John Robson: There Are More Vital Uses for Our Navy Than Researching Climate Change in Antarctica

The HMCS Margaret Brooke is docked for its commissioning ceremony in Halifax on Oct. 28, 2022. The Canadian Press/Andrew Vaughan

Commentary

Since Canada’s state propaganda machine churns out endless “Minister concludes successful visit to Ruritania” press releases, it’s easy to sleep through “HMCS Margaret Brooke returns from historic Operation PROJECTION.” Unless you also recall the April 30 headline, “Mould found in nearly half the Royal Canadian Navy’s frigates.” In which case you might think the Department of National Defence should be, um, cleaning up its act.

You might also be wondering what was so darn historic about Operation PROJECTION. And indeed what specifically was projected, since it pretty clearly wasn’t force or the capacity to exert the same to help protect allies ourselves.

After all HMCS Margaret Brooke is an “offshore patrol ship,” which I guess beats the onshore kind, named for a nurse who failed to save a friend from drowning when a ferry was torpedoed in the St. Lawrence during World War II, our governments in the 1930s having been nearly as insouciant about security as current ones. Talk about “Yes we can’t” as a national slogan. Especially as the ship carries minimal armament.

According to DND, the trip was “historic” because “HMCS Margaret Brooke built and enhanced international relationships, in cooperation with Global Affairs Canada, through multiple port visits and engagements with regional partners throughout South America and the Caribbean.” Riiight. Built and enhanced. Regional partners.

Rhetorical sludge. But wait. There’s more. “In Antarctica, the ship supported Canadian scientists in conducting vital research, showcasing Canada’s commitment to understanding this unique polar environment.” Which again brings to mind Dwight Eisenhower’s neglected warning against a government-science complex that accompanied his much-noted warning about a military-industrial one.

We tend these days to think any nation worth its AI must have massive government support for research and development or we’ll be run over by a fleet of international robots, on the apparent theory that entrepreneurs and researchers are sluggish dolts unless bureaucrats galvanize them. But they who pay the piper call the tune, so when the state takes over science, you get people studying what the government wants them to study and, even more troubling, finding what the government wants them to find.

A typical news story, from a state-subsidized outlet, gushed, “The Royal Canadian Navy returned to Halifax Friday from a deployment to Antarctica with tales of spotting exotic wildlife and samples that could lead to a greater understanding of climate change.” Now technically the Margaret Brooke isn’t our entire navy, though it’s not far off.

Wikipedia says, “The RCN operates twelve frigates, four patrol submarines, four Arctic and offshore patrol ships, twelve coastal-defence vessels and eight unarmed patrol/training vessels.” But it doesn’t really operate the subs because they were junk when bought second-hand in 1997 and are now as obsolete as they are unreliable. And the frigates, also antiques in a fast-changing world (“the outcome of the Canadian Patrol Frigate Project, which dates to the mid-1970s”), are mouldy as well as rusty.

I could go on and on, including about lack of personnel. But revenons á nos glaciers because given this environment, so to speak, you might expect the government to focus on protecting our coasts and sea lanes and working with allies on hard power capacity. Instead, politicians and bureaucrats send our dwindling resources to bolster their pseudo-scientific views on an “existential crisis” involving limited, largely natural, warming, and ignore the menaces of China, Islamism, and cybercrime, all with an intolerable air of smugness.

The news story trumpets, “The Arctic and offshore patrol vessel was the navy’s first ship to be north of the Arctic Circle and south of the Antarctic Circle all within the same year.” Woot. Not quite storming Juno Beach or weathering the Blitz, but it will apparently have to do. And the skipper laid it on with, “Not only were we able to do all this amazing work with science in the south, within Antarctica, but the relationships that we built with Latin American countries on the way south and north was just phenomenal.”

Amazing!!! Phenomenal!!! Though if you polled Latin Americans on this historical historicism, I suspect they’d go “Margaret Brooke? Quién es esa?”

As for the sediment cores collected in Antarctica, “one of 15 federal government and university scientists aboard,” which with governments controlling university funding isn’t really two separate categories, said: “We hope to learn about the rate of glacier retreat related to climate change over the years and how that has evolved through time. So, has it been increasing over the last 10 years or the last 20 years?”

Yeah? Let me tell you, buddy, the government didn’t send you there to see whether, but to say yes. I’m glad you saw cute penguins. But I wish you’d seen the ugly state of our navy and government science. And said so.

Now that would have been historic. Although admittedly you might well have been history.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.