MILNEWS.ca News Highlights – 14 Apr 12
- Budget 2012 (1) “The federal NDP says the Harper government’s budget cuts will mean poorer services for Canada’s military veterans. Veterans Affairs Canada will lose 800 jobs over the next three years as a result of the Conservatives’ belt-tightening budget, according to a memo obtained by The Canadian Press. The department will see a $36-billion reduction in funding by 2014. Peter Stoffer, the NDP’s veterans affairs critic, said the “reckless” cuts will result in the loss of frontline personnel who work with veterans. “The impact of these cuts on veterans and their families will be huge,” Stoffer said. “You simply cannot maintain the same standard of care or programs and services with fewer and fewer staff.” Veterans Affairs Minister Steven Blaney said it’s too soon to discuss total layoffs in the department. But he said many of the job cuts will be accommodated through retirements or transfers. Also, Blaney denied that veterans face diminished service, saying reduction in the department’s workforce reflects a transition in Veterans Affairs’ goals and activities ….”
- Budget 2012 (2) Border drug- and gun-sniffing poochies to be cut “The Harper government is giving sniffer dogs their walking papers. Nineteen of the 72 dogs used by the Canadian Border Services Agency across the country, which are trained to sniff out guns, cash and drugs, were given their pink slips and will be put up for adoption, Public Safety Minister Vic Toews’ office confirmed Friday. “We expect the CBSA to use the most effective tools for each job. Detector dogs are a great tool in the right circumstances, but they will no longer be used when there is a better tool available. To be clear, all drug detector dogs at land border crossings will remain in place,” Toews’ press secretary Julie Carmichael told the Star. According to reports from across the country, CBSA dog handlers had tears in their eyes when they got the news that their four-legged partners were being shown the door ….”
- Blogger/info curator Mark Collins on Canada’s (and allies’) defence spending
- “Canada joined worldwide condemnation of North Korea’s failed rocket launch on Friday, calling the communist regime’s behavior “reckless and provocative.” “Canada unreservedly condemns North Korea’s rocket launch,” Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird said in a statement. “This type of brazen behavior is entirely reckless and provocative. It ignores not only international will but also the basic needs of the North Korean people,” he said. Such actions, Baird continued, “will only further isolate this rogue regime and keep North Koreans from the better, brighter existence they deserve but are being denied by those in power.” The minister went on to say that Canada remains “gravely concerned” overall about North Korea’s “aggressive activities,” including missile tests and nuclear weapons development ….”
- Canada: BAD Guinea-Bissau coup leaders! “Canadian foreign minister John Baird on Friday joined international condemnations of a military coup in Guinea-Bissau, urging its leaders to leave power and to release the interim president. “Canada condemns the recent military coup in Guinea-Bissau,” Baird said in a statement. “The perpetrators of this coup must immediately withdraw and allow the democratic process to continue.” Guinea-Bissau fell victim to a military coup Thursday that included the arrest of interim president Raimundo Pereira and Prime Minister Carlos Gomes Junior only two weeks before the planned April 28 presidential election. “I am concerned that many senior figures from the government of Guinea-Bissau, including the interim president, have been arrested ….” More from the Foreign Affairs Info-Machine here.
