Airborne Brotherhood

Yes, I agree, it is time and furthermore it is time to reinstate the airborne regiment.

After the 4 Canadians were killed by the American pilot in A'fstan, they held a memorial in Edmonton. Jean Crouton was there and as they called the names on the roll the assembled soldiers responded with "AIRBORNE".

Thanks Kate.

We have YEARS of Trudeau/Liberal wrongs to undue, this would be but one thing, but a start...

Didn't the King say something along the lines of: Give me the Brits to organize it, the Yanks to supply it, but give me the Canadian boys to hold the ground all night. Or something along those lines. If anyone could post that quote it would be appreciated.

The most obvious candidate entity to be disbanded in disgrace is the Liberal Party of Canada. How many Liberal Party scandals have come to light and subsequently been swept under the carpet, aided and abetted in that and swept down the Memory Hole by the MSM?

F***ing right they should apologize to the Canadian Airborne Regiment!

Never has so much been made of so little! The actions of one alcoholic abusive soldier,Clayton Matchee, should have resulted in HIS court martial,and nothing else.

To disband a regiment,especially the elite Regiment of the entire Armed Forces,was beyond absurd.

This was just one of many slaps in the face to the Armed Forces by the Liberals.

Mr.Harper,do the right thing.

It'd be the honorable thing to do for the military, along with separating the branches. After all, those few remaining Liberals in the oppo benches are going to disagree, but, so what?

The actions of the Government of the day were so political it's simply disgusting. There were strong indications that the regiment were being used in drug testing and were on strong doses of mefloquinine for months longer than recommended by the manufacturer. Read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mefloquine . "In August 2009, Roche stopped marketing Lariam in the United States. Generic mefloquine from other manufacturers, is still widely available. Rare but serious neuropsychiatric problems have been associated with its use."
Rare when properly administered in proper doses without alcohol. (My quote)

Bring back the Airborne!

Fricken Liberals and their "expediency" in making a "problem" go away. Deny it exists or ever did. No respect for the military, no respect for our institutions and no respect for Canada.

My Dad went ashore with the 1st Hussars swimming Tanks in the D-Day assault wave. He had nothing but praise for these guys.

When they got to the Airborne they were holding onto a patch of surrounded ground, were cut up & had little ammunition left. Despite their dire straights they ordered the Tanks to move on and help another group who they thought were in tougher shape.

Tough and Brave.

Their history alone deserves reinstatement.

http://1canpara-hq.org/

Never forget.

Stay strong.

Blessed Memorial day boys!

A brazen Liberal Gov't over-reaction to an unfortunate military screw-up.
An elite, honorable regiment tossed to the scrap heap to assuage the government's fair-play edict.
What a crock!
The sooner the pantywaists in this nation (and that's you CBC, CTV!), realize that we're not in a game of ring-around-the rosy, and we've got some real enemies looking for our weaknesses, the better off we'll be.
I want the Airbourne to be re-instated. With full honours, and all the pageantry we can muster!

Don't know why Kate didn't post this and the next as a juxtapose. Maybe just too far apart.

If disbanding units was standard procedure because of one or two rotten apples in those units , there would be no Army, Navy of Air Force. Liberals always saw the armed forces as a waste of money. Or at best, a necessary evil.

Agreed. I trained with several members of the Airborne Regiment and a finer group of guys you couldn't hope to meet. The liberals must have been rubbing their hands together with glee when they were given the chance to disband this proud Canadian group. I have faith that Mr. Harper has the moral fortitude to do the right thing here.

Cretien himself should apologize. and while he is at it offer for the Liberals to payback the adscam money

The Liberal Party should have been disbanded with disgrace after Chretien's crooks stole millions of dollars, more than a few of them should see prison time, including Cretin himself.

