44 Replies to “Mulcaring About Our Military”

  1. Yup.
    And CFB Naden, right in the heart of Esquimalt, is represented by, and will likely still be represented by a Marxist, husband of a husband.

  3. Here’s what ours look like now:
    http://army.ca/wiki/index.php/File:Canadian_Army_Ranks_08_Dec_2014.jpg
    A lot of people in the forces plan to vote for the NDP or Liberals. Who do they think will be better, the pacifist NDP or the military slashing Liberals. Trudeau’s daddy took the military from 120,000 down to 80,000 and Chretien took it from 80,000 down to close to 50,000. Harper brought it back up to about 70,000. The biggest crime was the destruction of the reserve army by Daddy dumping about 100 armouries and cutting the reserve strength from 60,000 to maybe 10,000 killing dozens of old and honourable military units with proud war histories.

  6. it just goes to show you how utterly out of touch the left is with the defence of this nation. Mulcair is just grasping at straws and this is a perfect example of just saying something in a attempt to be relevant. Jr just wants to use our military to hand out winter jackets.

  8. “it just goes to show you how utterly out of touch the left is with the defence of this nation.”
    And not just the left.
    Alas, plenty of Canadians wouldn’t know a naval officer from a hotel doorman or an army NCO from a mall security guard.

  11. Dipper logic = maintaining a viable armed force pulls money that could be spent buying civil service union loyalty and CBC loyalty – so national security and northern sovereignty has to be sacrificed for perfidious commie politics.

  12. “Carry forward the National Shipbuilding Procurement Strategy to ensure Canada has the ships we need, and focus on industrial and regional benefits to support our shipyards.”
    I particularly like this one. Does anyone remember the last time an NDP government attempted to build ships? Harcourt/Clark/Dosanj super cats which ended up costing 4x as much, as fat contracts were handed to their union buddies, aluminum welders were trained at provincial expense (and promptly left BC for greener pastures in AB) and were scrapped for the value of the metal in them…….

  13. If Harper had done it there would be frequent ‘Special Bulletin’ interruptions for years to come.

  15. Until fairly recently NDP favoured withdrawal from NATO as part of their military policy, probably many in the party still believe that. Has that plank ever been completely removed from their platform? I wonder.

  16. Great question. I doubt they have removed this part of their secret policy.
    It is not just the NDP that hates the military. If either the Liberals or the NDP become the government they will work toward remaking Canada’s military into a semi-armed feminized boy scout troop.
    scar, “A lot of people in the forces plan to vote for the NDP or Liberals.” I sure hope that that is not the case. If so, then the leftist brainwashing and propaganda corruption if the Canadian population is almost complete.

  17. I can just see Mulcair in charge:
    Good old General Hand Grenade
    Ridin’ in a motorcade
    Sippin’ on a lemonade
    And waving at his fans
    Isabella Band Aid
    Wavin’ at the Shrine parade
    Eatin’ toast and marmalade
    And getting sticky hands
    Good old General Hand Grenade
    Ridin’ in a motorcade
    Lookin’ for the cavalcade
    To take him off to war
    Isabella Band Aid
    Suckin’ on a Gatorade
    Lookin’ at the mess he made
    And wonderin’ what it’s for
    People gettin’ high
    People gettin’ low
    People gettin’ nowhere
    ‘Cause they don’t know where to go
    Good old General Hand Grenade
    Ridin’ in a motorcade
    Lookin’ for the cavalcade
    To take him off to war
    Isabella Band Aid
    Suckin’ on a Gatorade
    Lookin’ at the mess they made
    And wonderin’ what it’s for
    People gettin’ high…

  18. Well Tommy the Commie has it on good authority (his campaign looootenant) that the inverted chevrons over the triple grin as a NATO insignia.

  20. Switzerland is not a member of NATO, and also not a member of the EU. Swiss citizens are VERY well armed, and nobody can recall the last time anybody tried to invade / attack the Swiss.

  22. Can’t really blame the dippers for a slipup by one of their US paid for ‘activists’ mercenaries now, can we?
    US foundation money, the gift that keeps on leaving telltale tracks.

