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Government hints at boosting Canada’s military spending

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I have long said that you could fund the CAF to 4 percent of GDP, but we would still lag behind in NATO and be much the same where we are.

It's never the money, it's politics. It's procedures. It's the pork-barreling in our defence spending that makes us a paper tiger in NATO.

My only hope in all of this for the CAF and the GoC, whatever the political stripe that may be, is that it will rouse them out of the "Peace Dividend" slumber. The world has been unstable since 1945. We have used geography, proximity, and association as a Defence Policy ever since. ICBMs don't care how close to the U.S. or how far from Russia/China we are.

Don't give us a dime more, but let us spend money on defence like it matters. The fact we follow the same rules for purchasing a fighter aircraft as we do for buying office furniture for a Service Canada office is disgraceful. Don't treat defense procurement as a stimulus package for Canadian Industry. There I said it.

We spend so much money, time, and effort trying to get that money to stay in Canada; be it by awarding contracts to companies with no capability to produce items without first "retooling" and"developing the production lines", or by hamstringing perfectly competent and competitive bidders by forcing the project to be made in St. Margaret de Poutain de Champignon, QC because the ruling government either lost the seat in the election, or won it with promises.

We spend so much money and staff hours jumping through TBS regulations that are great for other departments, but are terrible for defence procurement. Some items you have to sole source, because there are technologies and capabilities no one else makes. By doing the bid process, you get companies clamoring for a project they can't deliver on, but because they tick the bright boxes on the score sheet....

I truly and honestly belief we need to split from PSPC and legislate that its not beholden to TBS, only to the PBO/PCO. The guiding principles of this new Defence Procurement department should be "Off the shelf, from somewhere else" if there isn't an industry in Canada.

BOOTFORGEN has demonstrated how well we do when we are able to actually get what we need, instead of lining the pockets of a Canadian company that got lucky.

That, but with tanks, fighters, ships, weapons systems....
 
Well him and his entire cabinet, which many are also the new cabinet....

But what do they care so long as they keep getting elected... I think we'll see a new trend: The LPC will just flip leaders right before an election every time they start to get crushed in the polling.
In my view, that was a one time get-out-of-jail free card. And they burned it.

What they really need, is to manufacture a new "crisis" that only they can solve.

2019-M'eh Canada wasn't quite ready to ditch LPC and rewarded/punished them with a minority
2021-COVID! Oh My! And O'Toole was weak as a kitten (yeah, all you O'Toole better than Pierre crowd, bugger off and yes in the CPC leadership I supported O'Toole)
2025-Trump! And we are no longer "Trudeau" brand and "elbows up" (from the weakest people).

Seriously. If Trudeau had led the LPC into the 2025 election, Pierre would be PM, Jagmeet or Yves would have battled closely for leader of the opposition. And the LPC would be out of there.

Switch leaders. Promise Canadians it will be different (Actually, weirdly, I have more faith in Carney than Trudeau) and scare the idiots with "TRUMP, oh my!"

My hope right now is that Carney secretly wants Brookfield to build a bunch of pipelines, open up mines, boost internal trade and get something of an economic base going.
 
Switch leaders. Promise Canadians it will be different (Actually, weirdly, I have more faith in Carney than Trudeau) and scare the idiots with "TRUMP, oh my!"

My hope right now is that Carney secretly wants Brookfield to build a bunch of pipelines, open up mines, boost internal trade and get something of an economic base going.
I don’t think it’s weird to have more faith in Carney than in Trudeau at all.

I don’t think Carney is overly concerned with specifically who builds infrastructure; as a twice over G7 central banker with an exceptional education in economics, he’s likely to be solidly classically liberal in wanting to maximize the ability of the market to achieve positive outcomes. Viewing a lot of what he says through that light, and tempering it with political realities that we all know exist, I expect to see him pushing hard to reduce the degree to which government is in the way of major infrastructure and capital expenditures.