I have "thrown" these proud men and women out of planes with nothing more than then the silk on their backs and a few pounds of survival gear.I have partied with them,and proudly marched with them! And I am a "chicken" Airforce Vet! One lousy,psycho nutcase is cause to bring down and disband with disgrace a whole regiment???? Then the whole LPC should be gone,with Cretin as the head psycho!!! But then Matchee is a "Native"...i.e....Indian psycho....so the Libs stand up for him...and say the "system" is wrong. Hang the Libs high for this...and re-instate with full honors the Airborne,and make it known far and wide this was a Lib/leftie/commie/faicist move to discredit Canada and our Forces.And yes,I have met Matchee. He ranks right up there with the f&^*ing nutcase in the above post!
If I ever have the unfortunate case to go to court,I will plead Lib psycho,and go free because I am "nuts".

What a shame that this was permitted to happen. What's worse is that it happened not merely because of the behaviour of a few soldiers but because of the apparent and widespread breakdown in the chain of command whose source was outside the Airborne and especially in one of the supporting infantry units.

The real scandal went far beyond what happened to that Somalian boy. The systemic loss of discipline and the confusion between officers and enlisted ranks permitted an inevitable rogue culture; this was especially the failing of the officers.

The evidence for the malaise could be readily seen in news coverage of the camps where the visible slovenliness and disciplinary breakdown was made obvious. I recall one report that showed some soldiers 'hanging out' in their tents under a Confederate Battle Flag as if they were a bunch of bikers on a holiday. This was not the appearance or reputation of the legendary and highly trained and disciplined Canadian soldier.
And it didn't just start there. It had been lingering about and growing over a couple of decades.

Much of the source of this can readily be found in the Liberals politicization of NDHQ and the merging of the Ministry with the Armed Forces. Over time, both the interference as well as the lack of support from government did enormous damage to regimental identities and morale.

If there needed some rooting out it shouldn't have been the entire Airborne Regiment but those officers inside and out of the regiment whose priorities were inconsistent with not only QOR but the high standard and traditions of the Canadian infantry corps.

The Liberals never saw a Canadian symbol, tradition or institution that they did not consider a target for their re-making of, not only our military, but our country in the image of their malicious and amateur recreations that have trampled over the hearts and souls of the hundreds of thousands who have served this country so nobly.

They got away with all of this because they built a culture to protect that ability.

Since then so much has improved that perhaps under a government that cherishes Canadian, not Liberal, tradition and the valour that goes with it, the time may well have come to restore the Airborne properly.

Sorry for the long post.

It would be a great day in the old Dominion if the historic Airborne Regiment was reinstated. The "bilingual" officers on the ground, Lt,Col Mattue or whatever, etc. were not respected, or trusted by the regular Airborne soldier, and the whole chain of command was a Trudeauvian mess of socially engineered play time. In my memory the inquiry was shut down in order to keep the real systemic problems in the chain of command hidden, while disbanding the Airborne Regiment itself represented the pretense of having solved the problem. Another Liberal fraud, with a fog of deceit as cover.

"They were Canada's best of the best."

exactly. were. W-E-R-E. as in *past tense*

matchee's outfit was the direction they had evolved into. when you allow garbage like him to wear the colours anything can happen and did.

it was nevertheless exclusively political expediency. who was the defence minister at the time? as I recollect it was a maritimer.

I was serving in J3 at NDHQ at the time and recall having an emotional discussion with Peter Kenward as he was leaving to take command of the regiment. I told him if anyone could fix the regiment, it was him. Unfortunately we both also agreed it may have been too late, and the regiment was probably doomed.

A few years after the event I was told by what I consider a reliable source that the decision had been made to disband the regiment well in advance of the announcement, like several months at the least. Recall that this was in the early days of the decade of darkness, and that the army went down to six "full size" infantry battalions as well as one 10/90 battalion per regiment. There just was not an easy way to fit an airborne battalion into this. A flow of cleverly crafted leaks and rumours along with a compliant media in one of its feeding frenzies created an atmosphere where the CF was hardly at the top of the public's Christmas Card list. The airborne would have been lucky to have been disbanded as a financial measure, and that was not the way the Liberals worked. This gave the government the ammunition it needed to raze the DND budget.

Apology? Yes. Reinstatement? No.