  23. Let’s get real here. Everything said about how feckless the NDP is is entirely true. Instead of meeting defence needs, the Dippers propose to launch a new defense White Paper. And of course for however many years they waste doing this, all spending will more or less grind to a halt.
    But the CPC for the past 8 years has not been much better. We still don’t have a Sea King replacement. The F-35 program is still a fiasco, albeit not of our creation. We now have NO sea supply ships and will not for the foreseeable future. Arctic sovereignty patrols still remain more fiction than fact. Most of the CF-18s are now hangar queens. The Navy’s last destroyer retired this year, and it now has NO long range AA capability. Instead, the only thing delivered to the navy are some under-powered, under-gunned coast guard vessels barely capable of stopping fishing boats.
    There may have been some improvements in areas like procurement. But the drumbeat of defence spending cutbacks continues virtually uninterrupted. It’s a nearly remorseless decay that has continued since the end of the government of Louis St. Laurent, now virtually half a century ago. And the Prime Minister has done relatively little to reverse the severe attrition of the armed forces during the regimes of Trudeau and Chretien.
    Taylor is right that the Dippers are indeed worthy of nothing but mockery. But the CPC has fallen down in this file. And all this despite the fact that the world is a far more dangerous place than the 1990s when Chretien made the last large cutbacks.

  24. from the link:
    ” Dennis Krupski ‏@Dkrupski 9h9 hours ago
    @stephen_taylor Simple reasons for mistakes like these, #NDP: & #LPC rely on American left for their advice & resources. #elxn42 #imports
    7 retweets 4 favorites ”
    so, that’s pretty much exactly what hudak the chipmunk did here in ontaristan. which got him expunged from the list of premier hopefuls.
    marching orders from the yanks and that’s what it gets you.
    google it. ‘tim hudak american think tanks’ links cited in the 1st FOUR pages so it got a lot of coverage.
    a.k.a. ‘pot, meet kettle’

  25. So this foolishness, and the story about the Lib candidates glad-handing at an advance poll in Calgary made the CBC news tonite right?
    CTV?
    Globe?
    Yep…thought so….

  26. The Chretien government is where to lay the blame for most of the ills that affect our Armed Forces today, that and the fact that although Harper has been in power for ten years he has only been majority government for the last four. The Chretien government screwed the helicopter replacement package that the Mulroney government had signed and that cost us a tidy fortune in cancelled contract payments. Couple that with the iron-clad contract the Brits hammered out after they saw what Chretien did with the helo package and you will understand why we have spent most of the Defense budget on Subs that probably will never see active duty. A majority government cannot float a navy in four years especially when the opposition parties fight it every step of the way. The LIBS and DIPS have never understood that the primary responsibility of a government is to protect the society that appoints it. Whether you are sitting on one side of the House or on the other you are a sitting member of a government and sworn to protect the country, not to block every move that the party in power brings before the House. If you can’t support the Armed Forces then you shouldn’t be sitting in the House.

  27. You’ve raised an excellent point.
    That offshore money shows up all over the place, not just envirowhackos.

  28. The procurement policy mavens couldn’t organize a drunk in a brewery.
    It’ll take a major dust up before the ‘comedians responsible’ decide to close the seacocks and stop scuttling the entire Navy.
    The bride price for an Ethiopian gal is a bottle of whiskey, so I’m assured by one of my Navy pals, but the NDP will be so consumed with another blessed White Paper that they will forget to consummate the marriage if they still remember what that is these days.
    Cheers
    Hans Rupprecht, Commander in Chief
    1st Saint Nicolaas Army
    Army Group ‘True North’

  29. Antenor, it is absolutely true that a government cannot “refloat a navy” to use your very appropriate phrase in just four years. And I also agree with you that the minority government period does not count.
    However, it’s time enough to start putting things on the right track. Time enough to at least halt and reverse the budget decimation of the previous five decades.
    I disagree with you about the subs. They were a useful acquisition, and they are all operational now. They were a cheaper alternative than buying something off the shelf. The Chretien government can rightly be criticized for delaying the purchase for two years and increasing their deterioration.

  30. Citizens of a social welfare state are shocked, SHOCKED, that successive governments neglect their armed forces.
    In other news, water is wet.

  31. “The Chretien government is where to lay the blame for most of the ills that affect our Armed Forces today, …”
    It goes back further, to the Trudeau regime that embraced and encouraged the fashionable contempt for everything to do with the military. In this it was certainly true that we got the government we deserved.

  32. Mulcair and company are so far in the woods that they have to come out to hunt!!!!! And they want to lead the country??? It is bad enough to have those folks running provinces let along the federal government.

  33. Further than that, Tooner. The first symbolic example of contempt for the armed forces started with McKenzie King failing to show for the opening of the Vimy Memorial in 1936 despite the fact that many of the WW1 heads of state were there. Even Edward VIII showed up. But not the Canadian PM. It came about from the putrid treatment of Arthur Currie’s return to Canada after the war.
    It was McKenzie King’s fault that the so-called Canadian navy was in such dismal shape in 1939 and the land forces were virtually non-existent. Except for the St.Laurent government in the 1950s, the track record of all Canadian administrations since WW1 has been poor.

  34. The reason King was absent is due to the fact that he was “hiding” in the US during the Great War. (Just like a typical Liberal)–He didn’t want to be called out by the brave men who fought and survived the War…in other words, he was absent because he was a coward (for the second time in his life that we know of).

