February 6, 2025
Keep Canada safe by building out the Army Reserve
Fielding almost 20,000 Reservists cost the military barely $300 million in 2015. This is incredible value for money.
Fielding almost 20,000 Reservists cost the military barely $300 million in 2015. This is incredible value for money.

Saturday before last, in these pages, I noted how America’s allies, Canada included, have been left scratching their heads in recent years. U.S. foreign policy is, to put it mildly, incoherent. And the allies are left paralyzed with indecision, wondering if the U.S. will soon go back to “normal” — or if this is the new normal.

You may have come across an essay on a similar theme in The Globe and Mail that same day. The long piece, by Globe foreign affairs columnist Doug Saunders, took a similar (and much more thorough) path to essentially the same conclusion — that the foundation of foreign policy assumptions that the Trudeau government was counting on when they took office in 2015 has been basically shattered in the years since. It was a good essay, but as I was working my way through it, there was something missing. I found myself wondering, when the hell is Doug going to get around to making the obvious point that Canada is going to have to defend itself by itself, or at least much more so than we’re used to even contemplating?

He gets there, eventually. But only barely — it’s a half-sentence in the second-last paragraph. But the conclusion is still right: Saunders says that we’re going to have to start spending more on defence. He’s right. But spend it how?

I’ve been banging this drum for years. I don’t know if it’s my history degrees or my cynicism, but I’ve always believed that Canadians haven’t grasped how much of a historical anomaly the last generation of history has been. We are fabulously wealthy and fabulously safe, and have probably been both of those things just long enough for a critical mass of Canadians to come to take it for granted. Now that we are slowly and painfully realizing that the world isn’t the nice place we assumed it is, and our allies not necessarily as reliable as we’ve lazily counted on, we’re going to have to see to our own defences — fast.

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See Also:

(1) Trudeau will make the rich pay (but it won’t work)

(2) Canadians need a government that works with the provinces

(3) The magical thinking of Catherine McKenna

(4) Prof gets a fail for ‘party of the uneducated’ tweet

(5) Conservative premiers gather at Stampede on eve for ‘informal’ session before Council of the Federation meeting