> The Canadian Forces is counting on public servants to volunteer for military service as it tries to ramp up an army of 300,000 as part of a mobilization plan, according to a defence department directive.
24 000 reserves out of a population of 40 million seems like a rather small number.
Norway has 40 000 in the Home Guard (Heimevernet) rapid reaction force of volunteer part time soldiers and a further 20 000 reserves. All from a population of about 5.5 million.
The difference here is presumably for the last hundred years, ending last November, there was simply no chance of a invasion of Canada. Nukes might fly overhead and end the world as they struck targets on either side, but other than that we were safe and any significant military action we took part in would be overseas and thus not justify calling up a huge number of reservists.
Meanwhile Norway was occupied in WWII, and after that spent the next decades next to the Soviet Union, and then Russia. There's clearly been a long standing risk of actual invasion.
Except that there are several invasion risks, especially in the north. Canada maintains bases there (Alert) to protect its north from being taken by the likes of Russia, the USA and even Denmark (they have a longrunning dispute regarding an island near greenland). Canada also does not want the northwest passage to become an international waterway and so must maintain control over vessels in the north.
>> The Canadian government issued a declaration in 1986 reaffirming Canadian rights to the waters. The United States refused to recognize the Canadian claim. In 1988 the governments of Canada and the United States signed an agreement, "Arctic Cooperation," that resolved the practical issue without solving the sovereignty questions. Under the law of the sea, ships engaged in transit passage are not permitted to engage in research. The agreement states that all U.S. Coast Guard and Navy vessels are engaged in research, and so would require permission from the Government of Canada to pass through
"ending last November" - Is the implication that a Trump presidency implies a risk of invasion from the South?
Canada has relied greatly on the United States providing a blanket defense guarantee of the continent. The Canadian military is currently operationally worthless across the board, save the cyber domain. There are many reasons for it that I'm not here to list out. However, that does come with grave consequences geopolitically and the Canadian government has been living in the 1900s.
The USA, via Alaska, provides Canada against Russian provocation on the West Coast[0]. This is similar to the near constant probing of NATO states airspace, especially countries near Ukraine [1][2]
The Canadian Navy is severely underfunded (along with the rest of the Canadian Armed forces)[3] with not enough ships to actively patrol and protect it's waters, especially in the North.
The North passages are incredibly important, and will become more important as trade routes. The entirety of the US wanting to buy Greenland is as a part of having an Atlantic outpost to control those shipping lanes. Those trade lanes can be significantly shorter than routes using Suez or Panama canals.
In addition to the trade routes, the US fears a Russian and Chinese alliance because of the access that grants to the North Atlantic. Point blank: Nato cannot build ships anymore, and the PLAN capacity is staggering. This is already independent of CN and RU intelligence probing of the entirety of the west coast.
The world has changed dramatically, and the only thing that really changed in November is that the USA is no longer pretending it can defend the mainland, defend NATO countries, and police shipping lanes on their own. The USA doesn't have the capacity to replace ships, nor do they have the knowledge anymore to do so.
> The difference here is presumably for the last hundred years, ending last November, there was simply no chance of a invasion of Canada.
The chance of Canada being invaded didn't change at all in November. The amount of hyperbole about Trump has been utterly astounding, and fears of an Canadian invasion are an instance of that.
And my sense is that actually a fair amount of the bad stuff Trump has done (though definitely not all) is a direct result of the overreactions to him [1], so it's probably best not to overreact.
[1] E.g. Democrats fear and loathe him, so they pursued all kinds of legal actions against him while he was out of office to damage and destroy him. They failed, he got re-elected, and now only in his second term, he's corrupted the Justice Department into a club to attack those very same people.
Hilariously wrong take - first, Canada does not have a chance if the US wanted to take it. Second, the US does not want to own Canada for a bunch of reasons, starting with the demographic and economic mess that Canada finds itself in.
How well would 24000 reserves fare against a smaller but well trained group of regular military units? Aren't they pretty much canon fodder?
I guess it depends on the opposition. The counter is look at the quagmire the US military found itself against insurgent opposition because they were not willing to use the same plays as Russia leveling cities. Israel leveled Gaza with the same mentality.
When Russia invaded Ukraine, thousands of rifles were handed out in Kyiv. Why?
In a straight up fight the reserves have no chance, but they also have the choice to fight differently. In Ukraine, the Territorial Defence forces have absolutely put in work against regular Russian units. Reserve units can be very useful under the right circumstances.
How much useful combat skills can be taught in only a week? It seems like an extremely low estimate on the training needed to play a useful role in the military.
>Ukraine's paratroopers were ordered to withdraw from the city, leaving the city's defense to a few thousand local volunteers armed with rifles, limited anti-tank weapons and no armed vehicles or heavy weaponry.
i don't think they're really expecting people to serve a useful role in the military. it's a "supplemental reserve", meaning a level below ordinary reservists.
it sounds like basically if the country was ever in a situation dire enough that they were calling on ordinary citizens to help with defense, an ordinary citizen with a week's training would be better than one with no training.
or more cynically: it's a way to make a whole bunch of voters feel like they're involved in the military, to make military spending more palatable to voters.