The last thing Canada's little army needs is another niche capability of battalion size, especially when the jump capability has been retained at sub-unit level within each of the third battalions. CSOR should satisfy a desire for those seeking 'eliteness'. At a time when we can expect reductions in the numbers of line infantry to accommodate all of the new capabilities returning from Afghanistan, we should not be entertaining the thought of standing up another light infantry battalion.

I agree, I watched every single moment of the hearings and it became clear to me they shut it down because the truth was coming out. Our soldiers were given drugs not approved in Canada and the side effects caused some of them to become deranged and violent.

Many thanks to all the knowledgeable commenters above, but especially Pidd, Brian from K, and Junior. I learned more about the case of the Airborne Regiment from their comments than from any number of newspapers.

Cheers, men.

Junior

Annother unit has all ready been formed some years ago that fill the role the Airborne used to do. Instead they wear tan beret instead of maroon stationed in Petawawa.

The time has come to right this wrong. Do the right thing Mr. Harper. AIRBORNE!

If we were to apply the Liberal governments
(il)logic that the criminal acts of one require the shaming and disbanding of the entire unit, we should do so to the entire Liberal Party forever, no?

Finally somebody got enough guts to speak up.

The business of the regiment was not a picnic at 5. As those who care know, know that it involves things other than serving tea.

What should happen now is, those who brought all that nonsense up, some 16 years ago, should be exposed as useless selfpromoting stupid people that should be fired on the spot and never get a job in the employee of the public. Should find a real job.

Let us see how that would work out for them.

Hear, hear.

Absolutely agree and reinstate the unit. As a side benefit it would tick off Pacifist Jack who doesn't believe the military should be used as a military force.

Interesting that this has been brought forward now that there is Tory majority. I suspect that this is the first step in a planned campaign to politically rehabilitate the CAR.

I agree with some other commenters that it is unlikely that the CAR will be reinstated- as noted the CSOR handles that task now. But who knows, maybe a re-badging is in the offing.

The CAE was not blemish free despite the grotesque overreaction by the Chretien Gov to disband the Regt. It was clearly a political move by a man who very little understanding or respect for the military.

Actually, as one of the fraternaty that jumps from perfectly good aircraft....

At this point, paratroops are really obsolete...not obsolescant. To deploy, involves a large, low flying, slow moving target...the perfect target for shoulder launched missiles, which more and more are available to even the most unsophistocated antagonists.

Halo addresses a lot of these concerns but without O2 and pressure suits, has shown a tendancy to deliver a puny, unfit force to the drop zone.

Yet all major military forces still retain paratroops, as a prestige asset.

"Liberals always saw the armed forces as a waste of money. Or at best, a necessary evil." Part of the progressive notion that military personnel, especially veterans, are damaged, dangerous goods.

What sasquatch said makes sense. In today's world a niche paratroop force probably makes more sense.

A lot of thoughtful common sense above. Especially from Pidd, Brian from K, and Junior.

Perhaps an senate inquiry could expose what actually went on.

So, the Canadian Airborne Regiment has been disbanded. We'll (USA) take em!

How do you think the special units get to the area where they are supposed to take action?

Maybe fly them in? Land the plane? Then take off?

Are you kidding?

"How do you think the special units get to the area where they are supposed to take action?"

Choppers, usually. They can fly low enough to avoid detection, and have the ability to extract your forces after a successful mission. I didn't see any seals parachuting into Osama's compound.

Anyone ever hear of free falling or the Pathfinders? It wasn't always C130's and static lines.As for Chretien,if there was ever a more hated Prime Minister among the Airborne,or the legs for that matter,I have not met them.

We'd all like an apology; (AIC 8302) but the calls to re-instate the regiment? not going to happen. It's just not effective for a country or this size.

What was originally an honourable and extremely capable group of fighting men eventually became a band of shit eating Nazis who did not respect anyone...in the end they were a disgrace to the uniform and to Canada. Good riddance!

You are an ignorant troll,go back to huffpo you leftwing coward.