Mr. Pearson!

    and marshalled the very concept of “patriotism” to build consensus for picayune material entitlements. Trudeau couldn’t even help but do this in his CNN interview with Jake Tapper this week: “We delivered $10-a-day childcare. We’re delivering a dental care program that provides free dental care for people who don’t have coverage. We’re moving forward on a price on pollution that puts more money in the pockets of eight out 10 Canadians.”

    We suppose Trudeau found that argument very compelling argument to Americans marvelling at Canada’s inability to meet its basic NATO commitments.

    The weird thing is that Trudeau could have deflected a lot of these criticisms by our NATO allies almost painlessly without spending any more money directly on the Canadian Armed Forces — “It’s well known that Justin Trudeau has no time for military issues, but it’s surprising that he hasn’t done a few things that wouldn’t increase the actual spending on the CAF, but would be “bookkeeping” changes that would shift some existing government spending into the military category, like militarizing the Canadian Coast Guard. (That is, moving the CCG from the Fisheries and Oceans portfolio into the National Defence portfolio, not actually putting armaments on CCG vessels. Something similar could be done with the RCMP, switching it from Public Safety to National Defence with no other funding or operational changes.) That Trudeau hasn’t chosen to make even these symbolic changes shows that he actively opposes fulfilling the commitment his government has made twice in the last ten years for reasons of his own.”

    This tactic has been very electorally effective for the Liberals, no doubt, but it’s also reduced the idea of “Canada” to a smug transactional exchange. “Canada” as nothing more than what provinces and citizens can wheedle out of the commonweal in transfer payments, equalization cheques, and grandiose but poorly executed national program spending. At least we’re better than America, though, right? We’re “not American!” — we’re so much more thoughtful and compassionate, as evidenced by the entitlements we’ve voted for ourselves, secure in the knowledge that the troglodytes to the south will spend and bleed and die for our coddled asses if Russia lobs a missile from the North.

    Canada has become a question of what we, citizens, are able to get, rather than one of what we’re willing to give. And we’re smarmy, preachy assholes about it, to boot. (There’s a very famous political quote we could drop in here about what citizens can do for their countries and vice versa, but you’ll know why we aren’t, if you can guess the quote! It would be a little on the nose.)

    A nation that is unwilling to make serious sacrifices of blood and treasure to protect its own sovereignty is a nation that is going to cease to be a nation sooner or later — and if we judge Canada by its commitment to its military, ours is a nation that has regarded itself as a quasi-ironic post-modern punchline for many generations now.

    January 12, 2025

    Big Serge updates War Plan Red for a 2025 invasion of Justin Trudeau’s “post-national” “genocide” state

    Filed under: Cancon, Military, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

    After the farcical attempt by outgoing PM Justin Trudeau to pretend that he somehow has changed his mind and now likes and wants to defend the country he’s described variously as a “post-national state” with no core beliefs, steeped in white supremacy and misogyny, and still engaged in “genocide”, Big Serge suggests the US invasion plan should change like this:

    When Trump invades Canada, the key will be rapid advances in the opening 48 hours to take advantage of Canada’s odd force disposition.

    The country’s political and economic center of gravity is the urban corridor from Toronto to Montreal, but a significant share of the Canadian Army is dispersed, with large garrisons in Quebec, Halifax, and the western provinces. Only handful of brigades are garrisoned in the critical theater.

    The war will be won quickly and decisively, without massive destruction of Canadian cities, if American forces can establish blocking positions to isolate the urban corridor from peripheral Canadian garrisons. In this maneuver scheme, we utilize highly mobile elements including 1st Cavalry Division and airborne forces to block the highways into Toronto, while an eastern screening group isolates the urban centers from reinforcements scrambling in from Quebec.

    We envision inserting HIMARS at operational depths via Chinook slings, saturating Canadian road traffic with rocketry. A mobile firebase (“Firebase Maple”) will be established north of Toronto near Lake Simcoe that will have a dominant position over the city’s northern approach.

