The Anth Zone

The Senate’s Standing Committee on National Security & Defence has advised the government in a report for Canada to sign onto the Ballistic Missile Defence Program with the United States over protecting our territorial claims to our artic passageways.

The report criticized former-Prime Minister Paul Martin’s decision to reject Canada’s involvement in the bilateral program. I support his decision. I remember U.S. Officials and Military Experts supporting his decision also, that it would have been a bad decision for Canadians if Martin dedicated our country.

This missile system has not shown much promise after the tests failed because they did not hit and/or reach their targets. If Canada or our closet ally fell under a nuclear attack it would be a man carrying a suitcase sized device into a marketplace in a large metropolitan area, like New York City or Toronto.

The threat of nuclear war has dropped since the end of the Cold War; however nations in the developing world such as North Korea and Iran are getting closer but are no direct threat to the North American continent. Why should we put our faith into a system that has failed simulations? I have no clue.

This does seem quite similar to the time when officials from both countries were calling for Diefenbaker to scrap the Avro Arrow project, however we gave in and I think our current Prime Minister will do the same. Steve-oh will not disobey his masters to the south.

The part of the report on the Artic stated that the artic being a military target is ‘ridiculously low’ and that other agencies should be primarily operate in protecting our claims to it. The report also advised to arm the Coast Guard. I do agree with the report on this issue, however, we should increase activity in the Northwest Passage to monitor movements of foreign vessels regardless of classification whether it be military or merchant.

The National Security and Defence Senate Committee also advised for the federal government to allow the Department of National Defence to allow its minister to be empowered to spend up to $500 million on equipment for the Armed Forces.

I do agree with this point, the Canadian Forces are ill-equipped and some of it is out-dated. The rest was that the funding to the Armed Forces is inadequate and should be increased by $15 billion.

Your Moment of Zen

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 5th, 2006 at 9:16 pm and is filed under Canadian Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.