Seems like a generally good idea for creating a large reserve force. It definitely beats general conscription.
I don't see why Canada in particular needs such a large reserve force. This would jump Canada from number 127 to number 52 in terms of percentage of population in reserves, and bump it up to 17th in terms of absolute reserves size. For a nation with basically zero chance of invasion of its home soil and an extremely low risk of internal conflict, it's hard to imagine a scenario where anywhere near this many reservists would be required.
>For a nation with basically zero chance of invasion of its home soil and an extremely low risk of internal conflict
Clearly the Canadian government doesn't feel the same way. If they tried to conscript they'd quickly find themselves in a civil war (for the same reasons the US would), and one the Canadian capital clearly doesn't believe it'd win given how well it fared defending itself in 2022.
Of course, bureaucrats aren't exactly known for their fighting prowess either. This is mostly a statement that "Toronto/Ottawa doesn't need the rest of the country, it can see to its own defense", and to try and retain/engage the Elbows Up crowd (which, being the only reason the sitting government is in power, is completely understandable).
The US has been consistently signalling that it is considering annexing us since Donald Trump was re-elected in November of last year... the politicians are unlikely to say it outright but I think this is pretty clearly aimed at the US and making it too costly to do so.
24 000 reserves out of a population of 40 million seems like a rather small number.
Norway has 40 000 in the Home Guard (Heimevernet) rapid reaction force of volunteer part time soldiers and a further 20 000 reserves. All from a population of about 5.5 million.
The difference here is presumably for the last hundred years, ending last November, there was simply no chance of a invasion of Canada. Nukes might fly overhead and end the world as they struck targets on either side, but other than that we were safe and any significant military action we took part in would be overseas and thus not justify calling up a huge number of reservists.
Meanwhile Norway was occupied in WWII, and after that spent the next decades next to the Soviet Union, and then Russia. There's clearly been a long standing risk of actual invasion.
Canada has been running about 1% of gdp military spending, despite obligation of 2%; with new promise to meet 5%. a 500% increase to the size of our military in short order is the promise.
Our reserves are at about 40,000. They announced the plan to go to 400,000. 10x the size. It's not so much about any outside fears, it's just meeting our obligations.The fear about Russia or China is unfounded. The problem is that the USA our greatest ally isn't letting us use them as a shield.
>Federal and provincial employees would be given a one-week training course in how to handle firearms, drive trucks and fly drones, according to the directive, signed by Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Jennie Carignan
There's only about 300,000 federal employees. Greater on the provincial sides, but Canada isn't that big. Conscription will be necessary to fulfill these numbers
>The public servants would be inducted into the Supplementary Reserve, which is currently made up of inactive or retired members of the Canadian Forces who are willing to return to duty if called.
It says voluntary, but given the very significant % who need to join and be subject to immediate activation. I dont expect many to volunteer. Reserves at least pays you to have this cost. Conscription will be necessary. They are forcing those government employees ultimately.
That dismisses the greatest security threats of the era with a word. Most people in that field think those threats are very well-founded. Should Canada take the risk that everything will be fine?
I don't know much about Canada's current plans and how effective they would be.
Canada right now is trying to figure out if the greatest their to their security is China or the USA. They can tie their boat to either against the other, but they can't be allies with both.
The USA is a fantastic ally! When a small aircraft was recently hijacked from Vancouver international airport, guess which Air Force came to our rescue? Thank you!!
While there’s a lot of news and media about trade wars with the USA, the vast majority 85% of it remains under the free trade agreement. China does not even come close to a free and open market for us and their state sponsored corporate espionage is a real and growing danger.
China didn't strongly suggest that Canada should become its 23rd or 24th province. Also, if the USA keeps dipping its feet into fascism every other 4 year election cycle, every other western democracy is going to start pumping lots of resources into a plan B
Real question: Is any serious person advocating Canada abandon the West for China? What's their analysis here? If anyone has an article I can read I would love to do that.
>Real question: Is any serious person advocating Canada abandon the West for China? What's their analysis here? If anyone has an article I can read I would love to do that.