Maybe I wouldn't be very useful in combat but maybe I can peel potatoes or mop the floors in case of an invasion. I am thinking it frees up someone who is "combat ready" from kitchen or janitor duty. It helps, right?
It's not even that. It's literally the equivalent of an assessment center. The military is basically looking for promising recruits ahead of time. It's not about having a week's worth of training. It's about knowing who did well or not.
One week a year might add up after a while. At least you might be able to reduce the time spent in training should an urgent (but not immediate) need arise. Maybe a few years of this and you can manage basic training in six weeks instead of the usual nine. It should help build training capacity. It would likely help a bit with human resource management should the need arise: having notes on who can handle a rifle, who can handle a truck, and who can handle a drone, etc might help match people with training for what's needed.
A week is gonna be mostly "here's how to function in our organization, this is our trade specific vocabulary, here's a rifle and how you use it"
You use your D-grade troops like that for behind the lines security. You use them to check papers at checkpoints, round up dissidents, keep people from taking pot shots at your supply lines, etc, etc, the kind of stuff you don't need expensive professional infantry[1] or even beat cops[2] for.
[1] Who's expensive infantry skills are unessary overkill
[2] Who can play checkpoint thug at the right level, but who have a bunch of needless expensive training put into them regarding laws, evidince, how to conduct a traffic stop, etc, etc, that is unnecessary.
shooting a rifle is "easy" to learn. That's why long guns are used. Hold+brace, point, aim reticle/scope, squeeze.
handguns are harder, since you can't brace the stock against your shoulder, but need to learn how to brace with your wrists and arms.
anti-tank weapons a bit harder still, since you need to maneuver properly and have multiple shooters at the same target. Also, I laugh/smirk everytime I see a movie where someone uses a LAW indoors or in an enclosed space/with someone standing behind.
(I'm ignoring grenades; suffice to say it's not as easy to pull the pin with your teeth as you think)
I think the hard part isn't the shooting, but the tactical movement side; L shape ambush or fire formation when under fire, or presence of mind to seek to leapfrog or flank, ability to communicate under pressure instead of just hunkering down or screaming your head off. It gets complicated very fast since there are vastly different tactics used in forest/vegetation versus urban warfare, and choosing the wrong tactic will get you shot fast (think chess openings; choose the wrong one and unless you are an expert - which you will not be with 1 week of training, you will get mated fast).
>How much useful combat skills can be taught in only a week?
You'd be surprised how even a small amount of training can make you deadly with a rifle. Combine that with actually having thrown a grenade, been given training in laying of mines etc.
Also, a huge chunk of "the military" is logistics -- the measure of a soldier is not always whether they can snipe someone from afar.
It is relative, depends on the "type of warfare" being fought, and the countries/economies involved.
In a high-tech modern warfare, the countries with a fighting force that has higher academic education, higher tech literacy are relatively quick to mobilize and become effective militarily.
Useful for what role? It’s not obvious if someone has near significant or near zero training when they are acting as a stationary guard at a checkpoint etc. Which enables trained troops to preform more useful roles.
They are significantly less likely to do the correct thing if attacked, but a war isn’t going to just be over in 24 hours either so they can be trained up on the job.
Every combat soldier requires like 10 support soldiers doing things like logistics. Millions of people during WW2 did nothing but drive trucks.
A lot of military burst capacity is about freeing up soldiers who went through all the training and basic and specialization, but are stuck driving that truck.
The guys and gals who fire bullets are just the sharp point of the spear and all that.
It's also why Russia ballooned their "National Guard" forces even though they cannot be deployed outside Russia; They free up soldiers who can.
One of the most important things for a government in an actual "Oh shit real war" situation that requires significant mobilization is a simple census of "Who has the capability to do what menial job?"
Light infantry on domestic terrain doesn't need anything like those sorts of ratios. Chechen militia in the first Chechen war defeated the Russians well enough to win independence without any sort of logistics ratio like that on the military side, as did the YPG light infantry that defeated ISIS and held off the Syrian military well enough that they basically truced or better.
Higher ratios might be needed to project power to outside borders, but for defense within the territory they can be combat effective against many possible forces with small ratios of military side logistics.
That's not how it works in any NATO military. Truck drivers and other logistics troops generally never went through any sort of advanced combat training. They can be retrained for another MOS with sufficient time but not quickly enough for any sort of crisis. And in volunteer forces, the troops driving trucks are generally doing that because they specifically enlisted to do that job.
Even having up-to-date contact info, age, health records available for a population you know is physically able to serve is a big first step. Lot of logistics, most western countries don't want a draft that pulls randos off the street and shoves them in a van.
Seems like a generally good idea for creating a large reserve force. It definitely beats general conscription.
I don't see why Canada in particular needs such a large reserve force. This would jump Canada from number 127 to number 52 in terms of percentage of population in reserves, and bump it up to 17th in terms of absolute reserves size. For a nation with basically zero chance of invasion of its home soil and an extremely low risk of internal conflict, it's hard to imagine a scenario where anywhere near this many reservists would be required.
