The Government Strikes Again

(Aired January 7, 2010)

I guess one should never be surprised at the stupidity of the government. At a time when our military needs to be at its strongest, when it's obvious by Christmas Day activities in the skies that terrorism threats are far from over, it's absolutely outrageous that the Harper government is going to cut military spending by almost 200 million dollars this year. The navy, such as it is, will cut training for its reserve forces this month and reduce infrastructure maintenance and repairs, the air force will scale back non-operational training, cut some flying time, and limit non-essential repairs. The army will trim training and reduce the number of reserve soldiers full time. I appreciate that the government is trying to reduce our deficit, but military spending is not in a position to be cut. Let's just take one small example. Well, a not-so-small example. We have declining ice flows in the Arctic. In fact, the polar ice is almost non-existent. It's turned more to big chunks of what they call "rotten" ice, soft crumbly ice that will allow ships to pass through the ice cap almost at will in years to come. Canada is having a huge problem laying claim to that territory. It will require more and more military strength in that area to protect our sovereignty. We are totally unprepared to do it. We don't have the forces. And now we're talking about cutting 200 million dollars from military spending. Has Stephen Harper lost his mind completely? What kind of government are we running here? We're one of the largest countries in the world and one of the smallest militaries. There are third-world countries that have bigger militaries than we do. If we wish to give up any defence of our country, or abrogate our responsibilities to the world at large, we are certainly going about it the right way.