    With reinforcements unable to scramble into the critical theater and Toronto severed from the cities in the eastern corridor, the Canadian 31st and 32nd Brigade Groups will be isolated and destroyed. Unconditional surrender is anticipated within 14 days.

    If there is a Canadian insurgency, we’re calling it the Maplejideen.

    As an addendum, artillery airlifted onto Isle Royale in Lake Superior will support an advance out of Minnesota towards Thunder Bay, which will add an additional level of interdiction on Canadian reinforcements moving eastward by rail.

    People are so mad about this!

    And after much kerfuffle among the easily trolled, he suggests:

    There’s no community note on this post which means it has been fact checked as true by real patriots.

    As to why Trump would want to invade a frozen failed state on the brink of bankruptcy, even Big Serge doesn’t have an answer.

    January 6, 2025

    If you’ve ever been in any military organization, you’ve encountered this

    Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

    Shady Maples on the frequent issue needing a particular piece of equipment, but … bureaucracy:

    Have you heard the one about the soldier and supply technician?

      Soldier: I need a sleeping bag.

      Supply Tech: We’re not issuing sleeping bags right now.

      Soldier: I can see a sleeping bag on the shelf right there.

      Supply Tech: But that’s my last sleeping bag! If I issued that one then I wouldn’t have any left in stock. I need to keep at least one sleeping bag in stock in case someone needs it.

      Soldier: Yes! That someone is me! I need the sleeping bag!

      Supply Tech: Look, my job is to keep the shelves stocked. See the sign on the door? It says Stores, not Gives. If I give you that sleeping bag then we’ll be out of stock.

      Soldier: But I need the sleeping bag.

      Supply Tech: You’ll have to come back after we restock.

      Soldier: Fine, when are you restocking sleeping bags?

      Supply Tech: When we’ve depleted our current stock.

    This is barely a joke, I’m convinced it’s a script that supply techs learn in Borden.1 A common variant involves a soldier trying to get a piece of kit ahead of a training exercise. The supply tech tells them they can’t have the kit because they don’t need it. If the soldier needed the kit then it would be issued to them and since it’s not issued to them they don’t need it. I have personally had that conversation multiple times with everyone from lowly supply techs to quartermasters up to Life Cycle Material Managers in ADM(Mat). A notable one involved asking the depot in Montreal to send my unit a specific piece of optical equipment2 which we desperately needed, only to be told that they could not release that kit to us because the Army divesting it. My unit had just taken on a new capability that required this kit, why were they throwing this equipment away? “Nobody uses it anymore.” But I’ll use it, I’m telling you that I’m going to use it! My appeal failed, the depot had to divest because no one used the kit and they wouldn’t let us use the kit because they had to divest. I subsisted by borrowing equipment from other units off-the-books.

    Pic related, from Patrick McKenzie.

    There is a deep and difficult-to-articulate emotion that I feel whenever I have interactions like this. It’s a middle shade of anger, frustration, sadness, and loathing triggered by a people who so are so lost in process that they stop caring about real-world outcomes. Via Scott Alexander’s Links For December, I just learned? that Scott Aaaronson coined the term “blankface” for people like this:

      What exactly is a blankface? He or she is often a mid-level bureaucrat, but not every bureaucrat is a blankface, and not every blankface is a bureaucrat. A blankface is anyone who enjoys wielding the power entrusted in them to make others miserable by acting like a cog in a broken machine, rather than like a human being with courage, judgment, and responsibility for their actions. A blankface meets every appeal to facts, logic, and plain compassion with the same repetition of rules and regulations and the same blank stare — a blank stare that, more often than not, conceals a contemptuous smile.

