armed forces
Lest we forget our military
From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
By Lee Harding
An ocean of distance separates Flanders Fields from Ottawa. By now, we are separated just as much from the sentiments of the poem with the same name. In Flanders fields
An ocean of distance separates Flanders Fields from Ottawa. By now, we are separated just as much from the sentiments of the poem with the same name.
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
………..If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
The author, John McCrae, was one of 61,000 Canadian soldiers killed in the Great War. Forty thousand Canadians followed them In the Second World War. Their sacrifice, competence, and accomplishments did much at home and abroad to make the world notice the once-colonial Canada had come of age.
Alas, the armed forces began to erode a generation later. In early 1968 we saw the integration of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) partially as an exercise to reduce military spending and its numbers from over 105,000 to 70,000. The military expanded to 88,000 in the 1989 under Brian Mulroney’s leadership, but eroded thereafter.
The military in recent years has been increasingly short changed especially during the most recent years a time when the federal government has massively ramped up spending most everywhere else. Whereas Pierre Trudeau wanted to pull Canada out of NATO decades ago, his son Justin simply balks at the organization’s target of two per cent of GDP-spending. Instead, the sparsely-populated, second-largest country in the world dedicates just 1.29% of its economy to defence with an effective force of only 38,000 troops. Our $36.7 billion annual expenditure is about $20 billion short.
Back to Trudeau Sr. who had some unconventional sympathies. In 1952, he joined five Canadian Communists at a Soviet-sponsored conference in Russia. In 1960, he sojourned through China for six weeks at the invitation of the Maoist state, the same year he naively attempted to canoe from Florida to Revolutionary Cuba. As prime minister, Trudeau Sr. cherished Soviet ambassador to Canada, Alexander Yakovlev as a dear friend. Visits to Chairman Mao in China in 1973 and Fidel Castro in Cuba in 1976 brought mutual praise from both.
It’s hard to rally the troops against your foes when you consider them friends, so it was perhaps for both father and son. At the beginning of his new mandate in 2015 the new PM stated his admiration for China the most of all countries for its ability to get things done quickly because of it “basic dictatorship.” Coincidentally it turned out that the Canadian military was hosting Chinese troops on Canadian soil to train them in winter warfare.
Military readiness was subverted to politics when showcasing diversity and recruiting sexual minorities became the CAF’s overwhelming obsession. Unfortunately, this was not the only political overlay to distract, if not undermine, the forces.
Lawyer Catherine Christensen, who represents 300 veterans, told the National Citizen’s Inquiry on COVID-19 that the vaccine mandate devastated the military–and for this she holds the PM primarily responsible. Divisions killed morale, objectors retired early or were dishonourably discharged, while some were vaccine-injured. She warned the already bare-bones military has been reduced to a disturbingly vulnerable state.
Recently, military chaplains were informed they could no longer pray at public ceremonies, especially to a God conceived as a “He.” One military chaplain lamented to the press that Canada had “violated” its “covenant with the dead” who fought “for God and country.”
Lest we forget? Too late, we already have. In September, all 338 MPs stood and applauded an alleged Nazi who fought against our Russian allies in WWII. If McCrae is right, Canada’s war dead are all astir while its living are fast asleep.
Author
Lee Harding is a Research Fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
armed forces
Canadian veteran says she knows at least 20 service members who were offered euthanasia
From LifeSiteNews
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.
LifeSiteNews recently published a report noting how a Canadian combat veteran and artillery gunner revealed, while speaking on a podcast with Dr. Jordan Peterson, that the drugs used in MAiD essentially waterboard a person to death. Assisted suicide was legalized by the Liberal government of former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in 2016.
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).
armed forces
Why we keep getting Remembrance Day wrong
This article supplied by 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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