armed forces
Things worth fighting for
US ambassador David Cohen, Israeli ambassador Iddo Moed, Bill Blair, Cindy McCain, Peter MacKay. Photo: PW
Click here to subscribe to The Paul Wells Newsletter.
Of course people disagree. That’s what we’re trying to protect
“You really like going to those things,” an acquaintance remarked at Pearson Airport when I told him I was heading to the Halifax International Security Forum. Fair enough, I guess. I was just in Warsaw for their annual gathering of generals, defence ministers, think tankers and diplomats. I was in Halifax a year ago, and occasionally in previous years. I’ve been to security conferences in Herzliyah and Munich, long ago. The world is always on the brink of war, and lately has taken to spilling over several brinks at once. So there is always much to discuss.
Unfortunately much of what there is to discuss is horrible. On Saturday a panel moderator slumped into a plush chair, in front of the assembled cabinet ministers, diplomats, generals and think tankers, and introduced himself as Jason Rezaian from the Washington Post. He looked like any newspaperman from Central Casting, which means, approximately, like me. He reminded the audience that in 2014 he was taken prisoner by the Iranian regime and held in a Tehran penitentiary for over 500 days.
On Saturday at dinner I was reminded that Huseyin Celil, a Canadian citizen, has been in a Chinese prison for 17 years. Vladimir Kara-Murza, who spoke at Halifax in 2021, has been in a Russian prison for close to two years.
Prison is not even close to the worst fate that can befall a journalist, a dissident or a population. Halifax this year was preoccupied with continuing slaughter: in Ukraine, where the optimism of last year’s conference has been displaced by mounting concern; and in Israel and Gaza.
This newsletter is my full-time job. To support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
I’d been at the conference venue, a Westin hotel at the end of Hollis St., for perhaps ten minutes when a visiting soldier who knows Ukraine well told me that pushing the Russians all the way out of Ukraine — that is, out of Crimea and the eastern Donbas region — would take twice as many weapons and equipment as the West has sent Ukraine to date. This was the soldier’s way of engaging a debate opened by former NATO secretary-general Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who’s suggested bringing Ukraine into NATO without the regions currently occupied by Russia. This sounds easier, but as former Estonian president Toomas Ilves told me in an interview that will soon be on my podcast, a Russian Crimea and Donbas would essentially be permanent bases from which to harass the rump Ukraine.
So much for the heady optimism of a year ago, when fighting the Russians to a standstill still felt like some kind of triumph. Joe Biden’s promise to back Ukraine “for as long as it takes” is starting to sound ominously like a promise to keep up the West’s end of a stalemate. Several commentators at Halifax said that if all the weapons that were sent to Ukraine in 2023 had arrived in 2022, 2023 might have gone better. As for 2024, if it features mounting Ukraine fatigue in Western populations and ends with Donald Trump’s re-election, this year might look rosy in retrospect.
Of course the big complicating factor in any discussion of today’s world is Israel’s response to Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack. The conference agenda had plainly undergone substantial surgery to accommodate a discussion of the Gaza violence and its repercussions. A crowd of local pro-Palestinian protesters appeared at intervals across the street from the conference hotel, although they were loudest on Friday night when just about everybody attending the conference was at a dinner several blocks away.
My own sense is that the establishment and perpetual defence of a Jewish state of Israel is very partial payment toward the heavy debt humanity owes the Jewish people. I note that there was a robust and enduring ceasefire in Gaza as late as October 6, and that Hamas brought that ceasefire to a monstrous end. Hamas having opened hostilities, it falls to Israel to end them, by destroying Hamas’s ability to contemplate or deliver any similar attack in the future. Carrying out that task is inevitably an enterprise of horrifying violence.
Too much, say the protesters. “You support GENOCIDE,” they shouted outside the Westin Nova Scotian. I guess that’s going to depend on definitions. I had dinner on Saturday with Dolkun Isa, the president of the World Uyghur Congress, and I got the distinct impression he’s against genocide. Yet I have a hard time dismissing those protesters outright just because they weigh horrors differently from me. I have friends who seem to have spent the last six week gleefully looking for reasons to write off people who disagree with them. I’ve often thought moral clarity was overrated. Shouldn’t these questions be morally tormenting? And in a world where such lesser matters as vaccine mandates and carbon taxes become the stuff of furiously polarized elections, should we really be so surprised that life and death on a vast scale produces divisions too?
