Martin Shoots Down Air Force, Sinks Navy

Reports in today's various dead-tree papers indicate that Prime Minister Paul Martin's most recent brain-wave for the military, the 5000-strong "peacekeeping" brigade, will be implemented in the near future. Because the PM is providing no actual money for doing this, it will require the Canadian Armed Forces to mothball a quarter of the CF-18 fighter jets and lay up all three active destroyers to fund the new organization.

I'd love to say that this surprises me, but it merely deepens my already morose outlook on the future of Canada. The ruling Liberal party has no interest in maintaining or expanding the military: that's not their constituency and there are damned few votes for them in spending the large sums of money required to even keep the reduced state of the armed forces.

To a Liberal backbencher in Parliament, the job of Minister of National Defence is perhaps the worst possible fate awaiting them. Even a sincere and dedicated MND is always subject to public depantsing by the Finance Minister or the PM: no promise by the MND is considered binding on the government. The PM is going to hog any positive press coverage of military spending, but the MND is the poor bastard who is going to have to make speeches to angry defence contractors, veterans, and serving members of the Forces.

One of the local Liberal MPs fought the last election campaign by posting signs throughout the riding with a series of false choices, illustrating how evil his Conservative opponent was. The signs had choices like "Hospitals, not Tanks", "Education, not Aircraft Carriers", and "Peace, not Fascism".

Okay, I made up that last one, but the tone was fully consistent with what was actually posted. That Liberal won his re-election campaign handily. The bastard.