Which this 'imminent' factor never happened, but what was imminent was right before this was the announcement of various auto manufacturing moving production out of canada. Not really much to do with china, more of a screw you to the big 3.
China and Canada dont have a free trade agreement. The FIPA agreement is likely to be ended soon as it's possible.
Going from the antagonistic to a major trade deal and changing to chinese alliance would be a bizarre change though.
With the qualification that Canada has absolutely no intention of abandoning the West, merely the US. The intent of the government and people is absolutely to strengthen ties to western Europe, not weaken them.
Can they be allies with neither? They are trying to improve relations with the EU and, most importantly, are members of NATO (where the US is also a member).
Economically not really. China and the USA are the top economies, and China is only going to get more economically powerful, alignment with one or the other in trade at least is inevitable. The EU will be making similar decisions to Canada, and I doubt Canada is going to detach from Europe.
Russia is weak, they cant even take ukraine. To think they'd have a shadow of a chance against NATO is a joke.
China is strong, their standing army is probably 300 million and if they invaded canada. Our <100,000 CAF will be goners. Since they havent done it, they either dont want to or there's something external to canada protecting it. Either case, an unfounded threat.
>I don't know much about Canada's current plans and how effective they would be.
Ya that original comment about russia/china wasnt a significant part of my post anyway.
> China is strong, their standing army is probably 300 million and if they invaded canada. Our <100,000 CAF will be goners.
Having 300 million people and being able to move them across the Pacific Ocean are two very different things.
Yeah, China's building a lot of landing craft. Are those landing craft capable of a 10,000 mile voyage? I doubt it. Does China have a way of loading and launching those ships 100 miles from Canada? I doubt it.
TBH I think taking land is stupid, at least taking a lot of land is stupid because you are left with a huge cost and people who hate you. The US has already gone past that point and I doubt China wants to go back this route. Taiwan for sure, but the rest of the world? meh.
The only reason you can claim russia is not threat to you is their utter corrupted incompetence which had them losing cold war. In their mindset, every single one of you here living in free democratic country, doing and thinking whatever you like are a direct threat to their dictatorship and way of existence. Canada has no reason to not be another russian gubernia, they can come up with some made up claim like they would need one.
One would laugh at all this and ignore them if they didn't have enough functional nukes to cover entire civilization few times over.
Now I am not claiming the above about every russian person, nor attacking their culture or history. Actually history yes, a bit, its pretty sad and explains why they are as they are. They consistently end up with ruling elite who thinks above, maybe apart from Gorbachev (who is despised back home). Don't ever make a mistake of underestimating how fucked up russia as a country is. I keep repeating the same for past 2 decades (as someone coming from country practically enslaved for 4 decades by them) with people mostly laughing it off, apart from last 3 years.
>The problem is that the USA our greatest ally isn't letting us use them as a shield.
I personally think that Canada can be our (US) greatest ally, but this is only true in the hard-power sense of the word if Canada does actually meet its defense obligations.
Canada has a huge coastline, directly adjacent to our most significant threats (China & Russia), yet doesn't have a navy to speak of.
We need Canada to step up to its own defense so we can keep being equal allies, otherwise Canada is a de facto protectorate and should pay for that privilege.
Sign of the times, Canada is so afraid of the instability of America that they're low-key drafting public servants on a voluntary basis for now into the military.
Canadians are our closest brothers and sisters and it's just a historical quirk that we're separate countries at all.
I resent the implication that us being separate countries is a "historical quirk." It's condescending at best and exemplifies why we feel increasingly distant from the US.
It's like saying that Belgium and the Netherlands, or Spain and Portugal, or Germany and Switzerland are one historical quirk away from being the same countries.
> It's like saying that Belgium and the Netherlands, or Spain and Portugal, or Germany and Switzerland are one historical quirk away from being the same countries.
I think you could say this about any of those countries, although Switzerland's mountainous location means that it would always resist being part of a larger polity.
>It's condescending at best and exemplifies why we feel increasingly distant from the US.