- Way Up North (1) “Defense chiefs from eight Arctic nations agreed on Friday to cooperate more closely to deal with disasters and search and rescue operations in the remote resource-rich region, Canada’s top soldier said. As the Arctic warms up, major nations are jostling for influence in a frozen part of the world believed to contain vast reserves of oil, gas, gold, diamonds, zinc and iron. Canada’s chief of the defense staff told Reuters that the inaugural meeting of top Arctic military officials had vowed to work together in a region where there is little infrastructure and coping with a disaster could be very difficult. “Certainly what we saw was a great sense of a spirit of cooperation amongst everyone,” General Walter Natynczyk said after the conference at a military base at Goose Bay in the Canadian Atlantic province of Newfoundland and Labrador. As well as Canada, the United States and Russia – which account for the vast majority of the Arctic – Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden also attended. Natynczyk said the defense chiefs had agreed to meet once a year from now on. “The climate … is changing and therefore areas that heretofore have been inaccessible really are now open for much longer (in) the year,” Natynczyk said in a phone interview. The eight nations will look for ways to “enable such cooperation operations … (as) search and rescue, or in response to a natural disaster, a man-made crisis like a ship going up on the rocks and those kinds of scenarios,” he said ….” More from the CF Info-machine here and here
- Way Up North (2) Defence Minister announces latest northern exercise “The Honourable Peter MacKay, Minister of National Defence, is pleased to announce Operation Nunalivut 2012, a major sovereignty and security operation that takes place in Canada’s High Arctic until May 1, 2012, in and around Resolute Bay, Nunavut. During Operation Nunalivut 2012, which is Inuktitut for “land that is ours,” the Canadian Forces will face some of the most challenging terrain and weather conditions Canada has to offer ….”
- F-35 Tug o’ War (1) “The federal Liberals and NDP are manoeuvring to reconvene the House of Commons public accounts committee next week to review the auditor general’s scathing report on the government’s handling of the F-35 fighter jet file. The Conservative government says it has nothing to hide and welcomes a review of the auditor’s report on the multibillion-dollar stealth fighter program. Liberal MP Gerry Byrne and three New Democrat MPs are submitting a special request to the public accounts committee clerk asking all members of Parliament on the committee convene to discuss Auditor General Michael Ferguson’s damning report on the government’s F-35 procurement process and to call senior officials to appear before the panel. With Parliament currently on the first week of a two-week break, at least four MPs on the Conservative-dominated committee must submit letters asking for the committee to reconvene. The Liberals have filed their letter and the NDP said Friday that three of its MPs will do the same, meaning the public accounts committee could be recalled by early next week (the committee must meet within five days of notice being provided) ….”
- F-35 Tug o’ War (2) Macleans thinks unmanned planes can replace fighters? “…. The development of unmanned, remote-controlled aerial drones is rapidly eroding the rationale for the F-35 in a similar way. More broadly, the existing American system of military procurement is beginning to look hopelessly slow and cumbersome in a period of fast, decentralized technological progress. Our military leaders and bureaucrats, influenced by hungry contractors and by notions of continental amity, married into that system early. They are, quite naturally, still offering the last spasms of a defence of that decision. But, as the Conservatives are quick to point out, we haven’t bought any planes yet. We are still free to treat sunk costs as sunk costs, and to impose proper public-sector purchasing practices on a military-industrial field that has too long considered itself exempt from them.”
- Afghanistan Want to learn more about graphics painted on the front of CF Griffon helicopters? Check this out. A warning: I was only able to find one photo (shame)
- Defence Minister to announce search and rescue stuff at CFB Halifax tomorrow
- What’s Canada Buying? STILL looking for a boat to play “bad guy” for EX Frontier Sentinel 12 and someone to do some test well drilling in Wainwright
- More on JTF-2′s quest for a new training area near CFB Trenton “For six years now, Frank Meyers has been doing his best to ignore the elephant on his farm. Ask him about it—the fact that the federal government wants to kick him off his beloved land in order to build a new headquarters for the military’s elite special forces squad—and the 84-year-old brushes it all aside, like the dirt on his pants. Meyers, a dairy farmer for seven decades, is dealing with his bad luck the only way he knows how: with pride, toughness and a bit of humour. “What are they going to do?” he asks. “Bring a task force in to take me out? They might have to.” ….”
- Radio host on Vimy: “…. why, 95 years later, do we venerate Vimy? Perhaps because it’s far easier to stir emotions where military matters are concerned. You can’t erect a heroic statue to the civility for which Canada is renowned. Social justice has never been able to muster an inspiring flypast. The national understanding that in Canada we look after each other doesn’t have a solemn bugle call to draw a tear. In place of the notion that our national identity might rise from something as unremarkable as compassion, hard work and character, we prefer to imbue the solitary terror of a prairie farm boy calling for his mother as he bleeds out into the soil of a French field with a purpose and nobility it does not deserve.”
