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Contributor: Vox
Date: 2003-03-06 00:21:01
I think what you are arguing for are:
- Canada to put a focus on greater/better intelligence gathering and usage
- Canad to re-energize its defence capability
I have read other material that you recently posted and I believe you favour greater Canadian independence.
I would agree with these recommendations to a certain degree and it is also on a matter of degree that I find your ideas problematic. What I question are how Canada can realistically achieve the degree of independence that you seem to promote as well as how wise it is to try. To illustrate a major point - that our present government lacks the will to make any meaningful improvements to Canadian defense capability, you only have to look to HMCS Iroquios. We can't even find a replacement helicopter for it. Our "fleet" of such aircraft is less than 30, none of which was deemed suitable or available. The government has been ducking the issue of replacements for the 40-year-old museum pieces ever since they came into office.
You may also recall the PR flak over CSIS and Bill C36, I wonder how you feel about the prospects of increasing Canadian intelligence efforts. Do you really think the Canadian public would support such an idea? In the past, I have personally written letters to our Minister of Defence, without apparent success, to complain about the lack of simple everyday resources for our men and women in the armed forces.
Finally, I think you need to be more realistic about Canada's resources with regard to technology, budget, manpower or collective will. We are a small nation where our taxes go towards paying salaries of the bureaucracy and other mundane everyday social services. We are not a global defence player when assessed as a whole. While you may wish to look down the road past 2 decades I suggest that there are already more critical problems than we can handle at the moment. Would you prefer to promote the rise of a Franco-German-Russian alliance? Would you rather work with them than the Americans or the British?
BTW, I would like to point out apparent errors in some of your information. For one, I would say that towards the end of WWII, all the major combatants were developing atomic weapons, rockets, jets and possibly also nerve gas; and not just the US. I would also say that overall, Germany had markedly superior technology and Japan also had an marked edge at the beginning of the war. Aside from the benefit of having broken the German code (aided by the capture the "improved" enigma machine from U-505) what really made the difference was the speed and vastness of US war effort and the safety of their N. American supply base from Axis retaliation. Attrition had a great deal to do with the Allies' eventual victory. Germany and Japan simply could not replace what they lost. America had an overwhelming amount of resources to inject as well as pass on to GB and the USSR. It is also ultimately this question of resources and will power that Canada lacks to satisfy the degree of effort that you seem to recommend.
Vox Canadiana
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