The single most important job of the federal government is ensuring a strong national defence. With the government failing at that job, correcting the failure should be urgent, given that it is existential for our nation.
There seems to be a clear correlation between the federal government trying to insert itself into every issue and every industry while failing to meet its basic core responsibilities.
And nowhere do we see that more than when it comes to national defence.
The single most important job of the federal government – above all else – is to ensure we have a strong national defence.
After all, if we don’t have a strong national defence, we may not have a nation. And if we don’t have a nation, we don’t have healthcare policy, education policy, criminal justice policy, infrastructure policy, etc…
If we don’t get national defence right, our sovereignty could be lost and we won’t get to make any decisions about our future, since somebody else will be deciding for us.
A key takeaway from this is that the Canadian Government and the Opposition should view our crumbling national defences as an emergency situation.
Parliament shouldn’t be taking a one-month break. Instead, our leaders should be back on the job urgently working to come up with a plan to rapidly rebuild our Armed Forces.
This cannot be viewed as a ‘decades-long’ rebuild. It’s a rebuild that needs to start happening now and needs significant investment now.
National Unity & National Urgency
At least when it comes to rebuilding our military, there should be national unity. In a world in which threats to our sovereignty are escalating, all Canadians, from all regions, of all backgrounds, and of all political parties have a common interest in protecting our nation.
And there are things we can do immediately to start increasing our defences:
We can raise military pay and start ramping up recruitment ads while approving more CAF applicants (70,000 people tried to join last year but only 4,000 were accepted).
We can start fixing up military bases and improving personnel accommodations while constructing new military housing so recruits know they will be well taken care of.
We can direct billions in federal investment to 155mm artillery producers, small arms producers, LAV producers, and drone producers in Canada to start expanding our military industry.
We can sign contracts with defence companies from allied nations to start producing tanks in Canada.
We can issue official declarations of intent to deepen our cooperation with our allies, including increasing Arctic patrol cooperation with nations like the U.K., Norway, Sweden, and Finland, seeking to join AUKUS, and seeking to join the U.S. Ballistic Missile Defence Program.
And, we can have an all-party statement declaring Canada will hit our NATO target within six months.
These are all things Canada is perfectly capable of doing.
These are things a serious country would do.
And these are the things we must do to start rebuilding our Armed Forces.
There is no time to waste.
The current lack of urgency regarding our military is unacceptable.
It is time for our leaders to get back to Ottawa and take immediate action to ensure the federal government fulfills its most important responsibility:
Defending Canada.
Spencer Fernando
