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Canada’s Military is Collapsing. Without Urgent Action, We Won’t Be Able To Defend Ourselves

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From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By David Leis

Decades of underfunding and political neglect have left our military weak and unprepared

What Lt.-Gen (retired) Michel Maisonneuve (ret.) told me about Canada’s military was nothing short of alarming. He didn’t mince words—our armed forces are in dire straits. If we don’t act now, Canada will not only be unable to defend itself, but it will cease to be taken seriously by our allies, many of whom are already losing patience with our military decline.

Maisonneuve has seen firsthand what a functioning military looks like. He has served at the highest levels, working alongside our allies in NATO, and he knows exactly what Canada is failing to do. “We are no longer at the table when major defence decisions are made,” he told me. “The Americans don’t ask us what we think anymore because they know we can’t contribute.” That is a stunning indictment of where we now stand—a country that was once respected for its ability to punch above its weight militarily has been reduced to an afterthought.

The problem, as Maisonneuve laid out, is both simple and staggering: Canada doesn’t take its defence seriously anymore. The government has allowed our forces to wither. The Air Force is still buying CF-18s from the 1980s because the long-delayed F-35 procurement is years behind schedule. The Navy, once a competent maritime force, is barely functional, with no operational submarines and a fleet that is nowhere near what is needed to patrol our vast coastlines.

Meanwhile, the Army is struggling to recruit and retain soldiers, leaving its numbers dangerously low. “We have an Army in name only,” Maisonneuve said. “If we were called upon tomorrow to deploy a fully operational combat force, we couldn’t do it.”

Even more shocking is the state of readiness of our troops. A recent report found that 75 per cent of Canadian military personnel are overweight. Maisonneuve didn’t sugarcoat it:

“It’s unacceptable. We are supposed to be training warriors, not watching fitness standards collapse.” When the people entrusted with defending our country are struggling with basic physical fitness, it speaks to something much deeper—an institutional rot that has infected the entire system. Our allies have noticed. Canada was locked out of AUKUS, the military alliance between the U.S., the U.K. and Australia. “It wasn’t an oversight,” Maisonneuve explained. “It was a deliberate snub. The Americans don’t see us as a serious defence partner anymore.” That snub should have been a wake-up call. Instead, our government shrugged it off.

Meanwhile, Washington is openly questioning Canada’s value in NATO. The Americans see the numbers—Canada refuses to meet even the minimum defence spending requirement of two per cent of GDP. Instead of fulfilling our obligations, we offer up empty promises and expect others to pick up the slack.

Maisonneuve is blunt about what needs to be done. “First, we need to fully fund the military—and that means not just hitting the NATO target but exceeding it. Our allies spend real money on their defence because they understand that security is not optional.” He suggests Canada should aim for at least 2.5 per cent of GDP, not just as a show of commitment but as a necessity to rebuild our capabilities. Beyond money, Maisonneuve argues that military culture must be restored.

“We’ve allowed ideology to creep into the ranks. The military’s primary function is to defend the nation, not to serve as a social experiment,” he said. “We need to get back to training warriors, not worrying about whether we’re ticking the right diversity boxes.” He believes a return to a warrior ethos is essential— without it, the military will remain directionless.

Procurement is another disaster that Maisonneuve insists must be fixed immediately. “We’ve spent years dithering on replacing equipment, and every delay puts us further behind,” he said. The F-35 deal should have been signed years ago, but political hesitation means we won’t see a full fleet for years. The Navy urgently needs new submarines and icebreakers, especially to secure the Arctic, where other global powers, particularly Russia, are ramping up their presence.

The biggest issue, though, is manpower. “We need to rebuild the forces, period,” Maisonneuve told me. “That means recruiting, training, and retaining soldiers, and we are failing at all three.” He even suggested that Canada should consider implementing a national service requirement, a move that would not only increase troop numbers but also instill a sense of duty and responsibility in younger generations. “We used to be a country that took security seriously,” he said. “What happened?”

That’s the question, isn’t it? What happened to Canada? How did we go from being a country that contributed meaningfully to global security to one that can’t even defend itself? The reality is that successive governments have let this happen—first by neglecting funding, then by letting bureaucracy suffocate procurement, and finally by allowing the core purpose of the military to be diluted.

Maisonneuve is clear: Canada must act now, or it will cease to be taken seriously.

David Leis is President and CEO of the Frontier Centre for Public Policy and host of the Leaders on the Frontier podcast

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Canadian veteran says she knows at least 20 service members who were offered euthanasia

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From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

Canadian Armed Forces veteran Kelsi Sheren told members of the House of Commons that he has proof of veterans being offered assisted suicide.

Canada’s liberal euthanasia laws have made the practice so commonplace that a Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) veteran has said she knows and has “proof” that no less than 20 of her colleagues were offered unsolicited state-sponsored euthanasia.

Kelsi Sheren, who is a CAF veteran, recently told MPs in the House of Commons veterans affairs committee that “over 20 veterans have confirmed being offered MAID.”

“I have the proof, and I have proof of more,” Sheren told the committee during an October 28 meeting.

Conservative MP Blake Richards asked Sheren if she was willing to provide them with evidence to affirm her allegations.

Sheren noted how the 20 veterans have given written testimonies, or actual audio recordings, of when they were offered what in Canada is known as Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD).