>For a nation with basically zero chance of invasion of its home soil and an extremely low risk of internal conflict
Clearly the Canadian government doesn't feel the same way. If they tried to conscript they'd quickly find themselves in a civil war (for the same reasons the US would), and one the Canadian capital clearly doesn't believe it'd win given how well it fared defending itself in 2022.
Of course, bureaucrats aren't exactly known for their fighting prowess either. This is mostly a statement that "Toronto/Ottawa doesn't need the rest of the country, it can see to its own defense", and to try and retain/engage the Elbows Up crowd (which, being the only reason the sitting government is in power, is completely understandable).
They are likely being pressured to meet minimum obligations as part of NATO membership. Canada's military realistically isn't going to be called on for defense of the homeland but as part of a support force for NATO.
The new NATO funding requirements are so suddenly incredibly high that the government will probably have trouble actually finding the money to spend something on. So things like this are yeah probably a bit of a money sink to meet obligations.
The US has been consistently signalling that it is considering annexing us since Donald Trump was re-elected in November of last year... the politicians are unlikely to say it outright but I think this is pretty clearly aimed at the US and making it too costly to do so.
The US invading Canada isn't a realistic possibility. Any attempt to do so would trigger a civil war within the US, to say nothing of obliterating the geopolitical system. Attempting to annex in any way shape or form is currently nothing more than the musings of an old man, the only way any territorial changes could happen are through peaceful, mutually agreed upon transfer.
If the US were to seriously entertain the notion of invading its neighbor, 300,000 poorly trained reservists aren't going to seriously change the calculus. Canada is strong per capita but it has a fraction of the absolute population, military strength, and economy of the US. Nearly all of its major population centers are within extremely close proximity with the US border. It's military and economy are both heavily intertwined with the US, regardless of what rhetoric is being thrown around. A reserve force is for freeing up the active military to be used most effectively, defending key chokepoints, launching offensives, and operating complicated equipment, with the reservists doing things like preparing defensive lines, manning low risk areas, and supporting logistics. In a war between the US and Canada, the US would be able to launch large assaults with professional soldiers in multiple places with no natural obstacles over the short distance between their origin and objectives. There would be little for reservists to do to help - there would be no low risk areas to man, no defenses to prepare, very little in the ways of logistics to be concerned with. If Canada had serious concerns about the US invading, its money would be better spent on disentangling its armed forces from the US, acquiring counters to US systems, and establishing defensible positions between its border and major population centers.
> the politicians are unlikely to say it outright but I think this is pretty clearly aimed at the US and making it too costly to do so.
lol this makes zero impact on that. The Canadian government doesn't even think it's own solder would fight the USA or sadly even run an insurgency. It's the consequence of trying to minimize nationalism and being cultural dominated by the USA for decades.
This is likely an attempt to appease Trump on one of the many silly demands he's making in the silly tariff negotiations, this one being increased military funding. Gotta find something to spend money on.
* The article speaks of this personnel like reservists, but could the training also apply to helping defend public infrastructure and institutions, where they work? (For example, if there ever be a need to quickly hand out firearms on-site, or if ever there was a need for random people to know how to observe and report threats?)
* Could this training be practice, before mass military training of most adult citizens?
> The article speaks of this personnel like reservists, but could the training also apply to helping defend public infrastructure and institutions, where they work? (For example, if there ever be a need to quickly hand out firearms on-site, or if ever there was a need for random people to know how to observe and report threats?)
Can't quite imagine the threat that would cause a need for this in Canada, but sure. Edit: I guess in the north the training would be useful for polar bear defence...
> Could this training be practice, before mass military training of most adult citizens?
Probably not politically viable unless we were invaded (and border conflicts in unpopulated areas don't count). Not logistically viable after the US invades us, and they are the only contender.
Maybe you could manage to make a volunteer based reserve program attractive enough to get a significant fraction of adult citizens? If you could that might be politically viable. I doubt the current government is anywhere near ambitious enough to try.
im of two minds, where on the one hand having some basic physical competence and responsibility can only improve civil servants, but on the other, the civil service is now stacked with radical partisans, and arming them and organizing them as paramilitaries is going to go exactly how you'd expect.
Odd how this is on front page of HN but buried way down my feed on (Canadian) Google News and doesn't seem to be front-page news?
Do you have to be a public servant or retired Canadian Forces, or do they take portly middle-aged out of shape software engineers, too? Asking for a friend.
Haven't shot a gun since Bible Camp when I was 12. Could be fun.
> Federal and provincial employees would be given a one-week training course in how to handle firearms, drive trucks and fly drones
What is the use of these "professionals"?
I know russians send these substandard soldiers to meat grinder ("infiltration in small groups" tactics). If they're killed with ukrainian FPV drone, it's fine, at least AFU spent a drone. Is it what Canadians are planning to do?
Canada has been running about 1% of gdp military spending, despite obligation of 2%; with new promise to meet 5%. a 500% increase to the size of our military in short order is the promise.
Our reserves are at about 40,000. They announced the plan to go to 400,000. 10x the size. It's not so much about any outside fears, it's just meeting our obligations.The fear about Russia or China is unfounded. The problem is that the USA our greatest ally isn't letting us use them as a shield.