  35. “Alas, plenty of Canadians wouldn’t know a naval officer from a hotel doorman or an army NCO from a mall security guard.”
    I remember the question I received as a proud armoured officer dressed in my cavalry blues at a regimental function in a downtown hotel.
    “Where are your washrooms?”

  36. I may be a little closer to the Sub fiasco than you are but maybe not. Could you tell me where the subs are operational and when the Navy had one out on patrol. As far as I’m concerned a sub in drydock or berthed is not operational.
    As far as blaming the government for the dismal condition of our Armed Forces I place the whole blame on the Liberals and the NDP. When the “Bonnie” was sold off, that was the death knell for our Armed Forces. The vast majority of today’s voters are not even aware that the Canadian Navy ever had an aircraft carrier. It is difficult to “keep the peace” when you don’t have the capability to “Make Peace”. If it hadn’t been for the Harper government acquiring heavy lift transport then we’d be forced to use Air Canada to transport our troops to the next peace-keeping deployment, and that would only happen after some-one else had done the heavy lifting.

  38. I don’t understand why a permanent program isn’t in place building one ship per year. If we want 15 frigates/destroyers, 4 submarines, and 3 supply ships give or take, just build one per year and trash them after 25 years. That way everything is new and endless refits that cost more than new are gone.

  39. Antenor:
    http://www.navy-marine.forces.gc.ca/en/news-operations/news-media-submarine-fleet-status.page
    Scar, that’s how a proper capital spending program should work. However, the problem is technology obsolescence. Naval construction for the past 130 years has been done by building ships in classes fairly rapidly. There’s then a lag period for technology change and improvement and then another ship class is built. The problem with building one a year is that you end up with a fleet of unique ship types, greatly aggravating maintenance and parts cycles and supply problems. Think to a simple case say during WW1. A ship a year would have meant things like ship-specific ammunition requirements.
    But the basic premise of such a capital program is fine. Allot funding each year to new shipping and bank it up until a new construction program is needed. Even as it is, our last frigate program was sufficiently drawn out that they are not truly identical. This however will fail disastrously on a political level. A new government coming in after an election will promptly drain the capital fund to pay of the promises with which they bribed the voters. Hence, everything has to be expensed in the year it’s incurred.

  40. scar “A lot of people in the forces plan to vote for the NDP or Liberals.” October 12, 2015 5:29 PM
    I am curious as to where you get this information from. As someone who is in the RCN and has been for the last 29 years, I have yet to hear any serving member talk about voting for the NDP. As for vote LIB, maybe 1 in 3 will go that way.
    cgh “We still don’t have a Sea King replacement” October 12, 2015 11:47 PM
    The Navy has received a couple replacement helos which are under going trials at this time. Once trials have passed more will be received.
    In my personal view, procurement needs to be radically overhaul, the concept of producing an idea (be it ship, plane, tank or any other major equipment), making plans, approving said plans, open nomination to biding, takes longer then current equipment lifespan. Add to this mix the need for it to be “Canadian Built” when most Canadian bidders do not have the infrastructure to produce and must build that first, adding to the cost. Then setting a budget for this purchase for the lifespan of the item up to 10 years before building starts. I could go on and on. But blaming the current government for this mess in just plan stupid. The powers to be in NDHQ (both civie and mil) are to blame.
    The current government was able to purchase some equipment “off the shelve” an put in to service when it was needed for “combat operational needs”. However this is not a regular option due to the amount of bureaucratic interference and/or running to the MSM done by insiders trying to push their own ideas.

  42. “The Navy has received a couple replacement helos which are under going trials at this time. Once trials have passed more will be received.”
    Wayne, it’s more than too bad the “replacements” have inferior range, payload, avionics, all weather capability and engine safety, to the cancelled EH101, now in service with the British and other navies, known as the Merlin. We bought a civilian version of the EH101 for Search & Rescue, with comparatively inferior engines and less robust airframes, but with two completely different airframes, parts, training and life cycle requirements.
    Though both are less capable than the actual helicopter purchased by Mulroney, due to cancellation and subsequent procurement restarts/boondogles, they have ended up costing even more than the “Cadillac” price tag the Grits attributed to the original choices as grounds for cancellation, and still decades late, just so Chretien could save political face.
    On the bright side, maybe, and only maybe, they’ll remain in service longer than the EH101 would have if that program had proceeded, given the nearly at least 20 year time lag.

  43. Not unlike Obozo calling a Corpsman (pronounced ‘Corman’)’Corpsman’ (pronounced by the Prez as ‘corpse man). This by the Commander-in-chief’ Sheesh. Same goes for Mudcair.

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