    Once, my 2IC3 was trying to access a childcare benefit intended to reimburse members for babysitting when they are in the field or called in for overnight duties. My 2IC enquired about reimbursement but word came down from Ottawa that she wasn’t eligible since since had not used a licenced childcare provider. Nevermind that there are no licenced providers offering overnight childcare in our geographic area. When my 2IC submitted a grievance for her exclusion from the policy, the grievance analyst rejected it on the grounds that, since she never applied for the benefit (after being told she wasn’t eligible), she had not technically been denied anything. The analyst recommended applying for the benefit in order to be denied and then submitting another grievance based on that denial. At a time when the CAF is desperately trying to attract and retain female leaders, you know what really makes our case? Nickle-and-diming single moms over $70 of childcare. The analyst’s rejection letter made me feel like maybe Ted Kacynski had a point.

    In his blog post, Scott Aaronson used Dolores Umbridge as the canonical example of a blankface. Umbridge is conspicuous do-gooder who uses her positional authority to make life miserable for everyone around her. As the story progresses and she accrues more power to her office, it becomes apparent that her virtuous posturing conceals a cruel authoritarian heart. Scott noted that:

      The most despicable villain in the Harry Potter universe is not Lord Voldemort, who’s mostly just a faraway cipher and abstract embodiment of pure evil, no more hateable than an earthquake. Rather, it’s Dolores Jane Umbridge, the toadlike Ministry of Magic bureaucrat who takes over Hogwarts school, forces out Dumbledore as headmaster, and terrorizes the students with increasingly draconian “Educational Decrees”. Umbridge’s decrees are mostly aimed at punishing Harry Potter and his friends, who’ve embarrassed the Ministry by telling everyone the truth that Voldemort has returned and by readying themselves to fight him, thereby defying the Ministry’s head-in-the-sand policy.

    Voldemort is evil, yes, but he is a moral agent who chooses and sacrifices according to his principles. The series pits his perverse will-to-power against the protagonists heroic defence of good. Unlike Voldemort, Umbridge doesn’t have any vision or principles, her only goal appears to be rigorous application of Ministry rules and procedures. She is not an agent of evil so much as its midwife, allowing evil to spread by obstructing any effort to stop it.

      1. CFB Borden is the home of Canadian Forces Logistics Training Centre, a place that nobody says anything good about, especially the loggies.

      2. This piece of kit was specialized enough that I would effectively dox myself if I told you what it was.

      3. 2IC: Second-In-Command.

    December 21, 2024

    The Canadian Armed Forces are doing great on diversity … but not much else

    Filed under: Cancon, Media, Military, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

    In the National Post, Tristin Hopper reports on the amazing progress in anti-racist activism, diversity, equity, inclusion and — for all I know — drag queen story times in the officers’ messes but too bad about all the other stuff, eh?

    A new report finds that while the Department of Defence is making steady progress on all its new “equity and diversity” goals, morale is plummeting and the Canadian military has reached new lows in terms of its ability to actually deploy forces.

    For the first time, more than half of Canada’s naval and air fleets were marked as being unfit to “meet training and readiness requirements”, according to the military’s latest Departmental Results Report, published Tuesday.

    Only 45.7 per cent of Royal Canadian Navy ships are fit to be used for “training and operations”, and the same is true for just 48.9 per cent of RCAF “aerospace fleets”.

    And the figures weren’t much better in the army. The report wrote that the serviceability of Canadian Army equipment remained in a “persistent downward trend”, with army personnel forced to rely on “aging and increasingly obsolete fleets”.

    One example was the BV 206, a tracked snow carrier that is ostensibly the main form of transportation at the Nunavut-based Arctic Training Centre. The vehicle now has an incredible 80 per cent failure rate, with the report saying that it can’t be safely used for “essential” tasks.

    Morale is also hitting new lows. In a survey, just 30.4 per cent of military personnel said that the armed forces provide a “reasonable quality of life” — that’s far less than the official target of 85 per cent.

    And among full-time personnel, just 53.5 per cent said they felt “positive” about their job.

    Some of the few figures in the document that weren’t in decline were in the realm of “equity and diversity”.

    The Canadian Armed Forces slightly increased the share of personnel who “self-identify as a visible minority” (from 11.1 per cent in 2023 to 12.2 per cent in 2024).

