It was probably some speechwriter in Ottawa who fed his political master the catchy phrase for describing Canada as a country ‘from coast, to coast, to coast’. The introduction of this phrase fragmented the image of Canada’s coastline into three segments that has likely impeded Canadian maritime policy formulation. Successive […]
Stephen Harper
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[*Moderator’s Note: This article appeared originally as part of the ‘Plain Talk’ series in the Fall 2010 issue (Vol. 6, No. 3) of Canadian Naval Review.] Is the announcement of a new $2.6 billion project to acquire two Joint Support Ships good news or bad news for the navy? The […]
Rumours have been swirling ever since Lieutenant-General Andrew Leslie submitted his report on transformation to the CDS that there was big trouble brewing. John Ibbitsen writes in today’s Globe and Mail, in an article entitled “Discord over cuts leaves direction of Canadian military up in the air,” that “Senior officers […]
A quick internal polling of the CFPS fellowship on the question posed in this article’s title resulted in a general consensus that the navy’s name change is appropriate but not especially significant. The Canadian naval connection to the crown was not removed by dropping the ‘RCN’ name for the navy […]
Once again, Canada is faced with another complicated military procurement decision. Like other examples before this one, the F-35 procurement involves the competing demands of professional military advice on the one hand, and political judgements about affordability, ‘guns-versus-butter’ trade-offs, transparency, regional equity, and a host of domestic considerations on the […]
The navy is in a bind, and it is a bad one. The money needed to run the service and to reinvest in new ships is not in the budget. To make matters worse, it is approximately 20 percent short of people, mostly in the technical trades. What to do? […]
Brian Stewart, formerly Senior Correspondent for CBC’s national news programme “The National” and now Distinguished Senior Fellow with the Munk Centre at the University of Toronto, filed a report on 10 February about the performance of the navy in response to the Haitian earthquake. You can read his report here. […]
Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced the long awaited "Canada First Defence Strategy" (CFDS) yesterday. Or, as a cynic might put it, he repackaged several old announcements and planning document details, and attempted to pass it off as something new. The much awaited details? The Tories are serious about the North […]
The most recent article reporting on the state of Canada’s Aurora long-range patrol fleet appeared in the Toronto Star on 20 September in the form of a brief Canadian Press story confirming a CBC News report. The gist of the article is that Ottawa “…has halted a $ 1.6-billion upgrade […]
An article from the Sunday edition of the Ottawa Citizen by Colin Kenny, Chair of Senate Committee on National Security and Defence, "Stephen Harper is a toy soldier: Our gung-ho PM talks a good game on the military, but he is quietly selling out its future" provides a great synopsis […]