>Federal and provincial employees would be given a one-week training course in how to handle firearms, drive trucks and fly drones, according to the directive, signed by Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Jennie Carignan
There's only about 300,000 federal employees. Greater on the provincial sides, but Canada isn't that big. Conscription will be necessary to fulfill these numbers
>The public servants would be inducted into the Supplementary Reserve, which is currently made up of inactive or retired members of the Canadian Forces who are willing to return to duty if called.
It says voluntary, but given the very significant % who need to join and be subject to immediate activation. I dont expect many to volunteer. Reserves at least pays you to have this cost. Conscription will be necessary. They are forcing those government employees ultimately.
That dismisses the greatest security threats of the era with a word. Most people in that field think those threats are very well-founded. Should Canada take the risk that everything will be fine?
I don't know much about Canada's current plans and how effective they would be.
Canada right now is trying to figure out if the greatest their to their security is China or the USA. They can tie their boat to either against the other, but they can't be allies with both.
Russia is weak, they cant even take ukraine. To think they'd have a shadow of a chance against NATO is a joke.
China is strong, their standing army is probably 300 million and if they invaded canada. Our <100,000 CAF will be goners. Since they havent done it, they either dont want to or there's something external to canada protecting it. Either case, an unfounded threat.
>I don't know much about Canada's current plans and how effective they would be.
Ya that original comment about russia/china wasnt a significant part of my post anyway.
The only reason you can claim russia is not threat to you is their utter corrupted incompetence which had them losing cold war. In their mindset, every single one of you here living in free democratic country, doing and thinking whatever you like are a direct threat to their dictatorship and way of existence. Canada has no reason to not be another russian gubernia, they can come up with some made up claim like they would need one.
One would laugh at all this and ignore them if they didn't have enough functional nukes to cover entire civilization few times over.
Now I am not claiming the above about every russian person, nor attacking their culture or history. Actually history yes, a bit, its pretty sad and explains why they are as they are. They consistently end up with ruling elite who thinks above, maybe apart from Gorbachev (who is despised back home). Don't ever make a mistake of underestimating how fucked up russia as a country is. I keep repeating the same for past 2 decades (as someone coming from country practically enslaved for 4 decades by them) with people mostly laughing it off, apart from last 3 years.
>The problem is that the USA our greatest ally isn't letting us use them as a shield.
I personally think that Canada can be our (US) greatest ally, but this is only true in the hard-power sense of the word if Canada does actually meet its defense obligations.
Canada has a huge coastline, directly adjacent to our most significant threats (China & Russia), yet doesn't have a navy to speak of.
We need Canada to step up to its own defense so we can keep being equal allies, otherwise Canada is a de facto protectorate and should pay for that privilege.
Just in case people miss the core message: This is something you do if you have a credible risk assessment that you think a big conflict is a possibility within the next decade or so.
And, as much as I'd like to focus on deteriorating Canada/US relations, it's likely a dual purpose. The Ukraine/Russia/NATO situation would be the second factor. OK, a triad, China/US is also on the radar. Whatever the weighting, it's pushed Canada to work on a mobilization framework, because the combined risk is high enough.
Which means "oh shit" feelings are entirely appropriate, panic isn't.
Any rational assessment of Canada's military capabilities, its funding capabilities, and population will lead to a determination that they're not in any sort of position to have any sort of meaningful defense or offense without the US running point.
For that to change would require generational shifts in culture and revenue generation and so on. If the US chooses not to defend them, they're exposing themselves to unacceptable risk. If the US chooses to defend, Canada isn't contributing within the same order of magnitude. If the US chose to attack, then more has gone wrong in the world than you could possibly cope with, having a few thousand more tanks, ships, and helicopters isn't going to save the day. It'd take decades to build up population, R&D infrastructure, resources, and so on, and there'd likely be a lot of pressure to not do those things and use the US military industrial complex instead.
Not saying this is good for Canada, btw, just that the reality is they've kinda coasted on US coattails for decades now, and for better or worse, they're stuck. Which should in turn beg the question - if there's no practical or pragmatic point in spending a bunch of money on military preparedness and expansion, then why's that money being spent, and who's getting paid? Why are bureaucrats being militarized, instead of a discrete, well regulated military being created to meet whatever the need was?
If they arm and empower a significant local population, they do have a credible defense, because the vast majority of leaders in the world knows fighting a decently armed insurgency is extremely costly. They watched the US itself, a military that dwarfs the entire rest of the world's militaries, do it multiple times, along with Russia and a few other countries. The "cheapest" way to win against an insurgency is to literally blow the entire country up until nothing is standing à la North Korea, but that also destroys 95% of the value of taking a country which defeats the entire point of taking it.
The bureaucrats are being militarized out of desperation.
The political faction all bureaucrats in the nation belong to can't find enough soldiers. This is because they treat those soldiers with contempt- no young man wants to die for Ottawa. Plus, the volunteer soldiers that come back from Ukraine are not going to be on Ottawa's side if domestic instability ramped up, but will be familiar with the tools of modern warfare.