As a Canadian, why would it be condescending to suggest that at some point in the distant past, Canada and the U.S. could have been a single country had history played out slightly differently? There is nothing offensive about it, if anything the fact that it's a claim about a historical matter only highlights how the two countries have evolved separately and independently.
Furthermore your other points are kind of bizzare. Spain and Portugal could absolutely have been a single country, and in fact they were under the Iberian Union. There are numerous other instances where the two countries came close to unifying.
The historical possibility of a unified Belgium and the Netherlands is even stronger since those two countries had been unified twice.
Germany and Switzerland however is a long shot, but at any rate I don't think anyone from Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain or Portugal would take offense or find it condescending that some historical event could have gone differently and reshaped all of Europe... taking offense to that suggestion as a Canadian, even during these times seems overly insecure and I don't think it's a sentiment shared by most of us.
It's condescending to describe it as a quirk, in the sense that it's no more a quirk than anything else in history. In the current climate where this sort of rhetoric has been publicly and visibly used by Russia to justify their invasion of Ukraine, and by the PRC to justify their ongoing pressure campaigns against the ROC, I also don't take this kind of wording at face value.
Wars were fought. People died, generations were involved in discourse about national identity and where borders should be drawn.
The US and Canada were both at one point British properties, so by some definitions, we also used to be unified. Then we weren't.
Is it insecure? Maybe. The reality is that in a shooting war, we wouldn't last very long against the US, in all likelihood. Under these conditions, the least I can do is to push back against rhetoric that undermines our legitimacy as our own country.
I've heard the same rhetoric (we're brothers, all will be fine) from many russians days before 2022 star of proper war in Ukraine. This feeling sadly means nothing in large enough scale.
I mean, it's entirely possible that a historic quirk 300+ years ago leads to an increasingly distant relationship today.
It's definitely possible to intepret this the way Russia speaks about Ukraine - "They shouldn't even be a country *except for a historical quirk", but a charitable interpretation would be more along the lines of "things could have gone slightly differently and we'd be countrymen, but instead we brothers from a different mother (country)".
Yeah, it's not a historical quirk, really. In talking to many Americans it seems like they don't really cover loyalists at all, or what happened after the Revolutionary War. Much of what became Canada was settled by former colonists from the what became the United States who remained loyal to the crown. My hometown was founded by loyalists from New York -- including the mayor of New York City -- after the Revolutionary War.
Essentially we are even closer than many people think in terms of history, but Canadian identity was seeded from the beginning with the idea of rejecting being "American". We are indeed your closest brothers and sisters because of history, but it's no quirk at all that we're separate -- it's the entire reason we stayed separate at all.
You can also see the reverse play out -- what would become Alberta was settled by large numbers of American colonists moving to Canada, and to this day you can see the cultural impact of that in the politics and world view from the region.
The same is true of Canada, but to a far greater extent since Toronto/Ottawa/Montreal have a permanent veto on whatever the rest of the country wants. The US political system, for all its other faults, has successfully avoided this problem.
It is not a surprise that region can't find anyone else (in the rest of the economic zone over which it claims dominion) willing to die for its interests, especially when their interests have been revealed to be nothing but "loot the rest of the nation".
Just in case people miss the core message: This is something you do if you have a credible risk assessment that you think a big conflict is a possibility within the next decade or so.
And, as much as I'd like to focus on deteriorating Canada/US relations, it's likely a dual purpose. The Ukraine/Russia/NATO situation would be the second factor. OK, a triad, China/US is also on the radar. Whatever the weighting, it's pushed Canada to work on a mobilization framework, because the combined risk is high enough.
Which means "oh shit" feelings are entirely appropriate, panic isn't.
Any rational assessment of Canada's military capabilities, its funding capabilities, and population will lead to a determination that they're not in any sort of position to have any sort of meaningful defense or offense without the US running point.
