Xenophobic Layton plays the anti-Yankee card

[Are Be]

&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp Xenophobic hard line right winger!

Layton plays the anti-Yankee card

J.L. Granatstein
National Post

January 27, 2004

NDP leader Jack Layton is a man of great energy and high purpose. To him, Canada is a nation without enemies, a nation whose security is threatened only by climate change, global disparities, abuses of human rights -- and the United States government of George W. Bush. Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) -- or Star Wars, as Layton inaccurately describes it -- threatens Canada's independence, will never work, and will cost Canada millions and millions. Worse, as Layton said in a large newspaper advertisement on Jan. 22, "Star Wars is un-Canadian," undermining "Canada's proud tradition of peacekeeping."

Layton's advertisement listed six "facts," none of which are correct. But this frankly doesn't matter, given that the NDP leader's message was unambiguously clear: The Americans are the biggest threat to Canada. With Paul Martin busy trying to mend fences with Washington, with the new Conservative party on record as favouring better relations with the United States and more money for defence, Layton sees an opening on the anti-American and nationalist left. And he's moving to fill it.

This explains his conversations with Sheila Copps who, when she was a Liberal leadership candidate, made no bones about her anti-American cultural nationalism and her full-throated opposition to Canadian co-operation with the United States on missile defence. Now that Copps is facing an uphill fight for the Liberal nomination in her own Hamilton riding, she might well be persuaded to jump ship and join the anti-American, anti-BMD New Democratic Party.

Another unhappy Liberal is Lloyd Axworthy, the former foreign minister and, with his Liu Centre at the University of British Columbia, the nation's cheerleader for anti-Americanism. His speeches and papers published by his Liu Centre have been vituperative on the subject of BMD and, even if they are no more factually accurate than the Jack Layton "Star Wars" advertisement, they surely suggest deep dissatisfaction with the course the Liberal government's policy appears to be taking. Axworthy still favours "human security" policies for Canada, and a government that tilts to supporting BMD and good relations with the despots in Washington is not one he feels comfortable with. No wonder Jack Layton has been talking to him. Whether Axworthy will run for the NDP, however, must be considered doubtful, given his upcoming brand new job as President of the University of Winnipeg. Whether he would add any strength to the Layton "team" is more doubtful still.

The same might be said in spades of Paul Hellyer, the former Liberal minister, Progressive Conservative leadership candidate, and the present leader of the tiny, obscure Canadian Action Party. The 80-year-old Hellyer has apparently talked of merging his economic nationalist and anti-American rump party with Layton's NDP. That would surely be a major adhesion to the NDP -- if only Layton's party will change its name and policies to suit the octogenarian Hellyer and the 23,000 votes his candidates won in the 2000 general election. With Copps, Axworthy and Hellyer supporting Jack Layton in his anti-Americanism, all those who dislike the Yankees and all their works would be gathered together in one place.

All this verges on the comic today, but it is nonetheless potentially tragic tomorrow. For let us be clear: Anti-Americanism works in Canada. It is and has been very powerful as a political tool. It won in the Reciprocity election of 1911; it almost won in the Free Trade election of 1988; and it prevented Canada from supporting the Iraq War in 2003. Co-operation with the Bush administration on Ballistic Missile Defence is likely to be a hard sell for the Martin government, not least in francophone Quebec.

Moreover, many senior Liberals, including Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham and Parliamentary Secretary John Godfrey, have long records of opposing everything and anything the Americans do. The party caucus is full of soft-headed Grit MPs who slagged George Bush and the Americans over Iraq and who fret about Canada co-operating with the United States. Stand up, Carolyn Parrish! Many such Liberals might be persuaded that they could feel more comfortable in the New Anti-American Party than on the Martin team, especially in the few constituencies where the NDP can mount a credible challenge. If Layton plays his Ballistic Missile Defence cards right, if he can cause fissures within the Liberal government and manoeuvre to bring all the anti-Americans into his tent, he just might cause the Grits some serious trouble.

Jack Layton has indicated his intention to use one of his Opposition days in the upcoming session of the House of Commons to raise the BMD question. If the Martin government's ministers let him get away with his misrepresentations about "Star Wars" and Canada's place in it, if they don't smack down the NDP with what we might call the "true" facts about missile defence and North America's vulnerability, they will deserve the trouble they'll bring on their heads.

J.L. Granatstein is the Chair of the Council for Canadian Security in the 21st Century and author of Who Killed the Canadian Military?, to be published in February.
© National Post 2004




Copyright © 2003 CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest Global Communications Corp. All rights reserved.
Optimized for browser versions 4.0 and higher.

 

[afransen TO]

While it may be over the top, Jack's position is not anti-American. It is truthful to say that Canada has traditionally not participated in arms races, which exactly what BMD is--merely a continuation or an echo of the Cold War.

If the US wants to spend a trillion dollars, they'd be better off knocking off the more extreme dictatorial regimes in the world. Far better value for money if you ask me. Either way, the defence industry gets a huge payout.

 

[boiler2000]

J.L. Granatstein is the Chair of the Council for Canadian Security in the 21st Century and author of Who Killed the Canadian Military?, to be published in February.