    There was also a moderate uptick in the number of civilian employees “who self-identify as a woman” (from 42.4 to 43 per cent).

    The report boasted of a new system of military promotions that does not “disadvantage the intersections of diverse groups of women, men and non-binary people”.

    It also announced that “Gender Advisors” were now being routinely deployed on overseas operations, including on Operation Unifier, Canada’s mission to provide combat training to Ukrainian soldiers engaged in their ongoing war with Russia. “The Task Force Gender Advisor was involved in all aspects of this training mission”, it read.

    December 3, 2024

    Canadian Armed Forces: Can the RCN Really Stop Russia and China in the Arctic?

    Filed under: Cancon, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

    Esprit de Corps Canadian Military Magazine
    Published 2 Dec 2024

    Vice Admiral Angus Topshee recently told the National Post that the Canadian Navy is able to defend our Arctic waterways against China or Russia … without help from our allies (aka the US Navy). It is time to target just what the heck the Admiral is talking about!

    November 21, 2024

    Canadian defence priorities – don’t listen to what they say, watch what they spend the money on

    Filed under: Cancon, Government, Military — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

    The Hub provides an edited transcript of what retired Lieutenant General Andrew Leslie (and former Liberal whip in the Commons) said to the Standing Committee on National Defence earlier this month, which shows very clearly where national defence ranks in Justin Trudeau’s world:

    My intent is to offer some criticism of the status quo so that we can learn and then perhaps some sort of question period to get into some solutions. Essentially, in my opinion, “Strong, Secure, Engaged“, the precursor to the current defence policy, delivered nothing substantive in terms of modern military equipment, which saw Canada, in fact, become weaker, more insecure, and essentially absent from the deployable stables of troops required for either United Nation missions, or, of course, NATO.

    The 2024 defence policy update of “Our North, Strong and Free” is no better, unfortunately, in that it promises some urgently needed equipment years from now, but nothing today. Indeed, the 2024 defence spend will be less than that of 2023. Of course, we’re well aware of what just happened down [in the] United States. Both Republicans and Democrats are united and increasingly vocal about telling Canada how disappointed, frustrated and fed up they are with Canada’s failure to defend itself and their allies, with a special mention on the Arctic.

    Meanwhile, as we know, and I was involved in the last NAFTA renegotiations, that’s coming due at a time when a variety of key players down south have articulated clearly the base of 3 percent [of GDP spending on defence] looms on the horizon, and how defence, security, trade, and border security are all intertwined. At this time of crisis internationally, with what’s happening in the Middle East, in Ukraine, Canada’s military readiness is at its lowest level in 50 years. Canada spent last year, in 2023, more money on consultants and professional services than it did on the Army, Navy, and Air Force combined — which quite frankly, is madness.

    The Army has over 50 percent of its vehicle fleets, which are awaiting spare parts and technicians. The Navy is struggling mightily — bless them — to keep elderly warships, a handful of them at sea, specifically in the Indo-Pacific, and they’re desperately short of trained sailors. The Air Force has been unable to participate in significant NATO deterrent exercises, either up north or over the oceans, in conjunction with our friends and allies, because they don’t have the pilots, the spare parts, or the money to fly the aircraft.

    In the Arctic, which is many times larger than Europe, Canada has fewer than 300 military support staff who are not a deterrent — they’re essentially unarmed. Some of them are part-time, bless them, and about 1,600 Ski-Doos equipped with rifles, and Canadian Rangers who are not combatants. Their role is to observe and report.

    The bottom line is that Canada has no permanently assigned combat elements to deter potential presence by the Russians or the Chinese, who are showing up in our waters with increasing frequency. But other people do. Russia specifically has between 25,000 to 35,000 combat troops deployed in their Arctic with huge amounts of operational equipment — air, land and sea. The United States, bless them, has 22,000 full-time military and part-time military professionals with more equipment than the entirety of the Canadian Forces in terms of combat delivery. So really, thank you America for defending our Arctic.