For that to change would require generational shifts in culture and revenue generation and so on. If the US chooses not to defend them, they're exposing themselves to unacceptable risk. If the US chooses to defend, Canada isn't contributing within the same order of magnitude. If the US chose to attack, then more has gone wrong in the world than you could possibly cope with, having a few thousand more tanks, ships, and helicopters isn't going to save the day. It'd take decades to build up population, R&D infrastructure, resources, and so on, and there'd likely be a lot of pressure to not do those things and use the US military industrial complex instead.
Not saying this is good for Canada, btw, just that the reality is they've kinda coasted on US coattails for decades now, and for better or worse, they're stuck. Which should in turn beg the question - if there's no practical or pragmatic point in spending a bunch of money on military preparedness and expansion, then why's that money being spent, and who's getting paid? Why are bureaucrats being militarized, instead of a discrete, well regulated military being created to meet whatever the need was?
Most people haven't noticed until recently but many countries around the world have been dramatically increasing their defense spending for several years now, pre-dating and somewhat independent of the Ukraine situation. Most of it is targeted for operational capability by the end of this decade. Interpret that how you will.
As an eye-popping number that illustrates this, just the backlog of new foreign weapon sales awaiting approvals in the US is almost $1T on its own. Countries are spending tremendous amounts of money on advanced weapons right now.
I think it's just they sense that US is no longer willing to be the world police (with its good and bad), so they better either prepare themselves for defence or prepare themselves for offence to grab some lands they have been drooling over for a while.
Look up China's youth unemployment. You know, the country that makes all the goodies and had a one child policy?
If they don't have jobs for their youth - do you think anyone else does?
Wake up - we've been in 'dig a hole and fill it back in' for at least half a century.
We had an IT jobs program for a while. Now we'll have a military jobs program for a while. Then we'll have something else jobs program. It's good old USSR except they provided everyone with free housing, free education and guaranteed jobs, lol. In modern USSR, ahem Western World, you have to continually humiliate yourself aka 'compete' whilst nepo babies get all the good jobs and 'manage' aka enjoy seeing you humiliating yourself and being afraid of using the wrong pronoun or whatever the latest humiliation ritual is.
The most damning thing about this is the Canadian gov would struggle to find 300k people in the rest of the population that it would trust with skilling up in those ways. Federal public servants will be the last bastion of the values they try to force on everyone else.
It is in the process of spending vast amounts of money to remove guns from legal gun owners that are subject to absolutely amazing amounts of oversight already.
I don't think this is true. It's just much easier to bring in people when you have access to them to ask directly, basically.
In my short experience in public service, I met a great number of people who were not in lockstep with the so-called "values they try to force" (i.e. the political plans of the current government), so it seems they're not doing a great job of "forcing" those values if that's the plan.
Seems like a generally good idea for creating a large reserve force. It definitely beats general conscription.
I don't see why Canada in particular needs such a large reserve force. This would jump Canada from number 127 to number 52 in terms of percentage of population in reserves, and bump it up to 17th in terms of absolute reserves size. For a nation with basically zero chance of invasion of its home soil and an extremely low risk of internal conflict, it's hard to imagine a scenario where anywhere near this many reservists would be required.
>For a nation with basically zero chance of invasion of its home soil and an extremely low risk of internal conflict
Clearly the Canadian government doesn't feel the same way. If they tried to conscript they'd quickly find themselves in a civil war (for the same reasons the US would), and one the Canadian capital clearly doesn't believe it'd win given how well it fared defending itself in 2022.
Of course, bureaucrats aren't exactly known for their fighting prowess either. This is mostly a statement that "Toronto/Ottawa doesn't need the rest of the country, it can see to its own defense", and to try and retain/engage the Elbows Up crowd (which, being the only reason the sitting government is in power, is completely understandable).
The US has been consistently signalling that it is considering annexing us since Donald Trump was re-elected in November of last year... the politicians are unlikely to say it outright but I think this is pretty clearly aimed at the US and making it too costly to do so.
Canada would be insane to not beef up its military at this point. Mexico should, too.
24 000 reserves out of a population of 40 million seems like a rather small number.