:lol

 

[ganjavih]

Shitty article.

 

[mimicocreek]

It's not really a joke, Boiler. We can't defend ourselves without the help of the U.S.

I believe there are two options for Canada:

a. Cooperate with the U.S. so that we are defended on equal ground as their citizens are (we are at risk as a "Little Satan," after all).

b. Rebuild the military to ensure that we can defend ourselves without the help of the Americans.

Unfortunately, Layton is choosing neither route, instead opting to bash the U.S. as we rely on them for help and concurrently pushing for Canadian "independence."

 

[spmarshall]

What's the point? (Or, Where's the beef?)

Layton is only continuing the proud tradition of CCF/NDP opposition to unnecessary and unjust military actions. There is still a lot of opposition to the current regime in Washington, and a lot of it is within the US borders. Are those "unpatriotic" Americans American-bashing, or just un-American?

Terrible article that belongs in the Post, and nowhere else.

 

[drunknsubmrnr]

We can't defend ourselves without the help of the U.S.

How do you figure that?

Kevin

 

[mimicocreek]

Hmmm...I think it's self-evident from chronic neglect of the military over the past decade or so that our government feels it's okay to rely on the U.S. for defense. If the U.S. decided they did not want to take responsibility for us, then we'd be in serious trouble. And say the U.S. became the enemy...could Layton's non-military defend us?

 

[mimicocreek]

How sad (from the Globe):

Starved militia units run out of bullets

By*CHRISTIE BLATCHFORD

Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2004

Talk about biting the bullet: It seems inconceivable, and it is surely shameful, but at least some of the Canadian Forces' reserve units have run out of ammunition.

For almost a year now, militia units in 125 towns and cities across Canada have had only extremely limited amounts of live or "ball" ammunition -- just enough for soldiers to requalify annually on their service weapons -- and some have had no blanks for training.

The shortage means that about 15,000 part-time soldiers, a good many of whom may actually serve overseas to augment the chronically overburdened and depleted regular Forces, are training for war and its oft-dangerous cousin, modern peacekeeping, without the ability to practise regularly in battle conditions.

To be fair, any soldiers who go abroad receive additional training to bring them up to what's called "deployable" competency, and reserve units destined for such active service get first dibs on available ammunition.

But effectively, as one commanding officer put it yesterday, all reserve units "are starving" for ammo and even for the simulators that are supposed to supplant or support field training.

In recent years, with the regular Forces stretched beyond capacity by missions in Bosnia and Afghanistan, reservists have made up as much as 20 per cent of the soldiers serving in the former Yugoslavia.

Occasionally the number has been as large -- O irony -- as almost 50 per cent in the rifle companies.

The luckiest militia regiments, chiefly in Western Canada and Ontario, have been scrambling to share 400 kits of what's called Simunition, a military-style version of the Paintball game popular a few years ago among civilians.

These kits refit the upper part of the Forces' regulation C-7 rifle with a paintball-type system -- so-called "marking cartridges" replace the regular cartridges, which consist of a brass case, a primer and a 5.56-millimetre bullet -- with the lower part of the rifle left intact.

Even some of those who have warned about the sorry state of the Canadian Forces for years were astonished to learn of the militia's desperate plight.

John Selkirk, a member of the Reserves 2000 organization, an interest group composed in the main of retired militia officers, laughed bitterly when I told him yesterday what I'd learned.

"Well," he said, "there are so many things that just rot your socks. It would not surprise me. But you're saying they [the reserves] have absolutely none?"

But none is precisely what Lieutenant-Colonel Tom Compton, the commanding officer of the storied Hamilton-based Argylls and Sutherland Highlanders, says he has for the 200 part-time soldiers, or "citizen soldiers" as they proudly call themselves, of his regiment.

"I have a very limited amount of live ammunition for annual reclassification," he said yesterday.

"But no blank ammunition, and no pyrotechnics [these are grenade and artillery simulators which mimic the whistles and thunder flashes of actual battle]. It's very frustrating, and if it's frustrating for us, and we're infantry, imagine what it's like for those in the artillery: Their business is to shoot guns, and they have nothing to train people with."

Lt.-Col. Compton said that the news came down early last year, a few months before the start of the military's new fiscal year, and that as of April, 2003, the regiment has received no new issue of training ammunition. As far as he knows, it is a nationwide shortage and one that is likely to endure this year.

"It's every reserve unit I'm aware of," he said, "and I've spoken to them across Ontario and as far away as the West Coast."

Indeed, Lt.-Col. Blair McGregor, the commanding officer of the Seaforth Highlanders based in Vancouver, confirmed that his unit too has severely restricted amounts of live ammunition -- only for requalification -- and only a small quantity of training ammo.

That, The Globe and Mail has learned, is left over from the previous year because the regiment's main training exercise last summer was cancelled because of the forest fires in British Columbia.

If the ammunition crisis is in some measure reflective of a philosophical difference, with some senior officers believing soldiers can be properly trained using simulators of various sorts and others (the smart ones) adhering to the notion that their men and women must experience battle conditions and shoot real weapons, it is also a function of the general dire straits the Forces have endured for years.

