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44 pages eh? is this topic worthy of even more pages .?, i got a great idea lets just.....
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Originally Posted by TOkidd
44 pages of us wasting our time trying to debate or respond to someone who doesn't want to debate or read our responses. He could care less about Canada's ties to the British monarchy. He's just here to bother people. I think he'll melt away once we stop responding to him.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bernie20
I don't know if this has already been mentioned but Australia is a Commonwealth country and people acquiring Australian citizenship don't have to swear allegiance to the Queen but to Australia and its people. That makes a lot more sense to me.
I view that as being the next logical step with the groundwork and methodolgy already having been established.
It needs only a "trigger" event, such as the Queen's passing, to stimulate discussion on a national level and I'm sure that would be the first, most obvious, conclusion citizens of Canada would arrive at with perhaps even a more encompassing exclusion being on the table.
There are, after all, divorces in the very best of families.
My concern would be arriving at a position that leaves behind the rational oversight provided by the mere existance of someone like the Governor General while eliminating those things such as the oath of allegiance to ANY filial personage.
Our Senate was supposed to be the oversight committe guaranteeing parliamentary compliance by the various seated parties but, as we've all seen of late, they're just another bunch of pigs slurping at the trough.
I don't know if this has already been mentioned but Australia is a Commonwealth country and people acquiring Australian citizenship don't have to swear allegiance to the Queen but to Australia and its people. That makes a lot more sense to me.
I would prefer this model for Canada as well. Unfortunately, our Prime Minister is a monarchist who has done much to turn back the clocks and re-inject the Royal name and presence into institutions that had dropped them long ago, i.e. the Canadian Armed Forces.
I would prefer this model for Canada as well. Unfortunately, our Prime Minister is a monarchist who has done much to turn back the clocks and re-inject the Royal name and presence into institutions that had dropped them long ago, i.e. the Canadian Armed Forces.
I hadn't heard of this. Is the word 'Royal' being added back to the name? (I suppose in a sense it never was, since if memory serves, the word was dropped when you unified the services, and was not attached to the Army to begin with. But you get my meaning.)
Of course, there's a lot of monarchical reference surviving in Canadian military naming, beginning of course with the prefix to your warships' names. So many Canadian regiments refer back to monarchy and/or have Colonels-in-Chief among the Royal family.
I hadn't heard of this. Is the word 'Royal' being added back to the name? (I suppose in a sense it never was, since if memory serves, the word was dropped when you unified the services, and was not attached to the Army to begin with. But you get my meaning.)
Of course, there's a lot of monarchical reference surviving in Canadian military naming, beginning of course with the prefix to your warships' names. So many Canadian regiments refer back to monarchy and/or have Colonels-in-Chief among the Royal family.
Speaking as one who'se contract became null and void upon Hellyer's unification of the forces which allowed me to escape a full 7 year hitch I signed with the RCN to avail myself of an Engine Room Artificer trade group 3 rating upon graduation of a 4 year apprenticeship. I can attest to there being more to it than just the reinsertion of the "Royal" back into the nomenclature. I saw the writing on the wall and took the advice of senior staff to take that opportunity to jump ship, so to speak, at the precise moment I completed my apprenticeship and was about to be assigned sea duty. History has shown I made the right choice.
Unification did nothing but denude all three services of those things that had served for generations to make them unique and signalled the commencement of reduction of the military in both stature and effectiveness.
As far as I "understand" the military for some time and of today had been lobbying quietly for the return of the "Royal" designation for whatever reasons and I believe Harper thought he could save himself a lot of cash infusion into the services by throwing them a chew-toy instead.
The fact they're only just now beginning to replace those ancient Sea Kings that are over 60 years old is scandalous. The ones assigned to the old DDH's that had many cycles of their airframes being bear-claw yanked down onto the helipads (a Canadian invention, by the by) of Destroyer Escorts and would have reached their airframe complete rebuild requirements long ago. That is but one example of the disdain with which our military has been held by a variety of governments over the years.
The Afghanistan deployment of troops sent into desert theater with forest cammo was another, with having to borrow gear from our U.S. compatriots to not stick out like a horse's azz.
The lack of an up to date light armoured vehicle for patrol use with our guys getting blown up while riding around in the Iltis which was akin to an old volkswagon "thing", if you can remember the ugly breed, is but another.
In short; the request of the redesignation of the forces with the "Royal" prefix was quite probably just one in a laundry list of demands by military senior staff and that is the one Harper's minions gave them.
In short; the request of the redesignation of the forces with the "Royal" prefix was quite probably just one in a laundry list of demands by military senior staff and that is the one Harper's minions gave them.