Norway has 40 000 in the Home Guard (Heimevernet) rapid reaction force of volunteer part time soldiers and a further 20 000 reserves. All from a population of about 5.5 million.
The difference here is presumably for the last hundred years, ending last November, there was simply no chance of a invasion of Canada. Nukes might fly overhead and end the world as they struck targets on either side, but other than that we were safe and any significant military action we took part in would be overseas and thus not justify calling up a huge number of reservists.
Meanwhile Norway was occupied in WWII, and after that spent the next decades next to the Soviet Union, and then Russia. There's clearly been a long standing risk of actual invasion.
https://archive.is/G4oZo
Canada has been running about 1% of gdp military spending, despite obligation of 2%; with new promise to meet 5%. a 500% increase to the size of our military in short order is the promise.
Our reserves are at about 40,000. They announced the plan to go to 400,000. 10x the size. It's not so much about any outside fears, it's just meeting our obligations.The fear about Russia or China is unfounded. The problem is that the USA our greatest ally isn't letting us use them as a shield.
>Federal and provincial employees would be given a one-week training course in how to handle firearms, drive trucks and fly drones, according to the directive, signed by Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Jennie Carignan
There's only about 300,000 federal employees. Greater on the provincial sides, but Canada isn't that big. Conscription will be necessary to fulfill these numbers
>The public servants would be inducted into the Supplementary Reserve, which is currently made up of inactive or retired members of the Canadian Forces who are willing to return to duty if called.
It says voluntary, but given the very significant % who need to join and be subject to immediate activation. I dont expect many to volunteer. Reserves at least pays you to have this cost. Conscription will be necessary. They are forcing those government employees ultimately.
> The fear about Russia or China is unfounded.
That dismisses the greatest security threats of the era with a word. Most people in that field think those threats are very well-founded. Should Canada take the risk that everything will be fine?
I don't know much about Canada's current plans and how effective they would be.
Canada right now is trying to figure out if the greatest their to their security is China or the USA. They can tie their boat to either against the other, but they can't be allies with both.
The USA is a fantastic ally! When a small aircraft was recently hijacked from Vancouver international airport, guess which Air Force came to our rescue? Thank you!!
While there’s a lot of news and media about trade wars with the USA, the vast majority 85% of it remains under the free trade agreement. China does not even come close to a free and open market for us and their state sponsored corporate espionage is a real and growing danger.
China didn't strongly suggest that Canada should become its 23rd or 24th province. Also, if the USA keeps dipping its feet into fascism every other 4 year election cycle, every other western democracy is going to start pumping lots of resources into a plan B
They might be more worried about the recent attempts to annex them.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/25/donald...
I'd imagine the threats of annexation are more concerning than the tariffs.
Real question: Is any serious person advocating Canada abandon the West for China? What's their analysis here? If anyone has an article I can read I would love to do that.
>Real question: Is any serious person advocating Canada abandon the West for China? What's their analysis here? If anyone has an article I can read I would love to do that.
In Canada? Oh yes, many serious liberals are advocating ending with usa and becoming an ally with china. About a month ago: https://globalnews.ca/news/11490896/canada-strategic-partner...
Which resulted in the USA suspending all trade talks with Canada the next day.
But over the last decade, the liberals also have ordered various anti-china divestments: https://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article...
not to mention: https://electrek.co/2025/10/27/canada-rumored-immently-remov...
Which this 'imminent' factor never happened, but what was imminent was right before this was the announcement of various auto manufacturing moving production out of canada. Not really much to do with china, more of a screw you to the big 3.
China and Canada dont have a free trade agreement. The FIPA agreement is likely to be ended soon as it's possible.
Going from the antagonistic to a major trade deal and changing to chinese alliance would be a bizarre change though.
With the qualification that Canada has absolutely no intention of abandoning the West, merely the US. The intent of the government and people is absolutely to strengthen ties to western Europe, not weaken them.
Thank you I will read these!
Can they be allies with neither? They are trying to improve relations with the EU and, most importantly, are members of NATO (where the US is also a member).