    We are facing unprecedented dangers and challenges, and quite frankly, I see no sense of urgency to change, to modify, to re-guide the efforts of the government towards supporting and assisting in the Canadian Forces.

    Some facts. We have less than 35 military personnel deployed on UN missions; in 2003, we had close to 2,500. We are the only NATO nation whose level of military operational readiness is going down when everyone else is skyrocketing up. We have the longest and least efficient procurement system in NATO; indeed, in any nation that I can find. We are the only nation in NATO that does not have a costed plan to get to 2 percent of GDP, which was first agreed to by the minister of defence in 2008 and reiterated in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and I could go on. We are the only NATO nation whose defence minister has publicly admitted that he could not convince his fellow cabinet members of the importance of NATO defence spending, and the 2 percent GDP. And, as mentioned already, we’re the only NATO nation whose defence budget decreased this year.

    Emphasis mine.

    November 8, 2024

    An alternative path to meeting Canada’s 2% of GDP defence-spending aspirations

    Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government, Military — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

    I’m not convinced that Brian Graff is correct here, but it’s certainly a bit of unusually out-of-the-box thinking on Canada’s defence shortcomings:

    Canada has sent a few tanks over to Ukraine, as well as other supplies and financial aid. We will have to replenish these things, and this might be an opportunity to expand Canada’s capacity to make and export military arms and equipment. Maybe our defense policy and spending has been wrongheaded. Since we have so few troops, are unlikely to need to defend our own soil, and are far from any country likely to be in conflict, we may be able to meet our 2% target with some innovative thinking.

    Since the Second World War, the US has described itself as the “arsenal of democracy”, a phrase which Franklin Roosevelt used in 1940 when the US was supporting Britain (and Canada) by sending arms, most notably through the “Lend Lease” program that sent ships and equipment to Britain, technically on loan.

    Maybe a bigger part of Canada’s own defence policy should be to make and stockpile arms, equipment, and supplies to send to our allies or friends in times of need. Such equipment need not be “state of the art” like F-35 fighter jets. Canada could also expand production of parts for equipment assembled in other NATO countries – particularly for spare parts we need for ourselves.

    We need not limit this to new equipment. Canada could also promote companies that refurbish older equipment to be stockpiled or resold. And of course, Canada could determine which countries benefit from our stockpiles of military equipment. We could ensure that this equipment is not acquired by countries with regimes we oppose, and we would have the leeway to give or sell only to the “right” side of a conflict, possibly with strings attached.

    Take our Leopard 2 tanks that were built in Germany. We have given some to Ukraine. We have unfortunately scrapped even older Leopard 1 tanks, that could have been refurbished or modified to serve as platforms for other uses. Canada should probably give the rest of our tanks to Ukraine, then get into the business of buying older Abrams tanks from the US to refurbish as replacements or for re-export.

    Israel is a good example of a nation that builds up its military capacity with secondhand tanks and other equipment, and is now a major exporter of military equipment that it developed at least in part for its own defence.

    The trend in US equipment has been to build state of the art equipment, and buy smaller quantities of it. But the conflict in Ukraine has shown that even when fighting a country with advanced military technology like Russia, using some older equipment combined with innovative new designs has been successful for both sides. Along with the introduction of drones, the Russians have modified older bombs to become guided bombs that are accurate and far cheaper than building new missiles.

    September 18, 2024

    Canucks. In. Space – “racist, exploitative, elitist, and environmentally destructive”

    Filed under: Cancon, Military, Politics, Space — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

    In the National Post, Tristin Hopper‘s First Reading on a recently commissioned report for the Canadian Armed Forces on space exploration from an intersectional feminist viewpoint:

    As Canada prepares to send an astronaut on the first manned moon mission in more than 50 years, its own military has commissioned a $32,250 report on how space exploration may actually be “racist, exploitative, elitist, and environmentally destructive”.

    The 48-page report, entitled Hidden Harms: Human (In)security in Outer Space, concludes that human usage of space is currently “masculine, militarized and state-based”.

