Most of Canada’s major military hardware is old, degraded, unreliable and often unavailable. With a federal election looming, this crisis in defence procurement presents both a challenge and an opportunity for Canada’s next government — to rebuild the military from the ground up, and to so in a way that addresses the country’s actual needs.
International relations, peace and conflict
OTTAWA— A new report, entitled Smart Defence: A plan for rebuilding Canada’s military, has just been released by the Rideau Institute and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA).
The study, by University of British Columbia Professor Michael Byers, identifies more than $10 billion in potential savings in spending on military equipment.
At the same time, the study identifies ways to increase capabilities in Arctic and coastal surveillance, search and rescue, disaster and humanitarian relief, and peacekeeping.
U.S. hostility towards Venezuela reached absurd heights in March amidst accusations both Ottawa and Washington are supporting local efforts to overthrow the popularly elected socialist government of Nicolás Maduro. On March 9, U.S. President Barack Obama signed an executive order “declaring a national emergency with respect to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by the situation in Venezuela.” This strange step allowed the president to impose sanctions with the ostensible aim of “protecting the U.S.
A Canadian Armed Forces CF-188 fighter jet takes off from Kuwait on the first combat mission over Iraq in support of Operation IMPACT, October 2014. Photo credit: Canadian Forces Combat Camera
Screenshot from a short film about Guantánamo Diary (see http://guantanamodiary.com/).
Guantanamo Diary By Mohamedou Ould Slahi Little, Brown and Company (2015), 432 pages, $32 (hardcover)
[Pour la version française, cliquez ici]
In an astounding triumph for the Latin American Revolution, the U.S. government restored diplomatic relations with Cuba on December 17. This followed 55 years of U.S. aggression and hostility aimed at destroying the Cuban Revolution, including a damaging economic blockade, 638 assassination attempts by CIA-affiliated agents on the life of former Cuban president Fidel Castro, U.S. terrorist attacks on Cuba that killed close to 4,000 people, economic sabotage costing Cuba millions of dollars, and the 1961 military (Bay of Pigs) invasion of the island by CIA-sponsored Cuban exiles.
This report reviews Canada’s implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, and finds that while progress has been made in access to education, it also highlights the areas where inequality has persisted and worsened—particularly in terms of violence against women, political representation, economic security, access to social services, and the additional barriers to equality faced by Aboriginal women and girls, racialized women, women with disabilities and women from sexual minorities.
United States military aggression globally is stimulating the creation of a new international economic order that could serve as a viable alternative to the present Western-dominated version.
The election of Narendra Modi as India’s prime minister in May, with strong backing from the country’s capitalist class, placed a mass murderer at the head of the world’s largest democracy. It was a shocking and unprecedented development whose consequences for India’s political and economic future are ominous.