Economically not really. China and the USA are the top economies, and China is only going to get more economically powerful, alignment with one or the other in trade at least is inevitable. The EU will be making similar decisions to Canada, and I doubt Canada is going to detach from Europe.
"Canada right now is trying to figure out if the greatest their to their security is China or the USA."
I very much doubt that is true. Unless the Canadian government get's their information only from "truth" social.
Russia is weak, they cant even take ukraine. To think they'd have a shadow of a chance against NATO is a joke.
China is strong, their standing army is probably 300 million and if they invaded canada. Our <100,000 CAF will be goners. Since they havent done it, they either dont want to or there's something external to canada protecting it. Either case, an unfounded threat.
>I don't know much about Canada's current plans and how effective they would be.
Ya that original comment about russia/china wasnt a significant part of my post anyway.
> China is strong, their standing army is probably 300 million
Maybe 1% of that. Also, numbers are important, but so are equipment, training, and leadership.
The idea that China is going to ship 300 million troops to Canada seems absurd on its face. There is just no geopolitical scenario where that happens.
This is more about Canada having enough troops to contribute if NATO decides to intervene in a China-Taiwan war.
> China is strong, their standing army is probably 300 million and if they invaded canada. Our <100,000 CAF will be goners.
Having 300 million people and being able to move them across the Pacific Ocean are two very different things.
Yeah, China's building a lot of landing craft. Are those landing craft capable of a 10,000 mile voyage? I doubt it. Does China have a way of loading and launching those ships 100 miles from Canada? I doubt it.
TBH I think taking land is stupid, at least taking a lot of land is stupid because you are left with a huge cost and people who hate you. The US has already gone past that point and I doubt China wants to go back this route. Taiwan for sure, but the rest of the world? meh.
[dead]
Why is the US our greatest ally?
36 stratagems says "Befriend a distant state and strike a neighbouring one"
Why don't they offer to all PRs and citizens? I'd like to learn those skills...
There'll be a thousand resumes per drone operator job posting - best believe.
These aren't 90 IQ flesh bag with gun jobs - we don't need those anymore.
The only reason you can claim russia is not threat to you is their utter corrupted incompetence which had them losing cold war. In their mindset, every single one of you here living in free democratic country, doing and thinking whatever you like are a direct threat to their dictatorship and way of existence. Canada has no reason to not be another russian gubernia, they can come up with some made up claim like they would need one.
One would laugh at all this and ignore them if they didn't have enough functional nukes to cover entire civilization few times over.
Now I am not claiming the above about every russian person, nor attacking their culture or history. Actually history yes, a bit, its pretty sad and explains why they are as they are. They consistently end up with ruling elite who thinks above, maybe apart from Gorbachev (who is despised back home). Don't ever make a mistake of underestimating how fucked up russia as a country is. I keep repeating the same for past 2 decades (as someone coming from country practically enslaved for 4 decades by them) with people mostly laughing it off, apart from last 3 years.
>The problem is that the USA our greatest ally isn't letting us use them as a shield.
I personally think that Canada can be our (US) greatest ally, but this is only true in the hard-power sense of the word if Canada does actually meet its defense obligations.
Canada has a huge coastline, directly adjacent to our most significant threats (China & Russia), yet doesn't have a navy to speak of.
We need Canada to step up to its own defense so we can keep being equal allies, otherwise Canada is a de facto protectorate and should pay for that privilege.
Sign of the times, Canada is so afraid of the instability of America that they're low-key drafting public servants on a voluntary basis for now into the military.
Canadians are our closest brothers and sisters and it's just a historical quirk that we're separate countries at all.
I resent the implication that us being separate countries is a "historical quirk." It's condescending at best and exemplifies why we feel increasingly distant from the US.
It's like saying that Belgium and the Netherlands, or Spain and Portugal, or Germany and Switzerland are one historical quirk away from being the same countries.
> It's like saying that Belgium and the Netherlands, or Spain and Portugal, or Germany and Switzerland are one historical quirk away from being the same countries.