Saw that. Interesting tidbit about 75 cents out of every procurement dollar in defense going to the U.S. wanting to diversify that is reasonable. Hopefully we get ourselves integrated into European defence supply chains similar to our involvement with F-35.

If RUMINT is true. Within a day or two we should hear of some relatively substantive commitments within DND/CAF. I hope that’s the case; some early indicators of “we mean business” would be great to see.
 
I wonder how many the order is for. It’s good it’s coming with the FCD 558. Hopefully we procure the full range of modern munitions to go with the FCD.
Finally replenishing what we’ve given away over the last 3 yrs.
 
he’s likely to be solidly classically liberal in wanting to maximize the ability of the market to achieve positive outcomes.
Not necessarily.

"Second, unless they become pure theorists, grad students immerse themselves in one or two bodies of ultra-specific empirical research. This immersion occasionally shifts economists’ policy views in their areas of specialization. Yet the maximum effect is small because the volume of research is so massive that most economists end up with no more than a few narrow topics of expertise. In all other areas, mainstream Ph.D. students graduate with virtually the same policy views they held when they started grad school. Minor tweaks aside, that’s where they stay for the rest of their careers. They transition from conventional teenage leftist intellectuals to slightly contrarian twenty-something leftist intellectuals to slightly-contrarian mature leftist intellectuals. Possibly with truly contrarian economic policy views in a few ultra-specific areas they know best. Otherwise, mainstream economists barely connect their life’s work to economic policy. When policy comes up, most take off their researcher hat, and put on their slightly-contrarian left-wing intellectual hat."

Deflecting a person's political leanings with reason and empiricism is hard.
 
Not necessarily.

"Second, unless they become pure theorists, grad students immerse themselves in one or two bodies of ultra-specific empirical research. This immersion occasionally shifts economists’ policy views in their areas of specialization. Yet the maximum effect is small because the volume of research is so massive that most economists end up with no more than a few narrow topics of expertise. In all other areas, mainstream Ph.D. students graduate with virtually the same policy views they held when they started grad school. Minor tweaks aside, that’s where they stay for the rest of their careers. They transition from conventional teenage leftist intellectuals to slightly contrarian twenty-something leftist intellectuals to slightly-contrarian mature leftist intellectuals. Possibly with truly contrarian economic policy views in a few ultra-specific areas they know best. Otherwise, mainstream economists barely connect their life’s work to economic policy. When policy comes up, most take off their researcher hat, and put on their slightly-contrarian left-wing intellectual hat."

Deflecting a person's political leanings with reason and empiricism is hard.
Sure, and if we were talking about a purely academic ivory tower economist here, that would be much more applicable. Obviously his experiences and roles have gone well beyond that. One cannot meaningfully consider Mark Carney, the PhD in Economics, without considering Mark Carney the senior executive at Goldman Sachs, or Mark Carney the two-time G7 central banker. Any academic leanings or specializations he has are likely to be tempered by rather considerable experience in - and thought put towards - how the economics hit the ground in real life.
 
Sure, and if we were talking about a purely academic ivory tower economist here, that would be much more applicable. Obviously his experiences and roles have gone well beyond that. One cannot meaningfully consider Mark Carney, the PhD in Economics, without considering Mark Carney the senior executive at Goldman Sachs, or Mark Carney the two-time G7 central banker. Any academic leanings or specializations he has are likely to be tempered by rather considerable experience in - and thought put towards - how the economics hit the ground in real life.
If only a tendency to shape new information to fit priors only affected academic economists. I cannot suppose there are no NDP or Democratic voters, let alone progressive-left-leaners in general, in the world of finance, private or government.
 
Hopefully the Logistic Vehicle Modernization program is tripled or quadrupled, because 500 heavy trucks and 1,000 "light" (2 ½ton) trucks isn't even close to enough.
 
Crazy question from your resident crayon eater:

What’s the Golden Dome? Like an Iron Dome? But better and more beautiful?
 
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