Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives: The Wrong Advice for Canada

CCPA pushes far-left peacenik ideology over reality

Canada's most reliable source of far-left drivel dressed up as "academic research" has offered some advice on Canada's planned purchase of F-35 fighters:

Kill the deal.

"This is a massive commitment of defence spending on 'flying Cadillacs' that is being driven by defence contractors, not by a clear-eyed view of Canada's defence needs," explained the CCPA's Steven Staples, who wrote the report. "The main point is that we have time and we need to change the way we think about our aircraft. We don't need them for bombing missions and there is no real Russian bomber threat."

"Let's also investigate the acquisition of the next generation of unarmed, long-range, long-endurance, pilotless aircraft," he concluded.

Put emphasis on the "unarmed".

It's a foolish assumption on the CCPA's to suggest that Canada should make its long-term defence planning decisions based on the current lack of a substantive threat from Russian bombers, given that with Russia's increasingly-aggressive stance on foreign policy this is almost certainly subject to change.

Moreover, it's foolish for the CCPA to suggest that Canada should make its long-term defence planning decisions when the CCPA's own pet causes would actually require Canada to have these kinds of capabilities.

Case in point: the CCPA has often suggested that Canada should return its military focus to peacekeeping in order to help meet the demand for missions in places such as Darfur.

What the CCPA chooses to omit from these recommendations is that, all too often, modern peacekeeping missions are combat missions. Combat missions require air support, and there is no fighter jet better optimized for ground support than the F-35.

This renders Staples' suggestion that Canada should invest in unarmed aircraft all the more ludicrous. Such aircraft would be nearly useless in a combat scenario, and no more useful in terms of maintaining arctic sovereignty: whether the ideology of the CCPA permits them to admit it or not, these aircraft require the necessary firepower to repel an invader.

The CCPA's other bit of advice -- extending the operating lifetime of Canada's current fleet of CF-18s -- is also a crock. The operating lifetime of an aircraft can only be extended to a finite amount, and Canada's fighters are about to reach that.

It's a sobering reminder that the CCPA -- who deign to give advice to the Canadian government -- have no clue what the hell they're talking about. They live in a far-left ideological fantasy world.

One that the Liberal Party seems perfectly content to offer to join them in. They've suggested that if they form government before the deal is completed, they'll scuttle it.

Of course, Canadians should remember what happened the last time the Liberal government cancelled a military procurement upon taking office. It was the contract for helicopters to replace the Sea Kings. Jean Chretien called them "flying Cadillacs" as well.

That grossly irresponsible decision led to the deaths of Canadian pilots, just like scuttling the CF-18 replacement would.

The very most that can be said for the CCPA is that they've never had to be responsible for the consequences of such a decision. The Liberal Party already has. And it seems that they just never learn.

It probably helps that fools like the CCPA keep providing them with one more far-left audience to pander to, giving them an incentive to never learn.

A Crash Course in Reality for Linda McQuaig

McQuaig contemptibly refuses to acknowledge reality

The government's recent decision to purchase F-35 fighter jets to replace Canada's aging fleet of CF-18 Hornets has driven at least one point home to the Canadian public:

The Toronto Star seems to have attracted a stable of peacenik writers who simply refuse to acquaint themselves with reality.

Previously, it was Michael Byers, the foreign policy "expert" who implicitly suggested that Canada simply doesn't need fighter jets. Now it's Linda McQuaig.

Writing in an op/ed, McQuaig starts out by suggesting that Canadians simply don't want a new fleet of fighter jets.

"Of all the things Canadians want from their government, my guess is that new military fighter jets would probably rank close to last," McQuaig writes.

"But new fighter jets are what we’re getting," she complains. "Despite the enduring popularity of peacekeeping among Canadians, the Harper government continues to ramp up war-oriented military spending, most recently with its announcement of plans to buy 65 F-35 fighter jets from Lockheed Martin."

McQuaig is clearly clinging to the Pearsonian model of peacekeeping despite the fact that the nature of modern conflicts -- which, as opposed to being inter-state conflicts tend to be ethnic or religious conflicts -- has rendered it obselete.

