The latest attempt by NATO to persuade Canadians to contribute our fair share of the cost of the alliance gives us an objective peek at how the rest of the world views Canada.
The Price of Freedom
Our biggest contribution to the international situation is a charismatic Prime Minister who looks more and more like a glad-handing junior politician trying to increase his reputation by being in the right place at the right time and saying the right things. Meanwhile, we are the only member of NATO that doesn’t at least have a plan to solve the problem.
It seems convenient that the Canadian government has been unable (under both Conservative and Liberal governments) to buy the several billion dollars’ worth of new jets needed to keep our air force up to modern standards. With total military spending around $30 billion a year, the purchase of $20 billion worth of jets ought to improve our Defense-to-GDP ratio immensely. Besides supporting NATO, which is a solution to a long-distance problem, we need to increase our Arctic sovereignty. Russia is our neighbor to the north, we must remember. Who do you think Putin will be looking to next?
The Price of Our Habitat.
We have a major political party with no clue or motivation to solve our carbon emissions, instead mouthing the Big Oil mantra that all is well. I’m in Calgary at the moment. Business is booming. The housing market is hot. Construction is up. They have no forests nearby to burn. All they have is plenty of oil money. A five-letter word that starts with “G” and ends with “d” comes to mind.
The Price of Social Services
We complain about the waiting lines for medical and psychiatric patients, but heaven help any government that would dare to raise taxes.
The Rest of the World.
Meanwhile, the forces of authoritarianism are waging war against the Ukrainians, the Palestinians, and the people of several drought-stricken African countries.
The Bottom Line
Willful blindness to the truth is the most destructive of all human traits, and Canadians as a country are like the entitled rich kids everybody always complains about. We need to start paying our way like everyone else does, or we’re going to lose our freedom, our democracy, and our environment. This is not a partisan argument. We need to increase both military and social spending, or we’ll pay a larger price in the long run.