Share
I was nervous when I heard, late on Friday, that the Halifax Forum organizers were going to give their highest honour, a prize in the name of the late U.S. Senator John McCain, to “the people of Israel.” That sure wouldn’t go over well with the protesters outside the Westin. As it happened, by Saturday morning it was raining and the protesters were nowhere to be seen. More to the point, the prize went, not just to any people of Israel, but to Brothers and Sisters In Arms, an organization that spent much of 2023 protesting against Benjamin Netanyahu’s autocratic judicial “reforms,” but pivoted to assisting recovery efforts after the Oct. 7 attack. A neat way of emphasizing that Israel is a stubbornly pluralistic democracy, and that the Israeli state is not always the best steward of the Israeli people’s interest.
The conference, and the individual participants even more so, found other ways to express a diversity of opinion that might have surprised outsiders. (It’s easy enough to see for yourself: streaming archives of most of the sessions are on Youtube.) A panel with the title “Victory in Ukraine = Example For Israel” featured panelists politely disagreeing with the premise of the title. For starters, Ukraine had no settlements on occupied Russian territory, as one questioner in the audience pointed out.
Mouaz Moustafa, executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, was one of several people at the forum who argued that the Israeli government’s heavy and deadly bombardment of Gaza is counterproductive at best. “Such a campaign, where there are thousands and thousands more children being killed than Hamas fighters, is not something that makes, frankly, Israel or the West safer,” he said.
This sentiment — that even when brutally wronged, Israel is not automatically right — was reinforced Saturday afternoon by the publication in the Washington Post of a long essay on Israel-Gaza by Joe Biden. Biden moved early to support Israel and ward off Iranian escalation, moving two aircraft carriers to the Mediterranean and himself to Israel. Now he was signaling — hell, saying in so many words — that his support had limits:
“There must be no forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, no reoccupation, no siege or blockade, and no reduction in territory. And after this war is over, the voices of Palestinian people and their aspirations must be at the center of post-crisis governance in Gaza.
As we strive for peace, Gaza and the West Bank should be reunited under a single governance structure, ultimately under a revitalized Palestinian Authority, as we all work toward a two-state solution. I have been emphatic with Israel’s leaders that extremist violence against Palestinians in the West Bank must stop and that those committing the violence must be held accountable. The United States is prepared to take our own steps, including issuing visa bans against extremists attacking civilians in the West Bank.”
If Ukraine and Israel were the conference’s main themes, another repeated refrain was that bad things often come in threes, and war in Europe and the Middle East could become even grimmer if they were joined by conflict in the Asia-Pacific. Several speakers referred to China as the West’s “pacing threat,” which essentially means only China has the means and desire to compete with the West in shaping the world.
It was in this context — of a world growing constantly more dangerous in constantly more complex ways — that so many hallway conversations in Halifax featured variations of the observation that Canada is increasingly close to being a failed state. It sure would be great if Canada could contribute reliably to dissuading Chinese ambitions in the Asia-Pacific, but that would require a working navy, and Wayne Eyre told the conference we’re fresh out. Bill Blair, Justin Trudeau’s latest defence minister, met the large U.S. congressional delegation that always flies up to Halifax from Washington, and I’m told most of the questions had to do with his department’s annual Performance Report, which says that over the past year, “the growing demands for CAF responses challenged the already unstable foundation of operational readiness given personnel shortfalls, equipment deficiencies, and insufficient sustainment including critical stores of ammunition.”
Blair said at the conference that Canada needs to make “significant new investments” in defence; he was also heard to say, in private meetings, that in delivering this message within the government he faces “headwinds from the centre.” The headwinds will be portrayed on Tuesday, in a closely-watched speech, by Chrystia Freeland, who was said to be so displeased with Anita Anand’s constant push for more defence spending that soon both Anand and Blair had new jobs. Nearly every ambassador in Ottawa begins nearly every conversation by asking whether the Trudeau government or any potential successor will take the burdens of a troubled world more seriously anytime soon. Of course, Canada being a sovereign country, these decisions are not made by ambassadors. But they get to ask, and notice.
I suspect Freeland’s delivery of her economic and fiscal update will be one of the most important political moments of the last five years. Nobody really has any idea what the minister’s statement will say. She is the champion of activist government on odd-numbered days and of mighty fiscal restraint on even. She will be sure of some new direction on Tuesday, and I suppose it’s a toss-up whether she will even remember by Friday what that direction was supposed to be. The good news, as we were reminded in Halifax, is that Canada is close to being the least of the world’s problems. The bad news is that it also seems determined to become the least of the world’s remedies.
Paul Wells has written for the Toronto Star, the National Post, and the Montreal Gazette. Perhaps most Canadians know him best for the 19 years he spend writing long form journalism with Maclean’s magazine and for his regular appearances on CBC’s The National.
Click to visit the Substack of Paul Wells.