Few know this better than the person whom McQuaig likely hopes her criticism of this purchase would benefit -- Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff.

Ignatieff has made it clear on numerous occasions that the peacekeeping model people like McQuaig favour is simply no longer applicable to modern conflicts -- including Darfur, where McQuaig has previously made it clear she would like to see Canadians deployed.

During a 2008 speech at the University of Alberta -- carried in full exclusively at the Nexus -- Ignatieff cast doubt on a Darfur deployment as a peaceful alternative to deployments such as Afghanistan.

"The problems in Darfur are extremely serious. Sometimes people can say that 'if I can just go there. Why Afghanistan? Why not Darfur?'. The only thing to bear in mind when you say that is just think about what a deployment of Canadians in Darfur would look like.

It's 55 degrees centigrade. There's no cover anywhere. Do you think the Janjaweed are going to get off their camels and walk up when they see a Canadian flag and our hand? No. It's a combat mission."

In a combat mission such as that in the Sudan, the paramount goal of Canadian forces wouldn't be to advance McQuaig's far-left hippie ideology. It would be to accomplish the goals of the mission with a minimum of casualties.

That demands air cover -- the kind of air cover provided by helicopters, and by a fighter jet like the Lightning II, that can hover and deliver its munitions in close combat situations.

McQuaig, however, clearly refuses -- simply refuses -- to acquaint herself with this reality.

Even McQuaig's insistence that the looming end of Canada's combat engagement in Afghanistan should lead to a reduction in military expenditures is highly suspect.

After all, the reduction in Canada's hard power capabilities led to situations like in Rwanda, where an under-sized, under-equipped and under-supplied contingent of UN peacekeepers -- under Canadian command -- were forced to stand impotently by while more than 800,000 were ruthlessly slaughtered.

In Canada, the lack of political will to make the appropriate contribution to that mission was compounded by the lack of political will to even have that capability in the first place.

Simply put, when people like Linda McQuaig criticize Stephen Harper's government for investing in Canada's military capabilities, they are simply talking out of their ass.

L:nda McQuaig doesn't know the first thing about these kinds of issues, and she never has. By the force of her own will, she never will.

McQuaig's commitment to a discredited peacenik ideology not only fails to save lives overseas, but would actually put the lives of Canadian servicemen at an unacceptable level of risk.

One could offer Linda McQuaig a crash course in reality, but any attempt to educate her in such matters will plummet to Earth faster than Canada's fleet of CF-18s will if not replaced in the near future.

Nightmare Scenario: Michael Byers, Minister of Foreign Affairs

Michael Byers perpetually doesn't get it -- regardless of the issue

When Michael Byers ran for election in the riding of Vancouver Centre, it's tough to believe that the fantasy scenario of an NDP government wasn't percolating in the back of his mind.

As an alleged "top expert" on global affairs, Byers certainly must have imagined himself to be a contender to be Minister of Foreign Affairs in such a government.

Few scenarios could even possibly be more nightmarish for Canadians. If Canada ever needed a Jimmy Carter of its very own to screw up foreign policy to the detriment of the safety of Canadian citizens, Byers would fit the bill.

Byers' recent objection to the Conservative government's decision to spend $16 billion purchasing F-35 Lightning II fighter jets -- a brilliant peace of equipment that is actually far more like the Harrier jump jet than the A-10 Lightning which is its namesake -- is indicative of why Byers would be such an utter disaster for Canada.

Not all of his objections are entirely unreasonable. Some of them centre around the idea that another jet -- perhaps the Eurofighter Typhoon, which has outperformed the F-22 Raptor in head-to-head war games -- may have been a better selection.

There's some merit to this. The F-35 is optimized as a ground-support platform capable of holding its own in the air -- but the Canadian air force could stand to also have a dedicated air-to-air platform as well. The Typhoon would fit that need splendidly.

