All matters Canadian / Canada

[Norfolk]

Personally, I would like to see a multi-party discussion and debate over where we, as a nation, believe our military should go. [] What are our priority missions? What are our contractual obligations? What do we actually need to fulfill them?

No meaningful multiparty discussion would, or could, ever take place, I'm afraid. The utter ignorance and more or less complete indifference of all parties with regards to military matters is practically invincible; it is effectively likewise for the general public, though for much less distasteful reasons. Being in some ways Metternich's political 5xGreat-Grandson, the lack of any meaningful public interest in or substantive support for the military, while certainly not laudible, must be practically conceded as being something close to inevitable. Pretty hard to be concerned about something that never seems to touch you when it's difficult enough making ends meet day-to-day for many, and increasingly more, people. Especially when it means more money out of your own shrinking pocket. Troops can identify with that much quite well.

As Stevely mentions, there is a point at which the resources (as well as the political conditions and constraints imposed by the Government) reach the point at which a Military is brought to the tipping point between remaining a Military, or degenerating into a Gendarmerie. Since we already have a Gendarmerie, the RCMP, which does indeed have both peacetime paramilitary and wartime military roles, tasks, and missions, then if we are no longer able or willing or both to maintain a proper Military, then it's time to end the pretense and disband DND and the CAF. Re-paramilitarize the RCMP (their Constabulary role under contract to various Provinces has softened them substantially), and paramilitarize the Canadian Coast Guard. At least they will be capable of territorial surveillance as well as border and internal security. They would also be capable of limited overseas LIC missions.

The real cost of such an approach would be a national independence that would literally degenerate into legal fiction. But even as there is strong hostility towards such an eventuality, there is conversely no real will, or even recognition, of this, let alone a will or even recognition of what it would take to substantively reverse it. Unless these are effectively rectified, even asking what our treaty obligations and mission/force requirements are are of little more than interesting but merely hypothetical point.