Neglect and political games have taken toll on military
Shipping tycoon Paul Martin slashed our country’s defence budget 25% and chopped the number of our men and women in military uniform by the same percentage.
Now, the man who also razed CFB Calgary to the ground wonders why an American submarine could apparently sweep through Canadian territorial waters in the Arctic without asking his permission.
There’s a big shout that Washington and the nuclear-powered attack submarine the USS Charlotte have breached Canadian sovereignty.
Well, the legitimacy of our sovereignty in the high Arctic has been under question for some time, and, as the adage goes, if a country doesn’t defend its sovereignty, it loses it.
Way back when Brian Mulroney was our prime minister, his defence minister Perrin Beatty urged we build a fleet of nuclear attack submarines to defend both our coastal areas and assert our sovereignty in the North.
Back then, the Soviet Union was still an aggressive world power, and Beatty, a good friend of mine going back years, felt we simply had to put up a show of force against both the Soviets, who had a huge submarine fleet, and not let our claim to northern sovereignty be nibbled away.
Mulroney felt the same, which is why, while seriously pondering Beatty’s request for nuclear subs, he also ordered a batch of topnotch EH-101 search and rescue helicopters.
The EH-101s were the envy of the world, but after Jean Chretien became prime minister in 1993, out of pure spite he scrapped the helicopter contract and forced Canadian taxpayers to cough up $500 million in cancellation fees.
That $500 million was money that was stripped out of an already perilous inadequate defence budget.
Martin’s gutting of the overall defence budget, and of CFB Calgary, came at a time when the spectre of Islamic world terrorism was already on the horizon.
American embassies and other facilities had been attacked overseas—with a frightening loss of life—and in 1993 came the first bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City.
Yet the Chretien/Martin duo’s response was to cut back our defence budget to a point that within the NATO ranks only the tiny Duchy of Luxembourg spends less of its GNP on defence than does Canada.
On the day Chretien and Martin sabotaged CFB Calgary, I toured the regimental bases and spoke with our men and women in uniform, their husbands, wives and children, and still recall the shock they were in.
For CFB Calgary wasn’t shut for budgetary—and least of all military—reasons, but to be relocated in Edmonton to prop up Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan’s sagging popularity.
Yes, the men, women and children were herded to Edmonton at a cost estimated at $1 billion so McLellan could boast about bringing new activity to her city—and damn Calgary.
That’s $1 billion that could have been spent on new armaments—but as AdScam showed, when it comes to boosting Liberal party fortunes anything goes.
That Calgary’s Marda Loop area was economically devastated by the loss of CFB Calgary meant nothing to the Grit power brokers. Or that we lost some of the most famous regiments in our Armed Forces.
As I recall, not a single Liberal in our city stood up in defence of CFB Calgary and the men and women in it, and our mayor at the time, Al Duerr, simply regarded it as a fait accompli.
Duerr, who was then being touted as a potential high-profile Liberal candidate with a guaranteed cabinet seat, kept his mouth shut.
The rusting out of our military clout—what little we have of it—has continued unabated under Martin’s term as PM, just as under Chretien’s term
Even the recent promise of $12.8 billion for the military is spread over five years and just $1.1 billion is earmarked for the first two years.
The “rehabilitation” process won’t even get started until 2008-‘09.
Senator Colin Kenny, chairman of the Senate committee on national security and defence, warns our defence spending as a percentage of GNP since 1990-‘91 has fallen by a disastrous 63%. and the defence budget of $14 billion in 2005-06 should be at least double that.
Not with the self-serving Martin at the helm.
To me, any Calgarian—any Albertan—who votes for this pack of rascals and rogues should be charged with treason.
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