Commentary
For some perspective on the priorities and capacities of the Canadian government, or possibly just a bad headache, try looking simultaneously at these two stories.
First “Canadian troops in Poland not being reimbursed for meals,”
then “The cost to run the federal government is up $151B a year on Trudeau’s watch/ Federal public service employment has increased by nearly 31 per cent in seven years.” Either alone should set any remaining blood boiling. The combination surely vaporizes it on the spot.
You might be wondering what all those new bureaucrats are doing, especially since spending on consultants has also skyrocketed. Perhaps the consultants are busy trying to figure out how the bureaucrats spend their time and vice versa. But ironically, while the Canadian Armed Forces shrink to feeble demoralized irrelevance, the Parliamentary Budget Office reports that the feds spent $115.9 billion on operating costs in 2021-22, up by 32.5 percent in just two years. And, as the National Post
observes, “That increased spending… was driven by the three largest federal organizations, the Canada Revenue Agency, the Department of National Defence and the RCMP.”
I don’t think service at the CRA has improved, or will once they strike for even more of your money. And the RCMP is clearly in freefall. But how can DND be bloating up yet can’t find anyone to process troops’ expense claims even after it becomes a public embarrassment?
The troops had to buy their own meals because we forgot to send any “military cooks” to Poland, arguably a mixed blessing. And some CAF spokeschump said, “We apologize to the members and their families … We want them to know we have implemented measures to better support them moving forward.” But naturally they hadn’t; he then “acknowledged that even initial travel claims to Poland submitted by military staff have yet to be processed.”
This neglect
has not gone unnoticed within the Canadian Forces. And I sure wouldn’t want to be the bureaucrat, or vast number of same, charged with inducing people to join up to become social justice warriors who pay their own way to exotic locales like Gdansk. Especially as the PM blows $160,000 on
a Jamaica vacation, to which some lucky military people got to fly him, and isn’t waiting for room-service reimbursement on his $6K-a-night London hotel room. And the GG
serves carpaccio and “chicken scallopini in a creamy mushroom white wine reduction” on trips the CAF is, again, privileged to play chauffeur on, and at DND HQ they’re raking it in.
It is of course clear that national defence is not a priority for this administration, or the public sector more broadly. The feds plan to burn through $470 billion in the coming year, a figure
news stories don’t bother reporting, and borrow more than they spend on defence, a ratio journalists don’t bother mentioning. But the 2023 budget literally does not give an overall figure for defence, though it does tout a “NATO Climate Change and Security Centre of Excellence in Montreal.” And
journalists don’t care.
Nor is it a priority for voters, or even headstrong politicians would pay some attention. But it wouldn’t matter if they did, because even on core government functions like public relations, these people are inept. Including that while chronic wokeness is one of the things currently repelling recruits from the CAF, along with “poor treatment, concerns about pay and a lack of housing,” all these bureaucrats and generals can’t deal with the apparent plague of sexual assault you’d think would be priority one. So there’s a hefty dose of smug incompetence to go with the misplaced priorities.
That Canada is not pulling its weight in a dangerous world is by now glaringly obvious. The United States, UK, and Australia confer on serious matters without including the kid with the cool socks. And training Ukrainians was today’s version of the classic Canadian response in a crisis of sending our allies all aid short of help.
The CAF makes a big hoohah about “
Operation UNIFIER” and “
Operation REASSURANCE,” having apparently combined the American habit of pretentious mission names with the online lunatic habit of CAPS LOCK. But if you slog through the fine print, we sent about 100 people to Poland and can’t even feed or reimburse that feeble contingent, barely a “company” from a nation that fielded five divisions in World War II.
It seems unlikely that an economy can prosper when the
state accounts for nearly 90 percent of job creation. But we have an administration, and political culture, that believes the state can make us healthy, wealthy, wise, and compassionate, and doesn’t believe in core functions of government, like defence, criminal justice, or making ends meet.
Mind you it wouldn’t matter if they did, since they can’t even reimburse someone for a pierogi.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