Ottawa is currently (and perhaps rightfully) paranoid of a domestic uprising just as much as it is of the US invading. The US is strategically wrecking the economy of Canadian citizens only a few hours away and if those citizens violently insist on suing for peace Ottawa might lose its power forever.
So, you do the next best thing- you take the faction with the political power in Canada (in this case, Ottawa bureaucrats) and tell them that if they want to keep their privileges, they must join the reserve.
The fact that if any nation decided to actually attack they'd instantly flee (bureaucrats are not known for their courage under fire; that's why they're bureaucrats!) is a problem for future them. What matters is that, to fuel the jingoism fire long enough to keep the bureaucrat faction in power, they need to be seen to be doing something, and this is that something.
Most people haven't noticed until recently but many countries around the world have been dramatically increasing their defense spending for several years now, pre-dating and somewhat independent of the Ukraine situation. Most of it is targeted for operational capability by the end of this decade. Interpret that how you will.
As an eye-popping number that illustrates this, just the backlog of new foreign weapon sales awaiting approvals in the US is almost $1T on its own. Countries are spending tremendous amounts of money on advanced weapons right now.
I think it's just they sense that US is no longer willing to be the world police (with its good and bad), so they better either prepare themselves for defence or prepare themselves for offence to grab some lands they have been drooling over for a while.
Sign of the times, Canada is so afraid of the instability of America that they're low-key drafting public servants on a voluntary basis for now into the military.
Canadians are our closest brothers and sisters and it's just a historical quirk that we're separate countries at all.
I resent the implication that us being separate countries is a "historical quirk." It's condescending at best and exemplifies why we feel increasingly distant from the US.
It's like saying that Belgium and the Netherlands, or Spain and Portugal, or Germany and Switzerland are one historical quirk away from being the same countries.
> It's like saying that Belgium and the Netherlands, or Spain and Portugal, or Germany and Switzerland are one historical quirk away from being the same countries.
I think you could say this about any of those countries, although Switzerland's mountainous location means that it would always resist being part of a larger polity.
You are the one making the assumption that I meant Canada should be controlled by the US when I meant and wrote no such thing.
And Europe _absolutely_ should unite under a single government instead of this pseudo national semi-single-currency/market with a vague poorly representative European government designed mostly just to dance around the fact that these small states are stuck on archaic nationalist ideas and can't get along with a unified purpose. The world needs the strength a unified Europe could provide to counteract Russian aggression, the growth of Chinese power, and the crumbling cornerstone of world order the US is going through.
I've heard the same rhetoric (we're brothers, all will be fine) from many russians days before 2022 star of proper war in Ukraine. This feeling sadly means nothing in large enough scale.
I mean, it's entirely possible that a historic quirk 300+ years ago leads to an increasingly distant relationship today.
It's definitely possible to intepret this the way Russia speaks about Ukraine - "They shouldn't even be a country *except for a historical quirk", but a charitable interpretation would be more along the lines of "things could have gone slightly differently and we'd be countrymen, but instead we brothers from a different mother (country)".
> I resent the implication that us being separate countries is a "historical quirk." It's condescending at best and exemplifies why we feel increasingly distant from the US.
I mean that's a bit of an exaggeration. Canadians are basically Americans for all practical purpose to the degree you can barely tell them apart. It doesn't help that Canada has lacked any real national identity other then listing the few minor differences between it and the USA for decades.
>It's condescending at best and exemplifies why we feel increasingly distant from the US.
As a Canadian, why would it be condescending to suggest that at some point in the distant past, Canada and the U.S. could have been a single country had history played out slightly differently? There is nothing offensive about it, if anything the fact that it's a claim about a historical matter only highlights how the two countries have evolved separately and independently.
Furthermore your other points are kind of bizzare. Spain and Portugal could absolutely have been a single country, and in fact they were under the Iberian Union. There are numerous other instances where the two countries came close to unifying.
The historical possibility of a unified Belgium and the Netherlands is even stronger since those two countries had been unified twice.
Germany and Switzerland however is a long shot, but at any rate I don't think anyone from Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain or Portugal would take offense or find it condescending that some historical event could have gone differently and reshaped all of Europe... taking offense to that suggestion as a Canadian, even during these times seems overly insecure and I don't think it's a sentiment shared by most of us.
Yeah, it's not a historical quirk, really. In talking to many Americans it seems like they don't really cover loyalists at all, or what happened after the Revolutionary War. Much of what became Canada was settled by former colonists from the what became the United States who remained loyal to the crown. My hometown was founded by loyalists from New York -- including the mayor of New York City -- after the Revolutionary War.
Essentially we are even closer than many people think in terms of history, but Canadian identity was seeded from the beginning with the idea of rejecting being "American". We are indeed your closest brothers and sisters because of history, but it's no quirk at all that we're separate -- it's the entire reason we stayed separate at all.
You can also see the reverse play out -- what would become Alberta was settled by large numbers of American colonists moving to Canada, and to this day you can see the cultural impact of that in the politics and world view from the region.
The same is true of Canada, but to a far greater extent since Toronto/Ottawa/Montreal have a permanent veto on whatever the rest of the country wants. The US political system, for all its other faults, has successfully avoided this problem.
