Canada has abandoned national defense

Tiny Finland makes us look pathetic

Canada’s population is about 38 million and Finland has about 5 million people. I spent a decade in the RCAF flying antiquated fighters that frequently crashed owing to engine failures and a host of other factors. I had ten engine failures in 1,100 hours on the CF-101 Voodoo, but was able to land them all on the other engine or in one incident with no engines working.

During my years as a figher pilot, dozens of my contemporaries (including many close friends) died in plane crashes. The endless debates in Parliament were never about buying state of the art aircraft but rather about which nearly obsolete plane Canada could buy for some arbitrarily low budget.

Now look at Finland. Finland has a GDP of $288 billion compared to Canada’s $2.2 trillion, but the Finnish air force has ordered 64 F-35’s (the latest and greatest fighter on Earth), for $9.5 billion adding to its fleet of F18’s comparable to Canada’s latest fighter which is becoming obsolete.

Trudeau’s Liberals vowed never to buy the F-35 only seven years ago but this year Minister Anita Anand is promoting the purchase of 88 F-35’s. The F-35 program is 12 years old now, and not a single F-35 is on Canadian soil. But the cost of the program is now estimated at $45 billion, about 5 times what Finland spent on this fighter (although Finland purchased only 64 of them, versus the 88 Canada is eyeing). Had Canada bought when Finland did, Canada would have saved about $30 billion. Dithering costs money and Trudeau has demonstrated unusual expertise at dithering and no interest in fiscal prudence.

The Ukraine war should be a wakeup call for our government. Russia is just as close to Canada as it is to Ukraine and the Canadian Arctic is in Russia’s sights. Pretending we don’t have to fund our own defense because America is our “daddy” and won’t let us get hurt is a Liberal government schtick devoid of reality. Our defense policy is based on “political presumption and wishful thinking” and Trudeau would rather spend billions on the useless United Nations, give money to Canadians who don’t need it (because he “has our backs”) and refuse to answer where hundreds of millions of “infrastructure funds” went under Minister McKenna’s oversight. Deficits of $250 billion are fine with Trudeau when the money is squandered on pet Liberal programs that end up ridded with fraud, but defense is never a priority. The only headlines our military earns under Trudeau are for sexual harassment claims. The decay in our military approaches rot.

Canadians watching the news should pay attention to what cities look like after a few weeks of warfare and stop dreaming that it “can never happen” here. Minister Anand is brilliant and determined but faces an uphill battle in Cabinet with Trudeau at the helm. Send Trudeau packing, elect Pierre Poilievre, and Canada may once again have a military it can be proud of. Among other things, a strong military might come in handly when the socialist left attempts to install an authoritarian government and Canadians decide they won’t have it.