I think you could say this about any of those countries, although Switzerland's mountainous location means that it would always resist being part of a larger polity.
> means that it would always resist being part of a larger polity.
More like it can resist in a more cost effective way and that subjugating them is worth less.
>It's condescending at best and exemplifies why we feel increasingly distant from the US.
As a Canadian, why would it be condescending to suggest that at some point in the distant past, Canada and the U.S. could have been a single country had history played out slightly differently? There is nothing offensive about it, if anything the fact that it's a claim about a historical matter only highlights how the two countries have evolved separately and independently.
Furthermore your other points are kind of bizzare. Spain and Portugal could absolutely have been a single country, and in fact they were under the Iberian Union. There are numerous other instances where the two countries came close to unifying.
The historical possibility of a unified Belgium and the Netherlands is even stronger since those two countries had been unified twice.
Germany and Switzerland however is a long shot, but at any rate I don't think anyone from Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain or Portugal would take offense or find it condescending that some historical event could have gone differently and reshaped all of Europe... taking offense to that suggestion as a Canadian, even during these times seems overly insecure and I don't think it's a sentiment shared by most of us.
It's condescending to describe it as a quirk, in the sense that it's no more a quirk than anything else in history. In the current climate where this sort of rhetoric has been publicly and visibly used by Russia to justify their invasion of Ukraine, and by the PRC to justify their ongoing pressure campaigns against the ROC, I also don't take this kind of wording at face value.
Wars were fought. People died, generations were involved in discourse about national identity and where borders should be drawn.
The US and Canada were both at one point British properties, so by some definitions, we also used to be unified. Then we weren't.
Is it insecure? Maybe. The reality is that in a shooting war, we wouldn't last very long against the US, in all likelihood. Under these conditions, the least I can do is to push back against rhetoric that undermines our legitimacy as our own country.
It also reprises one of Russia's claims to Ukraine, and that of many other expansionist dictators through history.
Maybe the US should be part of Canada?
I've heard the same rhetoric (we're brothers, all will be fine) from many russians days before 2022 star of proper war in Ukraine. This feeling sadly means nothing in large enough scale.
I mean, it's entirely possible that a historic quirk 300+ years ago leads to an increasingly distant relationship today.
It's definitely possible to intepret this the way Russia speaks about Ukraine - "They shouldn't even be a country *except for a historical quirk", but a charitable interpretation would be more along the lines of "things could have gone slightly differently and we'd be countrymen, but instead we brothers from a different mother (country)".
No need to interpret. The exact same line colechristensen wrote has been used by Russias about Ukraine many times.
After this past year of US political discourse, you'll forgive me for not extending the benefit of the doubt anymore.
Yeah, it's not a historical quirk, really. In talking to many Americans it seems like they don't really cover loyalists at all, or what happened after the Revolutionary War. Much of what became Canada was settled by former colonists from the what became the United States who remained loyal to the crown. My hometown was founded by loyalists from New York -- including the mayor of New York City -- after the Revolutionary War.
Essentially we are even closer than many people think in terms of history, but Canadian identity was seeded from the beginning with the idea of rejecting being "American". We are indeed your closest brothers and sisters because of history, but it's no quirk at all that we're separate -- it's the entire reason we stayed separate at all.
You can also see the reverse play out -- what would become Alberta was settled by large numbers of American colonists moving to Canada, and to this day you can see the cultural impact of that in the politics and world view from the region.
It's a historic quirk that the US is a single country. It hardly feels like one most days.
The same is true of Canada, but to a far greater extent since Toronto/Ottawa/Montreal have a permanent veto on whatever the rest of the country wants. The US political system, for all its other faults, has successfully avoided this problem.
It is not a surprise that region can't find anyone else (in the rest of the economic zone over which it claims dominion) willing to die for its interests, especially when their interests have been revealed to be nothing but "loot the rest of the nation".
american: you're the historical quirk!
canadian: no, you're the historical quirk!
native american: you're both historical twerps.
Perhaps another sign of the times: commenters are responding with animosity to your suggestion that Americans and Canadians are incredibly close.