Almost two years ago, a report called A Nation at Risk from the Conference of Defence Associations detailed the many crises facing the Forces -- decades of underfunding, a severe shortage of skilled personnel and spare parts -- and sang the praises of the reserves, which the report said had been nearly destroyed.

Cost-efficient, far more multicultural than the regular forces, the militia was described as a valuable national institution, in part because its locations in so many Canadian communities connect the army to the people in a way that nothing else does.

While most reservists are students, who may enroll as a summer job, many transfer to the regular army, and also provide most of the individual overseas augmentations to regular units.

Lt.-Col. Compton's Argylls, for instance, have nine members now serving in Bosnia; Lt.-Col. McGregor's Seaforths have no members overseas now, but have sent about 50 to Bosnia and Croatia.

The entire budget for a year's worth of ammunition -- live, training and pyrotechnics -- for the Argylls is only about $200,000.

Let me tell you how I heard of all this.

Last Saturday night, I attended the Argylls' annual Robbie Burns Dinner in the gorgeous officers' mess. Seated beside me was Major Atheling Seunarine, the regiment's second-in-command.

Proudly, he told me about a wonderful demonstration coming up for this weekend; the Argylls have recently begun to specialize in urban-warfare tactics, and developed this initiative with the Canadian Forces Liaison Council, a group of businesspeople who promote the reserves.

But over the course of the dinner, without a complaining bone in his body, Major Seunarine acknowledged that the regiment was turning to urban-warfare tactics because, well, they have no ammunition for traditional training.

As Harry Ferguson, a Hamilton businessman who is the regiment's corporate development officer, said yesterday, "Some bastard up in Ottawa probably did it. It's like a Monty Python skit: You can just imagine a Canadian soldier being delivered to the field in Afghanistan somewhere and saying, 'Oh, is this a real bullet? It's pathetic.' "

Last I saw him, Mr. Ferguson was reciting Mr. Burns's famous Ode to a Haggis and periodically stabbing and slicing at the steaming bag. I can think of more deserving places for that dagger.

 

[jamerinbow]

Who'd Invade Us?!!? (Now who's playing the Xenophobic card?)

We can't defend ourselves without the help of the U.S. I believe there are two options for Canada:

a. Cooperate with the U.S. so that we are defended on equal ground as their citizens are (we are at risk as a "Little Satan," after all).

b. Rebuild the military to ensure that we can defend ourselves without the help of the Americans.

There's a third option. We could just let them (try to) take the territory. Do you know how much impassible land invaders would have to get through in order to strike anything important? Typically, paranoid military militias in Minneapolis play war games with the premise that Manitoba has been invaded by the Russians through Churchill, and that the advance is heading south from Winnipeg. However, any military expert will tell you that any army that tried that would be bogged down for about a month, and its remnants could be held off by a boy scout with a bowie knife.

About the only country capable of invading us is the United States, and no matter how much we try beefing up our military, there's no way we're going to defeat them.

We should maintain and improve our current army in order to maintain our peacekeeping presence, and also to respond to natural disasters in the country (things like the BC fires and the hurricane strike on Halifax are only going to get more common), but let's back off the idea that we're prone for invasion. We're not. We are in the best defensible position from all sides except the south. And a large army doesn't do much to prevent a nuclear missile strike.

 

[drunknsubmrnr]

Re: Who'd Invade Us?!!? (Now who's playing the Xenophobic ca

There isn't a country on the planet with the sealift to support an invasion of Canada, with the possible exception of the US.

There is no way we could ever beef up the CF to successfully hold off an invasion from the US.

The only way the US is "defending" Canada is by not threatening to invade Canada itself.

Kevin

 

[boiler2000]

Re: Who'd Invade Us?!!? (Now who's playing the Xenophobic ca

Exactly. Calls for beefing up our army and having it cooperate more with the US could only have one goal: saving the Americans some cash in their imperial adventures.

 

[drunknsubmrnr]

Re: Who'd Invade Us?!!? (Now who's playing the Xenophobic ca

No, we still need a modern military, but the calls of "The US is defending Canada" are clearly wrong.

Kevin

 

[GeekyBoyTO]

Re: Who'd Invade Us?!!? (Now who's playing the Xenophobic ca

We should perhaps look at the Swiss model for our national defense. Not suggesting that we should make military service mandatory (even thought that might do some good), but we should vastly expand the reserves for 'home defense'...

The regular forces on the other hand should be restructured, like James suggested, for humanitarian work in particular. And I don't mean "peacekeeping" - but a certain extent of "peacemaking" - a nimble force that can be rapidly deployed, with enough firepower to get the job done.

GB

 

[jamerinbow]

Re: Who'd Invade Us?!!? (Now who's playing the Xenophobic ca

No, we still need a modern military, but the calls of "The US is defending Canada" are clearly wrong.

I agree on both counts and, in many ways, by providing stable government over this vast area, we are defending the American's northern flank. Despite what some news stories may tell you, they don't have much to fear from our side of the border.

...James