It is not a surprise that region can't find anyone else (in the rest of the economic zone over which it claims dominion) willing to die for its interests, especially when their interests have been revealed to be nothing but "loot the rest of the nation".
The most damning thing about this is the Canadian gov would struggle to find 300k people in the rest of the population that it would trust with skilling up in those ways. Federal public servants will be the last bastion of the values they try to force on everyone else.
It is in the process of spending vast amounts of money to remove guns from legal gun owners that are subject to absolutely amazing amounts of oversight already.
I don't think this is true. It's just much easier to bring in people when you have access to them to ask directly, basically.
In my short experience in public service, I met a great number of people who were not in lockstep with the so-called "values they try to force" (i.e. the political plans of the current government), so it seems they're not doing a great job of "forcing" those values if that's the plan.
This isn't using government employees for non-combat tasks to free up troops. It's more like the WWII Home Guard in the UK.
"Federal and provincial employees would be given a one-week training course in how to handle firearms, drive trucks and fly drones...The public servants would be inducted into the Supplementary Reserve, which is currently made up of inactive or retired members of the Canadian Forces who are willing to return to duty if called."
This sort of thing is usually a desperation measure in wartime. What threat does Canada see? US ICE goon squads crossing the border into Canada? Building up the regular military reserves is more normal. Further down, the article says that's happening.
A better use for a Home Guard of government employees would be civil defense. What to do when power goes out, food distribution breaks down, or gas deliveries cease.
This reminds me of the movie 300 where an army shows up with potters and other tradesmen, while the army of Sparta were all soldiers.
Opinion: as an expat, I'm not sure who would join the CAF nowadays. Not much to be proud of in my opinion. Without exaggerating, not a single person I grew up with is doing well, and I had to leave Canada to start my family.
In high-tech warfare we're seeing these days your metaphor is reversed. These artisans (potters etc) are tech engineers, mathematicians, chemists. They are quick to mobilize and become effective (operate drones, robots, cyber, complex machines).
I cannot comment on your opinion of Canada, it's too vague in my opinion.
Generally, western Armed Forces (CAF included) reduced their personnel and spending when the Cold War ended (90s). Rightly so. Since then, war is fought very differently and AF are now very quickly adapting.
Recent conflicts in near/along Levant and near/along the Black Sea, show how effective certain types of warfare are in the current climate.
I suppose "doing well" isn't a very good metric. It's based on my feelings and experiences having traveled to 5 wealthy countries and chatting with people there. Even in third world countries, like Brazil, I didn't see people dying of opioid overdoses everywhere downtown.
How can we know that you arent a russian propaganda account, who created a legend that you live outside of Canada, when in reality you never lived there and your lies that "Canada military bad" are just written from Moscow?
> The Canadian Forces is counting on public servants to volunteer for military service as it tries to ramp up an army of 300,000 as part of a mobilization plan, according to a defence department directive.
24 000 reserves out of a population of 40 million seems like a rather small number.
Norway has 40 000 in the Home Guard (Heimevernet) rapid reaction force of volunteer part time soldiers and a further 20 000 reserves. All from a population of about 5.5 million.
The difference here is presumably for the last hundred years, ending last November, there was simply no chance of a invasion of Canada. Nukes might fly overhead and end the world as they struck targets on either side, but other than that we were safe and any significant military action we took part in would be overseas and thus not justify calling up a huge number of reservists.
Meanwhile Norway was occupied in WWII, and after that spent the next decades next to the Soviet Union, and then Russia. There's clearly been a long standing risk of actual invasion.
> Nukes might fly overhead
Numerous Canadian sites, military and NORAD, were and surely are on first strike lists from the USSR and later Russia.
The largest established combined bi-national military command in the world involves a fair amount of shared risk.
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Except that there are several invasion risks, especially in the north. Canada maintains bases there (Alert) to protect its north from being taken by the likes of Russia, the USA and even Denmark (they have a longrunning dispute regarding an island near greenland). Canada also does not want the northwest passage to become an international waterway and so must maintain control over vessels in the north.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisky_War
>> The Canadian government issued a declaration in 1986 reaffirming Canadian rights to the waters. The United States refused to recognize the Canadian claim. In 1988 the governments of Canada and the United States signed an agreement, "Arctic Cooperation," that resolved the practical issue without solving the sovereignty questions. Under the law of the sea, ships engaged in transit passage are not permitted to engage in research. The agreement states that all U.S. Coast Guard and Navy vessels are engaged in research, and so would require permission from the Government of Canada to pass through
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Passage
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"ending last November" - Is the implication that a Trump presidency implies a risk of invasion from the South?
Canada has relied greatly on the United States providing a blanket defense guarantee of the continent. The Canadian military is currently operationally worthless across the board, save the cyber domain. There are many reasons for it that I'm not here to list out. However, that does come with grave consequences geopolitically and the Canadian government has been living in the 1900s.
The USA, via Alaska, provides Canada against Russian provocation on the West Coast[0]. This is similar to the near constant probing of NATO states airspace, especially countries near Ukraine [1][2]
The Canadian Navy is severely underfunded (along with the rest of the Canadian Armed forces)[3] with not enough ships to actively patrol and protect it's waters, especially in the North.
