Funding Canada's War Pigs
The Liberal legacy will be entwined with supporting more war. And the NDP as well.
I remember years ago hearing a discussion on the news about how it was unreasonable to expect Canada to reach its 2% spending committment for NATO. It would never happen. With a GDP of $2.138 trillion, NATO’s 2% commitment would mean that Canada’s military spending should be just over $47.7 billion dollars; almost double what we currently spend on the entire Department of National Defense.
But then, as NATO became more important (as Russia became more threatening to The West and Western Democracy and Western Values and to You and Me Personally), NATO spending became more important.
It wasn’t simply a Russian invasion that made war more popular in Canada. There has been a concerted effort made by the military to play up its dismal state. If Russia’s attack on Ukraine represented a direct attack on Canada, then Canada needs to have firepower to fight against the attack. A crumbling military just won’t do. Here’s how journalist David Pugliese describes their campaign: “Military officers, along with retired generals and think-tanks and analysts partially funded by National Defence and the arms industry, have been promoting an image of a Canadian Forces on the verge of collapse. The communications strategy, defence insiders acknowledged, was to push such a message of significant decline to force the Liberals into pumping more money into the military.”
Fast forward to 2024 - the strategy worked. The Liberals promised $8 billion in new funding and $73 billion in spending commitments over the next 20 years, propped up by the NDP.
As Canada picks fights with countries like Iran (by sanctioning its Minister of Defence for retaliating against Israel for bombing their Syrian embassy, damaging Canada’s in the process…), or continues to support Israel’s genocide, we have to ask ourselves: has the NDP’s decision to prop up the Liberals been worth it? Has dental care and anti-scab legislation been worth this renewed war spending? Have breadcrumbs been worth $73 billion pledged to the death machine?
Western hegemony has never been as tenuous as it is today. As the West’s grip over the world slips, it will not be surprising to see politicians looking towards war as a way to slow this slide. With a record $100 billion to be spent this year on nuclear arms, there’s little question that the world is moving into a new era with new militarizations and new alliances built in response to and on top of old alliances and old prejudices. It’s these prejudices that the Liberals exploit, maintain and exasperate in their campaign to boost our military spending.
Anti-war and peace activists in Canada have been struggling against the logics of war for generations. The modern women’s movement owes its existence to the anti-nuclear movement. Anti-Islamophobia movements today stand on the shoulders of the waves of anti-war organizing in the early 2000s. But today, the anti-war movement is marginal. The best activists are doing what they can to make anti-war mainstream again but it’s nothing compared to even the days of the Canadian Peace Alliance twenty years ago.* This has made it easy for politicians to support war and fund war with money badly needed to be spent elsewhere.
Justin Trudeau promised Canadians Sunny Ways — a departure from the dark days of Stephen Harper. And yet, on the most fundamental question of justice — war — his party has even exceeded what his predecessor managed to do. The Liberals are Canada’s war party. But they couldn’t do this alone — they had help from the NDP, a party that long-ago forgot why it ever existed.
Canada spends about $27 billion annually on defense. That’s nothing compared to healthcare spending (obviously) but a lot compared to the $7.8 the feds spend on research. $27 billion for soldiers to play war games, hang out in Latvia and do whatever secret stuff that Canadians will never learn about. If yesterday’s by-election in Toronto-St. Paul’s is any indication, the sun is setting on the Liberal government. Now is the time of legacy building and military spending will be the Liberals true legacy: that at a time where corporate profits hit record highs, where houses became too expensive for most Canadians, where the oil and gas industry made record profits while towns and forests burned to the ground, and where income inequality has never been higher, Canada committed tens of billions of dollars to war. Tens of billions of dollars to murdering people who have the same fears, the same loves, the same needs that we do.
The Liberals will hand the Conservatives their war spending and the Conservatives will take this renewed militarization and amp it up further, enriching their friends in the arms industry along the way
And it was all made possible by a blank cheque written by a party that’s too afraid to face the electors.
*The Free Palestine movement, from the weekly marches to organized encampments, will give birth to a new mainstream anti-war movement, just watch.
Every Canadian who professes to champion world peace should pay attention to what you're saying here. Thanks for this, Nora.
So something gives this scum to think it has a right to address me? If it isn't a bot, it is something with nothing else to do but make propaganda for the Zionists on the net. The only thing lower than that is to stalk children on the net.