    The authors also bemoan a space exploration field that is beholden to colonial concepts such as “technospeak” and “expertise”, and which doesn’t give appropriate weight to “spirituality, astrology, and cosmology, the last of which views celestial bodies in space as animated beings and not mere objects”.

    As such, the report concludes that space will continue to be a realm of “hidden violence” against the world’s marginalized until “gender, race, class, ability, and sexuality” can be put at “the centre” of how decisions are made in the cosmos.

    “Leadership is needed to normalize inclusion of different perspectives,” reads a conclusion.

    The report has very little positive to say about the current state of human space exploration or space technology.

    The whole endeavour is criticized as “technology-biased” because it fails to consider “gendered effects”. It’s “geography-biased”, because it doesn’t include equal participation from poorer countries.

    It “normalize(s) violence and exploitation” by using language that depicts “outer space as a hostile and desolate environment that is unpeopled/inhuman and controlled so that it can provide an extractable resource”.

    The construction of launch pads, satellite receivers and other ground infrastructure causes “disproportionate harm to Indigenous communities by severing their connection to ancestral lands”.

    The report is also deeply critical of the fact that space is disproportionately inhabited by able-bodied males from wealthy countries. “Existing approaches are ahistorical and thus invisibilize diverse stakeholders and voices,” it reads.

    Hidden Harms contains little to no discussion of the technical aspects of space exploration or technology. The word “rocket”, for instance, appears only once in a footnote in relation to how a falling rocket stage could hurt Inuit people. The word “orbit” appears in the text just once, when referencing how states could impose extraterrestrial harm by “permanently damaging objects on orbit”.

    Nevertheless, the report is clear that all of these technical considerations should become secondary to “intersectional, decolonial, and humanitarian perspectives”.

    “We must make space for the unfamiliar and the uncomfortable,” it reads.

    It’s hardly surprising that an “intersectional feminist” view of space exploration would be harshly negative — what is surprising is that the Canadian Armed Forces paid to have this intellectual drivel written. A bit over $30k isn’t even a rounding error for the federal government, but as an indicator of just how federal bureaucrats are spending their departmental budgets it does seem to indicate that there’s a lot of fat in those budget numbers.

    August 11, 2024

    Canada’s long-standing issues with national defence won’t be fixed by merely spending more money

    Filed under: Cancon, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

    In The Line, Greg Quinn explains why meeting the 2% of GDP NATO target for military spending isn’t going to solve Canada’s problems with the military:

    Canada isn’t pulling its weight on defence. Is that what Canadians want? Because it isn’t what its allies want. And the allies are more and more willing to say so.

    Canada, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, likes to talk about how the country punches above its weight in NATO and global affairs more generally. It’s a cliché many countries have resorted to when put under pressure on one issue or another. (And I’ll confess that this includes my own United Kingdom, which I served as a diplomat for decades before my recent retirement.)

    It’s also smoke and mirrors, which in Canada’s case on defence, hides an unhappy truth — Canada doesn’t pay its way.

    Trudeau says Canada will meet the target of spending two per cent of GDP on defence in 2032. Some 18 years after NATO committed to it. At the moment Canada spends a paltry 1.37 per cent, or some $33.8 billion a year, on defence, damn near the bottom among the allies, in percentage terms. Ottawa claims this will increase to 1.76 per cent, or $49.5 billion, by 2030. If so, that will move Canada up a whopping two places to 25th.

    Mind you, the Parliamentary Budget Office disputes even this, stating that Canada’s defence spending will peak at 1.49 per cent of GDP in 2025-26 before dropping (yes, dropping) to 1.42 per cent in 2029-30. Somebody is being economical with the truth.

    […]

    The bottom line is simple — what does Canada (and the Canadian people) want its role in the world to be? Words are easy but they need to be backed by action. One of the most obvious demonstrations of action is spending on a defence force that is capable of deploying and acting on the global stage. More bluntly, of fighting and defeating a near-peer enemy as part of a coalition of allies.