“We also have other individuals who are too afraid to come forward because Veterans Affairs has threatened their benefits,” she told MPs, adding that some other veterans were even offered non-disclosure agreements along with “payouts if they were to take it.”

Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC) has told the media its “employees have no role or mandate to recommend or raise (MAid). ”

As reported by LifeSiteNews, this is not the first time reports of CAF veterans saying they were offered MAiD.

Indeed, as reported by LifeSiteNews, it was revealed last year that the federal department in charge of helping Canadian veterans appears to have purposefully prevented the existence of a paper after scandalous reports surfaced alleging that caseworkers had recommended euthanasia to suffering service members.

A new EPC report has revealed that Canada has euthanized 90,000 people since 2016.

As reported by LifeSiteNews last week, a Conservative MP’s private member’s bill that, if passed, would ban euthanasia for people with mental illness received the full support of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (EPC).

https://kelsisheren.substack.com/p/maid-will-always-be-abused-305?utm_source=podcast-email&publication_id=2800927&post_id=178742271&utm_campaign=email-play-on-substack&utm_content=watch_now_button&r=lqs9o&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

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Why we keep getting Remembrance Day wrong

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This article supplied by Troy Media.

Troy Media By Pat Murphy

Remembrance Day once honoured soldiers for their courage and conviction, but the values they fought for have long since been rejected

With the untimely death of Tim Cook on Oct. 25, Canada lost a valued historian. Military history was Cook’s oeuvre, and the First World War was a particular specialty. His ability to marry academic rigour with accessible storytelling made him a relatively rare bird.

Naturally, Cook wrote about battles, military commanders and political leaders. But he was also fascinated with ordinary soldiers, scouring the archives for personal letters from the front and other material to develop an understanding of what
motivated the soldiers and how they managed the day-to-day horrors of prolonged trench warfare in an environment characterized by cold, mud, lice and rats, not to mention the ever-present spectre of violent death.

Camaraderie was critical. To quote from an interview with Cook: “one of the ways they cope is to create their own tribe, their own group that is insulated from everyone else.”

All of which brings us to Remembrance Day.

Although formally recognized as “remembrance for the men and women who have served, and continue to serve our country during times of war, conflict and peace,” both the origins and iconography of Remembrance Day relate to the First World War. There’s the two-minute silence at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month to observe the formal end of hostilities in 1918; the playing of the Last Post; and, of course, the ubiquitous red poppies.

The conflict wasn’t post Confederation Canada’s first military endeavour, but its scale dwarfed anything that came before it, and only the subsequent Second World War was a comparable event. Some 620,000 Canadians served between 1914 and 1918 and approximately 60,000 were killed. To get a sense of scale, adjust the fatalities for population growth and it would be comfortably north of 300,000 today.

In War: How Conflict Shaped Us, Margaret MacMillan notes the long history of cultures elevating personal characteristics associated with battlefield success, honouring bravery, endurance, toughness and the willingness to face death. It’s been pretty much a universal characteristic.

Nor should we think of war as only a male activity driven by patriarchal social structures. While it’s true that military hierarchies are traditionally male and the fighting in most wars has been done largely by men, women have always played
a key role in reinforcing the culture.

We, though, have become somewhat uncomfortable with the warrior ethos. Take, for instance, In Flanders Fields. Written in 1915 by Guelph’s John McCrae, the poem has acquired iconic status over the decades. It’s haunting and melancholy, sufficiently so to grab at your throat and send shivers down your spine. It’s also become inextricably intertwined with Remembrance Day.

There is, however, a small problem. While we now view the First World War as senseless carnage, In Flanders Fields has a very different perspective. As the third and final stanza makes unequivocally clear, the poem’s message isn’t about the war’s futility—it’s about the need to keep the faith and carry on to victory.

Much the same can be said about the music associated with the era. Those songs written in recent decades stress the sadness and futility of it all, but the actual popular music of the time was cheerful, patriotic and resolute.

Rather than seeing the soldiers as they were, we insist on recasting them as victims. Stripping them of personal agency, we ignore the fact that 80 per cent of them were volunteers, people who, for various reasons, chose to go to war.

So what motivated them?

Many were surely lured by the male affinity for adventure, compounded by patriotic fervour and enthusiastic loyalty to the concept of king and empire, however incomprehensible or disreputable the latter may now seem to us. There was also the buzz of an environment where the usual social norms regarding life, death and destruction had either vanished or become significantly attenuated. In her book, MacMillan documents how some found the whole experience “vastly exciting.”

Acknowledging this shouldn’t be confused with cheerleading. As I’ve previously written on more than one occasion, I think Britain’s reluctant decision to enter the First World War was a tragic error on many fronts. And if Britain had stood aside, Canada wouldn’t have been involved.

But respectfully remembering those who died shouldn’t be confused with turning them into something they were not. They weren’t hapless victims—they were people with beliefs and values of their own, even if we no longer look at the world in the same way they did.

Troy Media columnist Pat Murphy casts a history buff’s eye at the goings-on in our world. Never cynical – well, perhaps a little bit.

Troy Media empowers Canadian community news outlets by providing independent, insightful analysis and commentary. Our mission is to support local media in helping Canadians stay informed and engaged by delivering reliable content that  strengthens community connections and deepens understanding across the country. 

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