I imagine it's hard to feel too close to people who elected a clown who wants to invade you.
Just in case people miss the core message: This is something you do if you have a credible risk assessment that you think a big conflict is a possibility within the next decade or so.
And, as much as I'd like to focus on deteriorating Canada/US relations, it's likely a dual purpose. The Ukraine/Russia/NATO situation would be the second factor. OK, a triad, China/US is also on the radar. Whatever the weighting, it's pushed Canada to work on a mobilization framework, because the combined risk is high enough.
Which means "oh shit" feelings are entirely appropriate, panic isn't.
Any rational assessment of Canada's military capabilities, its funding capabilities, and population will lead to a determination that they're not in any sort of position to have any sort of meaningful defense or offense without the US running point.
For that to change would require generational shifts in culture and revenue generation and so on. If the US chooses not to defend them, they're exposing themselves to unacceptable risk. If the US chooses to defend, Canada isn't contributing within the same order of magnitude. If the US chose to attack, then more has gone wrong in the world than you could possibly cope with, having a few thousand more tanks, ships, and helicopters isn't going to save the day. It'd take decades to build up population, R&D infrastructure, resources, and so on, and there'd likely be a lot of pressure to not do those things and use the US military industrial complex instead.
Not saying this is good for Canada, btw, just that the reality is they've kinda coasted on US coattails for decades now, and for better or worse, they're stuck. Which should in turn beg the question - if there's no practical or pragmatic point in spending a bunch of money on military preparedness and expansion, then why's that money being spent, and who's getting paid? Why are bureaucrats being militarized, instead of a discrete, well regulated military being created to meet whatever the need was?
Strange politics.
I wish I had written this. I think the exact same thing but you articulated it much better than I have been able to.
Most people haven't noticed until recently but many countries around the world have been dramatically increasing their defense spending for several years now, pre-dating and somewhat independent of the Ukraine situation. Most of it is targeted for operational capability by the end of this decade. Interpret that how you will.
As an eye-popping number that illustrates this, just the backlog of new foreign weapon sales awaiting approvals in the US is almost $1T on its own. Countries are spending tremendous amounts of money on advanced weapons right now.
I think it's just they sense that US is no longer willing to be the world police (with its good and bad), so they better either prepare themselves for defence or prepare themselves for offence to grab some lands they have been drooling over for a while.
It's a jobs program.
Look up China's youth unemployment. You know, the country that makes all the goodies and had a one child policy?
If they don't have jobs for their youth - do you think anyone else does?
Wake up - we've been in 'dig a hole and fill it back in' for at least half a century.
We had an IT jobs program for a while. Now we'll have a military jobs program for a while. Then we'll have something else jobs program. It's good old USSR except they provided everyone with free housing, free education and guaranteed jobs, lol. In modern USSR, ahem Western World, you have to continually humiliate yourself aka 'compete' whilst nepo babies get all the good jobs and 'manage' aka enjoy seeing you humiliating yourself and being afraid of using the wrong pronoun or whatever the latest humiliation ritual is.
The most damning thing about this is the Canadian gov would struggle to find 300k people in the rest of the population that it would trust with skilling up in those ways. Federal public servants will be the last bastion of the values they try to force on everyone else.
It is in the process of spending vast amounts of money to remove guns from legal gun owners that are subject to absolutely amazing amounts of oversight already.
HN seems to hate this but you're right. The type of people the military relies on are not in power in Canada and haven't been for some time.
Especially when most of them are in Western Canada, which keeps threatening to leave.
I don't think this is true. It's just much easier to bring in people when you have access to them to ask directly, basically.
In my short experience in public service, I met a great number of people who were not in lockstep with the so-called "values they try to force" (i.e. the political plans of the current government), so it seems they're not doing a great job of "forcing" those values if that's the plan.
They have enough problems keeping the people they currently have in the military on the same page.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/rcmp-caf-charges-terrorism-...
The general response to this was amazement that the MP or RCMP actually did anything about it, given what occurs within those.
[dead]