The North passages are incredibly important, and will become more important as trade routes. The entirety of the US wanting to buy Greenland is as a part of having an Atlantic outpost to control those shipping lanes. Those trade lanes can be significantly shorter than routes using Suez or Panama canals.
In addition to the trade routes, the US fears a Russian and Chinese alliance because of the access that grants to the North Atlantic. Point blank: Nato cannot build ships anymore, and the PLAN capacity is staggering. This is already independent of CN and RU intelligence probing of the entirety of the west coast.
The world has changed dramatically, and the only thing that really changed in November is that the USA is no longer pretending it can defend the mainland, defend NATO countries, and police shipping lanes on their own. The USA doesn't have the capacity to replace ships, nor do they have the knowledge anymore to do so.
[0] - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/russia-planes-alaska-us-fighter...
[1]- https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_237721.htm
[2]- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Russian_drone_incursion_i...
[3] - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-greenland-panama-canal-wh...
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> The difference here is presumably for the last hundred years, ending last November, there was simply no chance of a invasion of Canada.
The chance of Canada being invaded didn't change at all in November. The amount of hyperbole about Trump has been utterly astounding, and fears of an Canadian invasion are an instance of that.
And my sense is that actually a fair amount of the bad stuff Trump has done (though definitely not all) is a direct result of the overreactions to him [1], so it's probably best not to overreact.
[1] E.g. Democrats fear and loathe him, so they pursued all kinds of legal actions against him while he was out of office to damage and destroy him. They failed, he got re-elected, and now only in his second term, he's corrupted the Justice Department into a club to attack those very same people.
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Hilariously wrong take - first, Canada does not have a chance if the US wanted to take it. Second, the US does not want to own Canada for a bunch of reasons, starting with the demographic and economic mess that Canada finds itself in.
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How well would 24000 reserves fare against a smaller but well trained group of regular military units? Aren't they pretty much canon fodder?
I guess it depends on the opposition. The counter is look at the quagmire the US military found itself against insurgent opposition because they were not willing to use the same plays as Russia leveling cities. Israel leveled Gaza with the same mentality.
When Russia invaded Ukraine, thousands of rifles were handed out in Kyiv. Why?
In a straight up fight the reserves have no chance, but they also have the choice to fight differently. In Ukraine, the Territorial Defence forces have absolutely put in work against regular Russian units. Reserve units can be very useful under the right circumstances.
Vs. Finland has reserves of 870 000 from a population of about 5.6 million.
Via the magic of universal male conscription:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_Defence_Forces#Conscri...
Not teaching your son a second language so he can escape the country with draft as soon as he's 18 is evil.
You are obligated to give your child tools to choose his future if your government is trying to deny him that choice.
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I mean Canada just depends on the USA for nearly all it's defense. The USA isn't going to let anyone invade Canada or Mexico.
I don't know if you've been paying attention, but the head of the USA has threatened on numerous occasions to invade Canada.
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How much useful combat skills can be taught in only a week? It seems like an extremely low estimate on the training needed to play a useful role in the military.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Sumy_clashes had a large contingent of civilian volunteers that won decisively against the main Russian army.
>Ukraine's paratroopers were ordered to withdraw from the city, leaving the city's defense to a few thousand local volunteers armed with rifles, limited anti-tank weapons and no armed vehicles or heavy weaponry.
i don't think they're really expecting people to serve a useful role in the military. it's a "supplemental reserve", meaning a level below ordinary reservists.
it sounds like basically if the country was ever in a situation dire enough that they were calling on ordinary citizens to help with defense, an ordinary citizen with a week's training would be better than one with no training.
or more cynically: it's a way to make a whole bunch of voters feel like they're involved in the military, to make military spending more palatable to voters.
Maybe I wouldn't be very useful in combat but maybe I can peel potatoes or mop the floors in case of an invasion. I am thinking it frees up someone who is "combat ready" from kitchen or janitor duty. It helps, right?
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It's not even that. It's literally the equivalent of an assessment center. The military is basically looking for promising recruits ahead of time. It's not about having a week's worth of training. It's about knowing who did well or not.
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One week a year might add up after a while. At least you might be able to reduce the time spent in training should an urgent (but not immediate) need arise. Maybe a few years of this and you can manage basic training in six weeks instead of the usual nine. It should help build training capacity. It would likely help a bit with human resource management should the need arise: having notes on who can handle a rifle, who can handle a truck, and who can handle a drone, etc might help match people with training for what's needed.
A week is gonna be mostly "here's how to function in our organization, this is our trade specific vocabulary, here's a rifle and how you use it"
You use your D-grade troops like that for behind the lines security. You use them to check papers at checkpoints, round up dissidents, keep people from taking pot shots at your supply lines, etc, etc, the kind of stuff you don't need expensive professional infantry[1] or even beat cops[2] for.
[1] Who's expensive infantry skills are unessary overkill
[2] Who can play checkpoint thug at the right level, but who have a bunch of needless expensive training put into them regarding laws, evidince, how to conduct a traffic stop, etc, etc, that is unnecessary.
