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I'm glad to see more of you are discovering the joys of writing letters to the editor.
Perhaps the silent majority amongst the Canadian public will take notice ... ?
Sub tragedy may end public apathy
Jonathan Vance
Ottawa Citizen Special, Monday, October 11, 2004
There's something about the loss of life in a submarine disaster that grips the public's attention. Not that one way of dying while wearing the Canadian uniform is more tragic than another. We also grieve deeply when one of our own is lost in the crash of a Sea King helicopter, but the Sea Kings are now so accident-prone that we've become jaded about such incidents. We mourned when three Canadian soldiers were killed in Afghanistan in two separate incidents, both involving the Iltis, a vehicle that soldiers will say (in more colourful language) was unsuited to the task or the environment.
But these incidents don't capture the imagination like a submarine tragedy. Perhaps it is a legacy of the loss of the Russian submarine Kursk in August 2000, a story filled with pathos: Some crew members survived the initial blasts only to die of asphyxiation, but not before leaving notes to be found by salvage crews and later played out on our television screens.
Perhaps we've seen so many submarine movies, from Das Boot to U-571, that we now experience a slight twinge of claustrophobia, almost as a reflex, when the very word "submarine" is mentioned. Perhaps it's just that the thought of being sealed in a steel tube hundreds of feet beneath the sea seems so foreign that we can't help but be riveted when something goes wrong in that environment. For these reasons, the calamity that befell HMCS Chicoutimi off the coast of Scotland last week may prove to be the last straw as far as public opinion regarding defence spending goes.
For years, critics have charged that successive federal governments have run our armed forces on the cheap. Our men and women in uniform were stuck with decades-old equipment while politicians dithered over what should be purchased from whom. Defence procurement matters were overtaken by partisan politics, a game in which the only real loser is the Canadian soldier. And, as critics argue in the case of the submarines, the government bought used equipment for the sole reason that the price was right; serious mechanical flaws were overlooked with the same wilful blindness with which we ignore irreparable engine damage when buying that vintage sports car we've always wanted.
It will take years before anyone can say definitively if Canada got a good deal when it purchased the used Victoria-class submarines, or whether the federal government erred badly in shelling out $750 million for four vessels that should never have been brought out of mothballs.
But as any government knows, that verdict might not really matter. What matters is how things look, not how things are. And this latest in a string of teething troubles for our new old submarines looks bad. The government will defend the boats to the end, and our senior military officials will fight for space on the nation's airwaves to assure Canadians that the purchase was prudent. But it doesn't help when a respected British defence analyst points out on national television that the Chicoutimi had a reputation as a cursed vessel in the days when it was known as HMS Upholder.
No one for an instant imagines that the Canadian voter will wake up one day, think about the Chicoutimi accident, and suddenly decide that buying better equipment for the Canadian Forces is more important than boosting health-care spending. But perhaps the death of Lieut. Chris Saunders while being airlifted from the unforgiving seas off Scotland will finally awaken Canadians to what ails our military.
Not long ago, I took my children to a fall fair where they insisted on trying one particularly perilous-looking ride. It seemed pretty clapped out to me: dents here and there, an alarming number of broken bolts lying on the ground beneath it, and it swayed too much for my liking. I made myself very unpopular by ushering them to the pony ride instead.
Maybe there's a lesson there for government and taxpayer alike. If we're not willing to start equipping our forces properly to represent us in the international arena, it won't be long before Canada is stuck on the pony ride too.
[Jonathan F. Vance is Canada Research Chair in Conflict and Culture at The University of Western Ontario in London, Ont. His books include "A Gallant Company: The Men of the Great Escape" and "Death So Noble: Memory, Meaning and the First World War", which won the 1997 Charles P. Stacey Prize for Best Book on Canadian Military History, the 1997 Sir John A. Macdonald Prize for Best Book on Canadian History, the 1997 J.W. Dafoe Foundation Book Prize and was shortlisted for the 1997 Lionel Gelber Prize.]