But Byers seems to have an ideologically-skewed sense of what Canada's needs are in the first place. With Canada's fleet of CF-18 Hornets -- which have met Canada's needs admirably -- meeting the end of their operational lifetime, Byers' peacenick roots, and accompanying lack of priorities, can't help but shine through:

"it's not clear that fighter jets should be at the top of Canada's procurement list. The CF-18s were acquired to intercept Soviet bombers during the Cold War; today, Russia is a member of the G8, the Arctic Council, and a soon-to-be member of the WTO. It's largest trading partner is the European Union, which is made up mostly of NATO states.

Canada's most desperate procurement need is for fixed-wing search-and-rescue aircraft that could be built in Canada by Bombardier."

Canada could always put some fixed-wing search-and-rescue aircraft to good use at nearly any time.

However, at a time when CF-18s are very literally falling out of the sky at an increasing rate, Byers' suggestion can't help but paint him to be like the Chretien government, cancelling contracts for desperately-needed helicopters to replace Canada's fleet of Sea Kings, which continued to fall out of the sky for several years afterward.

Not to mention this is the same Michael Byers who became indignant after Canada disrupted diplomatic relations with Iran over the handling of the Zahra Kazemi case -- sending a message to Canadians that, if a Canadian citizen being beaten and raped to death in an Iranian prison doesn't warrant a hiccup in diplomatic relations, that a Canadian passport wouldn't mean a hell of a lot in the most corrupt and tyrannical corners of the world.

Fortunately, with the NDP unlikely to get anywhere near Canada's halls of power -- even if they attempt another coalition -- the prospects of Michael Byers becoming Minister of Foreign Affairs are remote enough that Canadians can sleep without the slighest hint of discomfort at the idea.

That's Right, Michael, We Don't Need to Replace the CF-18

Thank you for regaling Canadians with nearly the exact line of thinking that led to a swarth of Sea King helicopter crashes post-1993.

(That, by the way, came from the producer of "we didn't need to disrupt diplomatic relations with Iran over Zahra Kazemi". Just imagine what a Canadian Passport would be good for if Michael Byers ever became Minister of Foreign Affairs.)

Time to Face The Facts

We can't arm our troops with daisies and candy

For decades, Canadians have been proud of the peacekeeping tradition Lester Person has been credited with innovating -- and rightfully so.

Yet recent revelations by a Canadian soldier returning from Afghanistan dropped a bombshell yesterday by noting that the equipment being provided to Canadian troops in Afghanistan are better suited to peacekeeping than combat missions.

Among other issues, Corporal Danniel Beaulieu noted that vests issued to Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan are only equipped with pockets for four extra ammunition magazines. In a combat mission such as in Kandahar, troops should be equipped with 10-15 extra magazines.

According to Corporal Beaulieu, troops in Afghanistan aren't being issued enough extra ammunition for their sidearms (pistols), or proper boots for the conditions.

Naturally, the Canadian Forces have refuted Beaulieu's claims.

"We have to field 2,500 soldiers, so the equipment, by default, is generic a bit. It's not entirely specific to one soldier. Is it perfect? No. Does it satisfy the vast majority of soldiers? Yes," insisted Colonel Jean-Marc Lanthier, the Canadian Forces' director of land requirements.

Poor choice of equipment for the mission has long been identified as a cause of Canadian casualties in Afghanistan. In particular, armored personnel carriers equipped to detect and disarm roadside bombs are only being deployed by Canadians in Afghanistan this year.

And while we have both the sitting Conservative government and preceding Liberal government to hold to task for this unacceptable failure, there is one other culprit to finger: that is a decades-long institutional preference for peacekeeping missions, and a lack of preparation for combat missions.

