Canada: Military Matters

Quote:

Defence Minister Peter MacKay noted Lawson’s experience abroad as one of the reasons he had been selected. This was immediately dissected by the analysts who pointed out that while Lawson did serve in Germany as a fighter pilot early in his career, his most recent position was as deputy commander of NORAD in Colorado Springs.

They also noted that Lawson had never held a high-profile operational command.

I guess he will have a good understanding of the command chain in the defense of Canada and who the actual Commander in Chief is that decides on NORAD and NATO actions.

Good move by the government to show our allies in Washington that we know our place in the grand scheme of things.

Perhaps the thread title should be changed to finish the idea "Canada: Military Matters... more than anything else."

Interesting stories today:

1) DND had its share of layoffs and this was underlined by the Harper government to give the impression that even its favourite priorities were being cut and sharing the pain as well as what matters to Canadians like services. Well today the other penny dropped: the job losses at DND are privatization as $100 million in contracts were announced to provided the (nonunion) replacements for the public servants laid off by DND earlier this year. They will actually spend more money on these private contractors than if they had kept their own staff. As such the DND layoffs were not cost cutting but ideological privatization.

2) Major Mac is out campaigning for the restoration of the Avro Arrow as it is cheaper, flies higher and almost twice as fast as the F35 and is just as stealthy (not very) as the F35. Of course the procurement would mean lots of jobs and we all know that in Harper's universe they must be delivered to the US. This idea while sentimental for many Canadians is a non starter because those who think Canada should be out there spending lots of money on a war machine want to tug their forelocks in the presence of the US and those who think Canada should be more independent have lots of other things they would prefer to do with the money than build a better warplane. Still, it was remarkable that a plane from the 1950s could be so easily and favourably compared to the latest piece of US hardware being promoted for billions of dollars. Since the Canadian plane apparently could be built for half the cost (assuming you believe that) then perhaps we would see a new round of what we could do with (now) half the money saved from the F35 if we actually spent it on what Canadians need.  The idea that we could save even half of the huge pile of dough to be spent on the F35 while getting some well-paying jobs in Canada has an attraction even if the continued assumption that we need to spend billions on a war machine still has a drawback for those who see people rather than just numbers and technology. It will be interesting to watch this story over the next while...