For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.
armed forces
Judge dismisses Canadian military personnelās lawsuit against COVID shot mandate
From LifeSiteNews
Associate Judge Catherine Coughlan rejected a lawsuit from more than 300 past and current members of the Canadian military who lost their jobs or were put on leave for not taking the experimental, dangerous COVID shots.
A Canadian federal judge has thrown out a lawsuit filed on behalf of some 330 past and current members of the nation’s military who lost their jobs or were placed on leave for refusing the experimental COVID shots, because she alleged that their lawsuit lacked “evidence” that the jabs were harmful.
The Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) members had sought some $1.3 million in damages from the government for having their charter rights violated due to the military’s 2021 COVID mandates, according to their lawsuit.
In a November 13 ruling, Edmonton-based Associate Judge Catherine Coughlan ruled in favor of the Trudeau government, and thus military’s COVID jab mandate, to strike down the case. Coughlan remarked that the plaintiffs’ case lacked “material facts” along with “evidence” and was filled with “vexatious language.”
READ: Canadian father files $35 million lawsuit against Pfizer over son’s jab-related death
“The only indications of bad faith are found when the pleadings baldly assert that, among other claims, Canada failed to carry out safety and efficacy testing for the vaccines, and that the Directives were premature and ‘promoted the fraudulent use of the biologics’,” she wrote, overlooking reports of thousands of injuries due to the shots in Canada alone.
As a result of the lawsuit being tossed, all plaintiffs are now on the hook to pay some $5,040 out of pocket in legal costs.
As reported by LifeSiteNews in June, documents obtained by LifeSiteNews show that the number of jab injuries in the CAF rose over 800 percent in 2021, with the most being credited to Moderna’s experimental COVID shot.
The CAF members’ lawsuit was filed in June of 2023 and overall sought some $1 million in damages, along with an extra $350,000 in general damages. The lawsuit also had a condition that there be a declaration made that mandating the COVID shots for military members was a violation of their charter rights.
READ: Israeli boy featured in COVID vaccine campaign dies of heart attack at age 8
LifeSiteNews reported in July that a member of Canada’s military who was injured after taking the experimental mRNA COVID jabs has been denied compensation from the nation’s Veterans Affairs department.
Under the CAF’s mandate, hundreds of military members were fired, or one could say, purged for not getting the COVID shots. This is in addition to the thousands of public servants fired for not agreeing to take the COVID shots.
The CAF eventually ended its COVID mandate in October 2022, which was months after the federal mandate was lifted, but members are still “strongly encouraged” to take the experimental shot.
The federal government under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that its federal COVID shot workplace mandate would be dropped in June 2022, as would the mandate requiring domestic travelers have the shot to board planes and trains.
In November of 2023, a CAF member who spoke to LifeSiteNews under the condition of anonymity observed that the military considers members who refuse the COVID jab “a piece of garbage.”
READ: COVID shots have 200-times higher risk of brain clots than other jabs: new report
In March, LifeSiteNews reported on large personnel losses causing the CAF to consider dropping its remaining requirements altogether.
Although Canada has a Vaccine Injury Support Program (VISP) program, active members of the CAF, as well as veterans, are not eligible for the civilian program. According to Christensen, this leaves many COVID jab-injured CAF members and veterans with no recourse other than Veterans Affairs Canada.
COVID shot mandates, which came from provincial governments with the support of Trudeau’s federal government, split Canadian society. The mRNA shots themselves have been linked to a multitude of negative and often severe side effects, such as heart diseases, stroke, and death, including in children.
The shots also have connections to cell lines derived from aborted babies. As a result, many Catholics and other Christians refused to take them.
armed forces
From Batoche to Kandahar: Canadaās Sacrifices for Peace
From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
By Gerry Bowler
There is a grave on a riverbank near Batoche, Saskatchewan. It contains the remains of a soldier from Ontario who died in 1885 under General Middleton during the last battle of the Northwest Rebellion. It has been tended for almost 150 years by the Métis families whose ancestors had fought against him. His name was Gunner William Phillips and he was 19 years old.
Up a dirt road in the Boshof District of Free State, South Africa is a memorial garden in which are buried the 34 bodies of Canadians killed at the Battle of Paardeberg in 1900. They fell driving a Boer kommando off the heights where they had been dug in and inflicting severe casualties on the British forces below. Private Zachary Richard Edmond Lewis of the Royal Canadian Regiment lies there. He was the son of Millicent Lewis and was 27 years old.
On April 22, 1915 the German army launched its first poison gas attack on Allied trenches near Ypres, Belgium during the First World War. When French troops on their flanks broke and ran, the 1st Canadian Division stood fast amid the chlorine cloud and repelled their attackers, suffering 2,000 casualties in the process. On the grave of Private Arthur Ernest Williams of the 8th Battalion are the words “Remember, He Who Yields His Life is a Soldier and a Man.” Private Williams was 16 years old.
