Canada's Irrelevance

And whose fault is that?

Is the it the electorate who sold its sensibilities for taxpayer-funded trinkets?

Is it China, the country Justin openly declared his love for?

I know that the US is the usual whipping-boy here but the Americans have been asking us to pull our military weight for the longest time. 

We cannot even fulfill the Liberals' promise to Ukraine (how vain it is!).

Justin, though keen to rub elbows, also realises that there is an element of seriousness to being an actual leader. He simply is incapable of such a thing. His broken-down jets are the perfect visual for what Canada is: an aging and useless playboy no should ever take seriously.

Now, the only headlines Canada gets are bad ones.

The only way it could surprise the globe is if Canada did something right:

At Global Affairs Canada, our diplomats must be feeling as downtrodden as the military, fraught with Chinese interference in elections and in the day-to-day lives of Chinese Canadians, allegations of an assassination on Canadian soil by India that remain unproven and managing flip-flopping positions on the Hamas terrorist attack of October. Abandoning Israel, our friend and staunch ally, by voting in December for a United Nations motion denying the country its right to self-defence, Canada has now been publicly thanked by Hamas leader Ghazi Hamad.

Meanwhile, aid promised by Canada to Ukraine in the form of a $400 million air defence system, which provided the Prime Minister’s Office with photo-ops, has yet to arrive a year later. Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz was turned away from Canada in 2022, Trudeau’s explanation being that there “has never been a strong business case” to export natural gas.

Now, Canada is being excluded from alliances and treaties like the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF), as well as AUKUS, a security partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

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The point that seems to elude our government and many Canadians is that our weight in international diplomacy is a function of our military capability; we must be able to fly the flag on international missions and participate with our allies in exercises to be taken seriously. Right now, our ability is severely restricted. While the U.S., France and U.K. have all shot down Houthi missiles in the Red Sea, Canada has contributed only three staff officers to Operation Prosperity Guardian.

Beatty supported the government’s Indo-Pacific Strategy in his letter, and so do I. But a strategy requires the means to accomplish it, and the chief of the defence staff only has a finite number of ships. We had three ships in the Pacific over the last few months, but they have now returned home. What will Canada do now? When will we send more? There are not enough crews to outfit the few ships we have left, and many of them need to be refit.

In his video, Topshee warned that Canada’s new surface combatants won’t be ready for many years. What are the diplomats in Asia going to do without that support? No Canadian presence, no port visits. Sorry, Japan, no one from Canada will be around for a few years. Sorry, Australia, we wish we could exercise with you as part of AUKUS, but we do not belong. Sorry, U.S., although we have a senior officer and some staff at Indo-Pacific Command headquarters, this will not translate into a greater Canadian presence in the area.

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Canada’s armed forces have been neglected for many years, and no one in cabinet — especially the prime minister — cares. Our minister of national defence, Bill Blair, is new to the portfolio and has probably seen the real status of the forces; will he have the guts to demand the prime minister pay more attention to the military? Blair’s predecessor, Anita Anand, probably did, and she was removed. So who will do it? I am glad military leaders are speaking out. More Canadians need to tell our political leaders we support our CAF and the difficult situation they are in.