Glad to oblige...
'Prepare for war' No. 1 military job, Canadians say
Survey shows Liberals out of step with public on funding, overall goals
Tim Naumetz
The Ottawa Citizen
Monday, October 18, 2004
Nearly 80 per cent of votes cast in a CanWest Global online survey supported preparation for war as the primary role of the Canadian military, with peacekeeping taking a back seat to defending Canada's borders.
Military analysts said the results of the three-week survey suggest successive Liberal governments have been out of step with Canadians' views when it comes to funding and overall aims for the Forces.
Of 10,366 votes received via the Internet, 8,160 said "Prepare for war" should be the military's primary role.
The next most popular choice was defending Canada's borders, with 1,191 votes supporting that option as the primary role for the military. Only 745 votes, or 7.19 per cent, supported peacekeeping as the chief role, while 270 votes were cast for the statement that Canada doesn't need armed forces.
Alain Pellerin, chief spokes-man for the Conference of Defence Associations, said the results indicate the public is more aware than Liberal governments have been for nearly four decades that a nation's defence is the chief reason for having armed forces.
"It really struck me that the population knows something the government doesn't want to accept," said Mr. Pellerin, who followed the vote results as they were being posted on the CanWest Global website. "That is why you have armed forces, you always prepare for the worst-case scenario."
As successive Liberal governments, until recently, continued to reduce and limit funding for the military, they at the same time built the image of the Canadian Forces into one of being primarily peacekeepers, said Mr. Pellerin. He argued this allowed the Liberals to pare spending, especially on high-cost traditional warfare hardware like ships, aircraft, armour and equipment.
Retired colonel and military analyst Brian MacDonald said the poll suggests Canadians are aware, perhaps more so than the government, that the nature of peacekeeping has changed dramatically since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. He cited the heavy armour and combat equipment demands of Afghan-istan as one example.
"The public is aware of the new demands," said Mr. MacDonald. "It is interesting in that there's obviously a clear understanding of the different requirements for classical peacekeeping and the current kind of peacekeeping, which is not classical."
Mr. MacDonald said the relatively high number of votes cast for border defence were likely from people who recognized the need to reinforce U.S. confidence in Canadian border security following the 9/11 attacks.
Military analysts have for several years criticized the federal government for allowing the state of the Canadian Forces to decline to the point where Canada now spends only one per cent of the country's economic output on defence, compared with 3.2 per cent for the U.S. and 1.9 per cent for Australia.
Historian Jack Granatstein, in his latest book, Who Killed the Canadian Military? claims Canada has reached a "new level of irrelevancy in foreign and military affairs" because of its lack of support for the military.
© The Ottawa Citizen 2004
