OUR COUNTRY IS IN THE MIDST OF AN EXISTENTIAL CRISIS

There are times when what is happening in the Political World must be addressed by the Theological Community. Our flock needs guidance.  This is one of those times. The World is in a very dark and dangerous place. It would be nice if all actually was sweetness and light, and everybody played nice together in the sandbox. However, that is not the case today. Unlike 1939, we do not have the luxury of time to debate and study and haggle. It takes less than 30 minutes for a nuclear tipped intercontinental ballistic missile to arrive at its target and trigger Armageddon. The balance of terror that kept the peace since the end of WWII – Mutual Assured Destruction – no longer has the same effect. There is another Dominance Race in progress. The first country to believe they win with a first strike and survive could trigger our worst fears, Moreover there are more crazy people today who could trigger it, and old men who believe they would have little to lose by doing so because they are already staring their mortality in the face.

Hence this article, with particular reference to Canada, and our Western Way of Life. As Sir Winston Churchill so aptly put it:

“Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…”

Our Country is in the midst of an existential crisis – a trifecta as it happens. At the same time we are in the midst of a food security crisis, a financial crisis, and a national security crisis. We are vulnerable to arbitrary decisions made by foreign actors, and are no longer masters in our own house.

Because of the actions of former governments – plural – of BOTH major parties, we are pariahs in the international community. We are no longer reliable allies. We have not lived up to our commitments in either NATO or NORAD. We have not invested in our military, believing that others must protect us to protect themselves. We are like the restaurant guests who eat the meal and expect that others will pick up the tab.

We have justified that by taking on the role of peacekeepers. Peacekeeping does not require the capacity to wage war. It is a much nicer role for us, and we see ourselves as nice people. The problem is that, as Thomas Hobbes famously said, “Life in the state of nature is nasty, brutish and short.” Nation states do not respect others who are weak. As we have seen, the weak get invaded. Unfortunately, we are not American, and so did not learn the necessary corollary for effective peace keeping. It was stated by one of their Presidents, Theodore Roosevelt, “Walk softly, but carry a big stick”. Our problem is that we do not have a big stick; and are a liability rather than an asset to those we look to for our protection. Yet, incredibly, we expect to have a voice, a significant voice, at the Table. In the words of a former Prime Minister, “Canada is back!” We were shocked when the rest of the world did not agree with our self-image. We did not win the seat on the UN Security Council that we believed was our right, because we actually were not perceived as having any influence of consequence. Our reputation is fine words, but no action.

Our major equipment is worn out. We need to replace armoured vehicles, ships, and planes – items that cannot be readily purchased off the shelf, and that have significant cost. Our ammunition stocks have expired or been sent to Ukraine. We no longer have the industrial capacity to produce these things ourselves. We once did, during the Second World War, but have allowed that capacity to atrophy. We also do not have the physical resources. – men and women – to fulfill our responsibilities. We are short 16,000 people, mostly at the sharp end of our military, and do not expect to come up to full strength until 2032. It takes time to train recruits to be capable members of the military, but not seven years. We do not have the luxury of that kind of time.

We have not secured our borders – particularly our Northern Border, the Arctic. Our allies are worried about that, given the current security situation, and the threats in the arctic posed by both Russia and China. The United Kingdom volunteered to patrol our Arctic waters, the Northwest Passage, because we cannot. We did not accept their offer. The United States has not waited for permission, from all accounts.

By arbitrary decisions made elsewhere, outside of our political and legal institutions, and therefor, beyond our control, our economy can be crushed into submission. As that unfolds, we can find that shipments of food, material, supplies, equipment, and finished products that we rely on others to produce for us may not make their way into our country. Tariffs can make this financially punishing for us. Countervailing tariffs will cost such enterprises as we do have their export markets. When the cash flow dries up so will the jobs, as companies close or relocate to more favourable business environments. We do not have the economic resources to take on a country ten times our population, and with considerably more financial assets and countries that want to do business with them because of the size of their market, and the resources they command.

So, the question is, what are we to do?

We can start, as many have been doing, by buying Canadian products where possible. We can make a start on rebooting our own industrial capacity to produce the inputs we need to manufacture what we require here. Yes, that will take time. In the meantime we need to be finding other sources of the goods and equipment we need from other countries who do not threaten to crush us – Europe, The British Commonwealth countries (56 member states with a population of 2.4 billion) for a start, who also may be more favourable trading partners, and provide  better and more reliable markets and than the United States.

We should be investigating replacement sources for the military and industrial equipment we need; particularly focusing on what is available off the shelf. We cannot wait for cutting-edge equipment. We certainly cannot wait for lengthy bidding processes, that have hampered procurement of the F-35 Aircraft, and critical components for our new Naval combatants – the River Class Destroyers to complete. Concerns about the reliability of support from the United States make both procurements problematic. We should purchase what we can get now that is more current than what we have in our inventory, so that we can more rapidly build up our resources. Our mid to long term goal should be to develop the capability and capacity to build and maintain our own equipment. But we need fighter aircraft, transport aircraft, helicopters, maritime patrol aircraft, submarines, patrol ships, ice breakers equipped to defend themselves, naval combatant vessels, tanks, artillery, armoured personnel carriers, the list goes on …. and the ammunition, spares and supplies for all of them. We need these things NOW, on a priority basis.