Perhaps the silent majority amongst the Canadian public will take notice ... ?
Sub tragedy may end public apathy
Jonathan Vance
Ottawa Citizen Special, Monday, October 11, 2004
There's something about the loss of life in a submarine disaster that grips the public's attention. Not that one way of dying while wearing the Canadian uniform is more tragic than another. We also grieve deeply when one of our own is lost in the crash of a Sea King helicopter, but the Sea Kings are now so accident-prone that we've become jaded about such incidents. We mourned when three Canadian soldiers were killed in Afghanistan in two separate incidents, both involving the Iltis, a vehicle that soldiers will say (in more colourful language) was unsuited to the task or the environment.
But these incidents don't capture the imagination like a submarine tragedy. Perhaps it is a legacy of the loss of the Russian submarine Kursk in August 2000, a story filled with pathos: Some crew members survived the initial blasts only to die of asphyxiation, but not before leaving notes to be found by salvage crews and later played out on our television screens.
Perhaps we've seen so many submarine movies, from Das Boot to U-571, that we now experience a slight twinge of claustrophobia, almost as a reflex, when the very word "submarine" is mentioned. Perhaps it's just that the thought of being sealed in a steel tube hundreds of feet beneath the sea seems so foreign that we can't help but be riveted when something goes wrong in that environment. For these reasons, the calamity that befell HMCS Chicoutimi off the coast of Scotland last week may prove to be the last straw as far as public opinion regarding defence spending goes.
For years, critics have charged that successive federal governments have run our armed forces on the cheap. Our men and women in uniform were stuck with decades-old equipment while politicians dithered over what should be purchased from whom. Defence procurement matters were overtaken by partisan politics, a game in which the only real loser is the Canadian soldier. And, as critics argue in the case of the submarines, the government bought used equipment for the sole reason that the price was right; serious mechanical flaws were overlooked with the same wilful blindness with which we ignore irreparable engine damage when buying that vintage sports car we've always wanted.
It will take years before anyone can say definitively if Canada got a good deal when it purchased the used Victoria-class submarines, or whether the federal government erred badly in shelling out $750 million for four vessels that should never have been brought out of mothballs.
But as any government knows, that verdict might not really matter. What matters is how things look, not how things are. And this latest in a string of teething troubles for our new old submarines looks bad. The government will defend the boats to the end, and our senior military officials will fight for space on the nation's airwaves to assure Canadians that the purchase was prudent. But it doesn't help when a respected British defence analyst points out on national television that the Chicoutimi had a reputation as a cursed vessel in the days when it was known as HMS Upholder.
No one for an instant imagines that the Canadian voter will wake up one day, think about the Chicoutimi accident, and suddenly decide that buying better equipment for the Canadian Forces is more important than boosting health-care spending. But perhaps the death of Lieut. Chris Saunders while being airlifted from the unforgiving seas off Scotland will finally awaken Canadians to what ails our military.
Not long ago, I took my children to a fall fair where they insisted on trying one particularly perilous-looking ride. It seemed pretty clapped out to me: dents here and there, an alarming number of broken bolts lying on the ground beneath it, and it swayed too much for my liking. I made myself very unpopular by ushering them to the pony ride instead.
Maybe there's a lesson there for government and taxpayer alike. If we're not willing to start equipping our forces properly to represent us in the international arena, it won't be long before Canada is stuck on the pony ride too.
[Jonathan F. Vance is Canada Research Chair in Conflict and Culture at The University of Western Ontario in London, Ont. His books include "A Gallant Company: The Men of the Great Escape" and "Death So Noble: Memory, Meaning and the First World War", which won the 1997 Charles P. Stacey Prize for Best Book on Canadian Military History, the 1997 Sir John A. Macdonald Prize for Best Book on Canadian History, the 1997 J.W. Dafoe Foundation Book Prize and was shortlisted for the 1997 Lionel Gelber Prize.]