So, my takeaway from that is that the Forces asked for a number of substantive improvements, most of which would require buying something beyond new letterhead and paint jobs, and the government said, "We're responsive to your needs. You can have the new letterhead and paint jobs." In effect, anyway?
The perception around the US Army in the 1980s, which was the last time I had my ear anywhere near the military balance of NATO, was that the Forces were not very well equipped but had a very high standard of training and morale. I hope that this is still so. However, you can't exactly penetrate armor with training and morale (though your chances might improve because of them). Back then, there was a Canadian brigade group at Lahr, and about a squadron of multirole aircraft, on station in West Germany, so I heard some reports on such matters. We thought highly of you. "Give them decent equipment and they'd be dangerous."
Another issue the Forces face as I see it, in terms of remaining up to date, has to do with environment. If the requirement is national and coastal defense, a key need is high airmobility to bring airportable land forces to bear in even relatively remote and harsh areas, with strong air support that can redeploy swiftly; and coastal capacity on, below and above the sea capable of identifying and engaging military and perhaps non-military threats. If that was the Forces' only mission profile, you'd choose the best equipment to make that possible. However, it isn't; the Forces have operated globally in UN peacekeeping, as part of the NATO commitment, and in wars we asked/pushed you to join into with us. That has created equipment and training needs you otherwise wouldn't have, such as desert warfare. While it gets pretty windy out on the Prairies, a shamal is unlikely. A blizzard is not, so the Forces require one of the world's highest standards of 'able to fight while freezing one's nads off'.
Contrast that with Sweden and the US, for the sake of comparison. The US plans to operate globally at need, but has the resources and overall size to prepare for a wide variety of environments. It can afford a mountain division, an airborne division, marine divisions, and so on, and the specialized stuff they need. Sweden, much smaller than Canada but slightly more armed per capita, may do UN peacekeeping as well but otherwise never has to equip or train to fight anywhere but in or near Sweden's limited distances and terrains. So as I see the Canadian defense funding dilemma, it has something of the challenge facing the US yet without the numeric size and financial resources.
One could argue, of course, that the need for national defense is less because it's very difficult to imagine your southern neighbors just letting someone attack you (and not entirely for reasons of pure self-interest; many Americans realize that Canada is the closest friend the US has, if nations can be said to have friends). However, that goes to sovereignty: an essential assertion of independence is to not depend, obviously, thus not to be or feel beholden. I guess I can see both sides of that debate, but if I lived there I believe I'd have to come down on the side of assertion of sovereignty. Greater dependence in the military sphere would surely erode sovereignty, which Canadians have defended and asserted for 250-some years depending on when one begins reckoning. Diminish that and you could diminish all that is Canadian, and I hope that won't happen. (For one thing, the North American Beer Quality Index would take a major hit.)
An agreement was reached way back in McKenzie King's time with the U.S. of "mutual protection from enemy" which was a worthy and somewhat relevant concept when we were just coming out of WWII with a navy to be reckoned with along with an experienced army and airforce but it went south from there.
Our role within Nato was Anti-submarine warfare and at that we maintained a workable force with then new DDE's and DDH's coming off the ways in reasonable numbers but as in all things military, they soon reached there life expectancy and every single fed government opted to pass the buck with things like throwing money at Quebec to stave off separation taking center stage instead.
Now we have the boondoggle of the joint fighter program with our committment to, I believe, over 60 of those darn F35 compromise things that will very likely be lucky to get off the ground after all the mod's being done to them on the run down the line. By the time those things finally show up in our inventroy the poor old F18's will very likely be nothing more than duct-tape and chewing gum in a pile sitting beside a hanger somewhere. We're already scavengine parts from the permanently crippled to keep the 'merely lame' still in the air.
The one instance comes along when the fed's are hesitantly putting a foot into deeper unfamiliar waters and we had to end up in this settling for a slow, dodo that is having a problem launching off the drafting board. Other options were available and instead of considering carefully things like delivery times in conjunction with airworthiness of our remaining F18's and perhaps opting for modified existing airframes like Super Eagles, among others offered, that would have been suitable and more easily obtained in a timely manner at far less cost even, they instead, tied their can to the latest, greatest, whoopee, doopee, rabbit in the hat extravaganza.
I'm deathly afraid this F35 conundrum will leave such a bad taste, future decisions on procurement will become an even greater rarity.
The will to keep an effective standing force in all three services of manning and up to date equipment is so fleeting in Canadian politics that even peace keeping duties stretch our resources outside our capabilities.
Would that it were not so.
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