The earthquake in Haiti this week has created a humanitarian disaster, with hundreds of thousands of people killed or injured and millions requiring assistance. Canada and other countries around the world are scrambling to provide emergency aid. The federal government has already donated $5 million to emergency relief efforts and has promised to match private […]
Tag Archives: Defence policy
Canada and UN peacekeeping
A new fact-sheet published by the Peace Operations Working Group documents the collapse in Canadian government support for UN peacekeeping since the early 1990s. As recently as 1992, Canada was the single largest contributor of personnel to UN peacekeeping missions. We have since fallen to 56th place. In October 2009, we contributed just 55 of […]
Budget "adjustments" miss obvious defence spending waste
As noted in an earlier post, all three branches of the Canadian Forces (Army, Navy, Air Force) are currently conducting budget “adjustments”, amounting to $190 million, that have to be made by the end of March. As part of this process, the Army is “adjusting” its budget by $80 million, and the Reserves are reportedly […]
Air Force Association pushes CF-18 replacement
The Air Force Association of Canada is pressing the government to proceed as soon as possible on a replacement for the CF-18 fighter, David Pugliese reports. The Next Generation Fighter program, expected to cost as much as $10 billion, is intended to procure about 65 aircraft to replace the CF-18 in the 2018-2023 period: The […]
Moens warns of "existentialist" threat
Simon Fraser University professor Alexander Moens warns in a new paper published by the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute that Canada and its NATO allies face an “existentialist threat”. But, no, the problem apparently is not that Jean-Paul Sartre or one of the other existentialists has risen from the grave. What Moens is actually […]
Military spending "cuts" underway?
David Pugliese reports that “the Canadian military is looking for savings of more than $190 million by March to help pay for the Harper government’s defence strategy.” The Army is reportedly looking at an $80-million cutback, while the Navy is facing a $52-million cut and the Air Force is facing a $59-million cut. These “cuts” […]