    If Canada doesn’t want to do that and prefers a defence force that is essentially a glorified local militia that focuses on domestic issues, well, fine. But let’s not pretend it is anything else. Let’s not talk about how much of a force for good Canada is in the world and let’s not try and fool Canada’s allies. They’re not as stupid as Canadian politicians want them to be.

    And let’s not expect those allies to happily accept the situation and continue on as if nothing has changed. Canada already complains about being left out of AUKUS. Is it any wonder? More of that should be expected. If you don’t play the game and don’t pull your weight, then sadly, you don’t get the benefits of being in the grown-ups’ club.

    Canadians owe themselves, and frankly owe their allies, an honest discussion about kind of role Canada actually wants to play in the world … and whether they’re willing to actually pay the bills required to play that role. Only after such an honest chat can Canadians, and their allies, calibrate their expectations accordingly.

    July 6, 2024

    Canada, NATO’s most egregious freeloader

    Filed under: Cancon, Europe, Military, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

    In The Line, Eugene Lang and Vincent Rigby explain why our NATO allies are less and less willing to listen to Canadian virtue-signalling and posturing when we continue to refuse to live up to our commitments on the Canadian Armed Forces and contributing our full share toward NATO operations:

    Next week’s NATO Summit in Washington marks the 75th anniversary of the trans-Atlantic Alliance. Yet despite being one of the original 12 founding members, Canada’s credibility within the alliance will be at an all-time low.

    There is no question Canada has a proud history with NATO. Canadian statesmen — including Lester B. Pearson, Louis St. Laurent, Hume Wrong and Escott Reid — were architects of the alliance in the late 1940s, and helped author Article Two of the North Atlantic Treaty calling for political and economic collaboration among member-states, the so-called “Canadian Article”.

    Over the decades, the Canadian military has made significant contributions to NATO missions in western Europe, the Balkans and Afghanistan. But that was then and this is now, and two years ago, Michel Miraillet, France’s ambassador to Canada, put things bluntly: “You are riding a first-class carriage with a third-class ticket. If you want to remain in the first-class seat, you need to train and expand (the military) and to go somewhere.”

    Sentiments like these have been fuelled by Canada’s stubborn refusal to meet NATO’s defence spending target of two per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) — a commitment Ottawa has signed onto twice in the past ten years but is far from achieving. Last year, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg expressed frustration over this recalcitrance: “Canada has not conveyed a precise date but I expect (it) to deliver on the pledge to invest two per cent of GDP on defence, because this is a promise we all made”.

    Stoltenberg’s comments evidently had little impact in Ottawa. While Canada’s recent Defence Policy Update (DPU) placed greater emphasis on the Arctic (NATO’s northern flank) and promised new defence investments, its pledge to increase defence spending to 1.76 per cent of GDP by 2030 fell well short of the NATO target. Canada, currently spending 1.37 per cent of its GDP on defence, remains among only a handful of NATO members which have failed to reach the two per cent threshold and have no plan to do so.

    The Defence Policy Update’s silence on this issue did not go unnoticed among allies. Criticism of Canada’s NATO posture reached new heights last month when 23 U.S. senators wrote to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, stating “we are concerned and profoundly disappointed that Canada’s most recent projection indicated that it will not reach its two percent commitment this decade”. Canadians can be forgiven for failing to recall the last time nearly a quarter of the U.S. Senate wrote to the Canadian government on anything.

    It’s well known that Justin Trudeau has no time for military issues, but it’s surprising that he hasn’t done a few things that wouldn’t increase the actual spending on the CAF, but would be “bookkeeping” changes that would shift some existing government spending into the military category, like militarizing the Canadian Coast Guard. (That is, moving the CCG from the Fisheries and Oceans portfolio into the National Defence portfolio, not actually putting armaments on CCG vessels. Something similar could be done with the RCMP, switching it from Public Safety to National Defence with no other funding or operational changes.) That Trudeau hasn’t chosen to make even these symbolic changes shows that he actively opposes fulfilling the commitment his government has made twice in the last ten years for reasons of his own.

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