When the Japanese invaded Hong Kong in December 1941, Canadian troops from the Winnipeg Grenadiers were there to resist them. Among them was Sergeant-Major J.R. Osborn whose men were surrounded and subject to grenade attacks. Osborn caught several of these and flung them back but when one could not be retrieved in time he threw himself on the grenade as it exploded trying to save his men. His body was never found after the battle but his name is inscribed on a monument in Sai Wan Bay War Cemetery.
In the hills south of Algiers is Dely Ibrahim Cemetery. This is where they buried the body of RCAF Pilot Officer John Michael Quinlan after the crash of his Wellington bomber in March, 1944. He was a movie-star handsome student from Prince Albert, Saskatchewan and my father’s best friend in the squadron. I carry his family name as my middle name as does my little grand-daughter.
The Kandahar Cenotaph in the Afghanistan Memorial Hall at National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa honours those Canadians who died fighting Islamic terrorists. 158 stones are bearing the faces of the soldiers who were repatriated from where they fell and now are buried in graves in their home communities across the country. One of those stones commemorates Warrant Officer Gaétan Joseph Francis Maxime Roberge of the Royal 22nd Regiment who is buried in a cemetery in Sudbury. He was 45 when he was killed by a bomb. He left behind a wife, an 11-year-old daughter and twin 6-year-old girls.
On November 11, we pause to remember the 118,000 Canadian men and women who died fighting, among others, Fenian invaders, Islamic jihadis in Sudan, the armies of Kaiser Wilhelm, Benito Mussolini, and Imperial Japan, Nazi SS Panzer regiments, Chinese and North Korean forces, ethnic warlords in the Balkans, and the Taliban. They died in North Atlantic convoys, in French trenches, in primitive field hospitals, on beaches in Normandy, in the air over England, on frozen hills in Korea, in jungle POW camps, on peace-keeping duty in Cyprus, in the Medak Pocket in Croatia, and in the mountain passes of Afghanistan. We also remember the hundreds of thousands more who returned home alive, but mutilated, shattered in body and mind, the families deprived of sons, fathers, and brothers, and the communities who lost teachers, hockey players, volunteers, pastors, nurses, and neighbours.
We remember them because in honouring their memory we honour the values on which Canada was built. They did not die to create a Canadian empire, acquire foreign territory or satisfy some ruler’s grandiosity; they fought and suffered to protect parliamentary democracy, freedom of expression and religion, a tolerant society, and the right to live in peace.
On November 11, let us be clear that the prosperity and tranquility enjoyed today by North Americans, Europeans, South Koreans, Japanese, Indians, Malaysians, Singaporeans, Filipinos, etc., etc., were purchased with the blood of heavily-armed men in military uniform, many of them with maple leaf patches on their shoulders. A country which is contemptuous towards its duty to maintain its armed forces, where schools forbid personnel in service dress from attending remembrance assemblies lest their presence makes children and parents “feel unsafe,” or where Forces chaplains are instructed to avoid religious language or symbols in services commemorating our dead, is a nation lost to its memories and unlikely to have much of a future.
KILLED IN ACTION. BELOVED DAUGHTER OF ANGUS & MARY MAUD MACDONALD,
Nursing Sister Katherine MacDonald, Canadian Army Nursing Service, May 19th 1918
HE WOULD GIVE HIS DINNER TO A HUNGRY DOG AND GO WITHOUT HIMSELF.
Gunner Charles Douglas Moore, Canadian Anti-Aircraft Battery, September 19th 1917
BREAK, DAY OF GOD, SWEET DAY OF PEACE, AND BID THE SHOUT OF WARRIORS CEASE.
Sergeant Wellesley Seymour Taylor, 14th Battalion, May 1st 1916
Gerry Bowler, historian, is a Senior Fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
-
conflict24 hours ago
US and UK authorize missile strikes into Russia, but are we really in danger of World War III?
-
Business2 days ago
Carbon tax bureaucracy costs taxpayers $800 million
-
Alberta1 day ago
Early Success: 33 Nurse Practitioners already working independently across Alberta
-
MAiD2 days ago
Over 40% of people euthanized in Ontario lived in poorest parts of the province: government data
-
Brownstone Institute2 days ago
The Most Devastating Report So Far
-
armed forces19 hours ago
Judge dismisses Canadian military personnelās lawsuit against COVID shot mandate
-
International18 hours ago
Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy Outline Sweeping Plan to Cut Federal Regulations And Staffing
-
Alberta1 day ago
Province considering new Red Deer River reservoir east of Red Deer