In a recent speech at the University of Alberta, Liberal party deputy leader Michael Ignatieff spoke, in particular, to some of the shortcomings of the Pearsonian model of peacekeeping, and how it's effected our preparation for the unfortunate eventualities that we may -- as we find ourselves now -- have to fight a war. Sometimes, it's even affected our ability to peacekeep effectively:

"One of the things I have learned in 15 years out there in the killing fields of Africa and the Balkans, is that you can't protect human beings with blue berets and a sidearm," Ignatieff said. "I'm fiercely proud of our peacekeeping tradition. Where peacekeeping of the traditional Pearsonian sort can be practiced we must practice it. But in a lot of cases now, in situations where you want to protect human beings, you want to prevent them from being ethnically cleansed or massacred because of their race, religion or ethnicity, you've got to have bulked up capabilities. You gotta go in there with flak jackets, you've got to have armour, you've gotta protect them."

When we examine the current situation on the ground in Afghanistan -- wherein Canadians seem ill-equipped to do the job they've been trained for in the first place, we clearly need to reevaluate our priorities in terms of our military.

As JL Granatstein notes in Who Killed the Canadian Military?, Canada's peacekeeping tradition -- while a proud tradition, and rightfully so -- has led to a devaluation of our military's ability to fight a war if need be. Apparently, the Canadian Forces have become so bogged down in peacekeeping-related institutional enthropy that we're sending troops out on combat missions equipped as if they're going to be peacekeeping.

In fact, if anything, the opposite should be true: we should be sending troops out on peacekeeping missions as if they were combat missions.

Especially since so many peacekeeping missions in the future will be combat missions (just as Somalia actually was and Rwanda should have been).

The denials of Colonel Lanthier aside, so long as our troops remain engaged in combat in Afghanistan, it's the duty of every single Canadian to pressure the government to ensure that our troops on the ground are properly equipped for the job.

Whether or not a historical military culture of peacekeeping has impeded this is immaterial. We owe our fighting men and women this solemn responsibility.

Denis Coderre and the Definition of Insanity

Liberal Defense Critic suggests we do the same things, the same way, and somehow expect a different result

It's said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing, in the same way, expecting different results.

That's precisely what the Denis Coderre, the Liberal party's Defense critic, has suggested the Canadian government do inregards to Canada's aging fleet of Aurora patrol planes.

"Those planes have a capacity to be perfect up to 2025," Coderre insisted at a press conference attended by fellow Liberals Scott Brisan, Geoff Regan and Michael Savage. "If we are replacing them... and we're stalling those other [upgrades], you will have kind of a gap in some years when Canada won't be able to fulfil its own military duty. That's a problem in itself."

To sum the matter up in short, Coderre, the Defense Critic for the party that has historically cut corners with Canada's military hardware in order to save a couple of bucks, has suggested Canada's sitting government do exactly the same.

Somehow, presumably, the results will be different.

The previous chapters in this sad little chronicle are pretty well known to Canadians.

Upon taking office in 1993, the Liberals (under Jean Chretien) cancelled the previous Tory government's purchase of helicopters to replace Canada's decrepid fleet of Sea Kings. What ensued was nothing less than years of helicopter crashes, and, more importantly, pilot casualties, precipitated by Liberal negligence.

In 2004, a Canadian submariner died of injuries sustained in a fire aboard a submarine purchased second-hand from the British Navy.

Now Coderre suggests Canada should continue to pursue the Liberal policy of overhauling obselete equipment in order to squeeze every last operating hour out of it. Perhaps when the Canadian forces resort to spending 30 hours of maintenance for every hour in the air on the Auroras will they finally admit the planes have had enough.

Coderre has even suggested that replacing the planes instead of upgrading them will leave Canada with a significant gap in its surveillance capabilities -- obviously a blow for Arctic sovereignty. Yet, Defense department officials disagree, noting that replacements for the Auroras can be in place by the time the refit of the existing planes would be finished in 2013.

As a potential compromise, a portion of Canada's Aurora planes could be refitted, then used as backups in case of an emergency.

But Canadians have already seen what happens when the government bends over backwards to extend the operating life of aging hardware.

It looks a little something like this:



That's reason enough for Defense Minister Peter MacKay to tell Denis Coderre the government already has other plans.

The last thing Canadians need is for its sitting government to buy into Coderre and the Liberals' institutional insanity.