We need to recognize that we are already at war – an Economic War, certainly, with the United States, and China who are imposing their own tariffs on us, but also a proxy war with Russia via our support for Ukraine and our involvement leading the Nato Brigade in Latvia.

The food security shoe could drop at any time. Already the US is threatening our supply management system in Dairy products, wanting unfettered access to our markets for American farmers. Also, a substantial portion of our fresh food comes from the United States and Mexico by truck through the Unites States. That supply can be turned off at any time, by executive order.

We have been told that there could be 1,000,000 jobs lost with the imposition of US tariffs. In Ontario alone 500,000 jobs, 250,000 in Quebec and a similar number across the rest of the country. Already Canadian businesses are announcing the closure of Canadian facilities and opening up in the United Staes to avoid the US tariffs. As Mr Trump has said, the United States does not need anything Canada produces. He went on to say that his objective is to take other countries’ jobs by inviting companies to build in the United States on a preferential basis.

Since we are in a war, albeit not of our own choosing, it is incumbent on us to act like it. Canada does not need this unnecessary political squabbling. What we do need is a Coalition Government, of all parties, working for our common good. That will take compromise, but it is critical to our survival as a country. We need Parliament sitting, and able to make and legitimize decisions. We do not need arbitrary measures imposed without legitimacy. We need it continuing to sit, and continuing to do the work of the country until these emergencies we are facing have been completely resolved.

As to the massive unemployment we are facing, there is some good news in that dark cloud. We will need those people to build and work in the factories and plants we will need to construct to rebuild our industrial and manufacturing capacity….to work in our transportation systems, our clothing and equipment manufacturers, our food production, provision and preparation, our construction industry, that list goes on. This will provide opportunities for gainful employment for Canadians that will pay living wages and provide group benefits and pensions. There will be a tremendous boost in our economy from those efforts and the recruitment of youth into our National Service. – whether that be our military, or a rebirthed Katimavik – the Canadian “Peace Corps”. Both are needed, the latter to do socially needed work throughout the country. Youth need some way of paying back the Society they live in. That is how they learn self respect, self-discipline, what they want to do with their lives, and as importantly, what they do not want to do. Two years of National Service could serve both the country at this critical time, and the youth themselves. In this we should take a leaf from the Americans’ playbook. Completing that National Service should qualify the participants for benefits – their Education paid for, subsidized mortgages and loans. It can and should be a win-win relationship. Canada did that after WW II, and then let it lapse. We need to do that again, for the forseeable future. It will remove a cohort from the workforce for a time while they do needful work for the country. This in itself will be of significant benefit by opening up jobs to others in the general economy. But the whole economy will benefit from the multiplier effect of money circulating through it.

An example. When the Scarborough Van Plant closed in Toronto it took $1.8 billion out of the Toronto economy, not only for the year of closure, but each and every year thereafter. Consider. 3,000 employees earning an average of $50,000 a year. That payroll by itself is $150,000,000. Now multiply it by 12, the multiplication factor economists attribute to the working of that money in the economy as the employees buy food, clothing, gas for the car, pay rents and mortgages and so on. The result is $1,800,000,000. Build a plant that employees 3,000 people each earning $50,000 per year and you will put $1.8 billion back into the local economy. That multiplier effect is why there was such a huge economic boom and full employment following WW II.In order to ensure these things happen, we need a MINISTER OF EVERYTHING who can cut through the red tape and expedite the decision-making process. In WWII that was C.D. HOWE, and it worked.

We have done this before, and we can do it again

in WWII, one of every 10 Canadians was involved in our military. Canada transformed from a small, unprepared force into a massive military and industrial power, with over 1.1 million Canadians, out of a population of 11.5 million, serving in the army, navy, and air force.

• Army: Mobilized nearly 750,000 soldiers, culminating in the First Canadian Army
• Navy: The Royal Canadian Navy expanded from just 6 to 13 ships at the start to over 400 vessels and 95,000 personnel by 1945, becoming the third-largest navy in the world.
• Air Force: The Royal Canadian Air Force grew from a few small squadrons to over 215,000 personnel and 78 overseas squadrons, ranking as the fourth-largest Allied air force. Canada also hosted the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, training over 130,000 aircrew personnel.

We were also known as “The Arsenal of Democracy”. Canadian factories produced over 800,000 military transport vehicles, 50,000 tanks, 40,000 guns, and hundreds of naval and merchant ships.

Canadians, I urge you to contact your Member of Parliament and Political Party, and demand that our country start acting NOT talking. We must put the Country on a wartime basis because that is the imminent danger facing us – whether from the destruction of our sovereignty by the United States, or by nuclear annihilation. We need to let contracts, not talk about it. We do not have five more years to study the situation, hoping we will not have to make a decision. That way lies certain failure. We need to start rebuilding NOW, not later; recruiting now – it takes time to train civilians to become competent soldiers, sailors and airmen; buying the equipment we can get now – Good enough is better than NOT enough;   mobilizing our people to invest in our country, as we did in the last war with Victory Bonds. There is much to be done.

May God bless our land, and keep it the True North strong and free. It is not, however, enough to just pray. Ora et Labora, prayer AND work is the path to our salvation. We each have a responsibility to our common good. And God did give us the means and capacity to do so. But, we have to START. We no longer have the time to deliberate.

JB Bartley, Maj (Ret’d)