I think you’re discounting what a physically-unacceptable soldier can do with a drone.
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shooting a rifle is "easy" to learn. That's why long guns are used. Hold+brace, point, aim reticle/scope, squeeze.
handguns are harder, since you can't brace the stock against your shoulder, but need to learn how to brace with your wrists and arms.
anti-tank weapons a bit harder still, since you need to maneuver properly and have multiple shooters at the same target. Also, I laugh/smirk everytime I see a movie where someone uses a LAW indoors or in an enclosed space/with someone standing behind.
(I'm ignoring grenades; suffice to say it's not as easy to pull the pin with your teeth as you think)
I think the hard part isn't the shooting, but the tactical movement side; L shape ambush or fire formation when under fire, or presence of mind to seek to leapfrog or flank, ability to communicate under pressure instead of just hunkering down or screaming your head off. It gets complicated very fast since there are vastly different tactics used in forest/vegetation versus urban warfare, and choosing the wrong tactic will get you shot fast (think chess openings; choose the wrong one and unless you are an expert - which you will not be with 1 week of training, you will get mated fast).
>How much useful combat skills can be taught in only a week?
You'd be surprised how even a small amount of training can make you deadly with a rifle. Combine that with actually having thrown a grenade, been given training in laying of mines etc.
Also, a huge chunk of "the military" is logistics -- the measure of a soldier is not always whether they can snipe someone from afar.
It is relative, depends on the "type of warfare" being fought, and the countries/economies involved.
In a high-tech modern warfare, the countries with a fighting force that has higher academic education, higher tech literacy are relatively quick to mobilize and become effective militarily.
Useful for what role? It’s not obvious if someone has near significant or near zero training when they are acting as a stationary guard at a checkpoint etc. Which enables trained troops to preform more useful roles.
They are significantly less likely to do the correct thing if attacked, but a war isn’t going to just be over in 24 hours either so they can be trained up on the job.
More likely driving trucks, cooking meals, filling out spreadsheets, etc
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Every combat soldier requires like 10 support soldiers doing things like logistics. Millions of people during WW2 did nothing but drive trucks.
A lot of military burst capacity is about freeing up soldiers who went through all the training and basic and specialization, but are stuck driving that truck.
The guys and gals who fire bullets are just the sharp point of the spear and all that.
It's also why Russia ballooned their "National Guard" forces even though they cannot be deployed outside Russia; They free up soldiers who can.
One of the most important things for a government in an actual "Oh shit real war" situation that requires significant mobilization is a simple census of "Who has the capability to do what menial job?"
Light infantry on domestic terrain doesn't need anything like those sorts of ratios. Chechen militia in the first Chechen war defeated the Russians well enough to win independence without any sort of logistics ratio like that on the military side, as did the YPG light infantry that defeated ISIS and held off the Syrian military well enough that they basically truced or better.
Higher ratios might be needed to project power to outside borders, but for defense within the territory they can be combat effective against many possible forces with small ratios of military side logistics.
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That's not how it works in any NATO military. Truck drivers and other logistics troops generally never went through any sort of advanced combat training. They can be retrained for another MOS with sufficient time but not quickly enough for any sort of crisis. And in volunteer forces, the troops driving trucks are generally doing that because they specifically enlisted to do that job.
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Even having up-to-date contact info, age, health records available for a population you know is physically able to serve is a big first step. Lot of logistics, most western countries don't want a draft that pulls randos off the street and shoves them in a van.
Just enough to be dangerous.
Seems like a generally good idea for creating a large reserve force. It definitely beats general conscription.
I don't see why Canada in particular needs such a large reserve force. This would jump Canada from number 127 to number 52 in terms of percentage of population in reserves, and bump it up to 17th in terms of absolute reserves size. For a nation with basically zero chance of invasion of its home soil and an extremely low risk of internal conflict, it's hard to imagine a scenario where anywhere near this many reservists would be required.
>For a nation with basically zero chance of invasion of its home soil and an extremely low risk of internal conflict
Clearly the Canadian government doesn't feel the same way. If they tried to conscript they'd quickly find themselves in a civil war (for the same reasons the US would), and one the Canadian capital clearly doesn't believe it'd win given how well it fared defending itself in 2022.
Of course, bureaucrats aren't exactly known for their fighting prowess either. This is mostly a statement that "Toronto/Ottawa doesn't need the rest of the country, it can see to its own defense", and to try and retain/engage the Elbows Up crowd (which, being the only reason the sitting government is in power, is completely understandable).
> Clearly the Canadian government doesn't feel the same way
Not clear at all. One of Trump's demands during this tariff negotiation mess was that Canada isn't spending enough on defense.
So now Canada is finding ways to spend more.
Are you referring to the "Freedom Convoy"?
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They are likely being pressured to meet minimum obligations as part of NATO membership. Canada's military realistically isn't going to be called on for defense of the homeland but as part of a support force for NATO.
The new NATO funding requirements are so suddenly incredibly high that the government will probably have trouble actually finding the money to spend something on. So things like this are yeah probably a bit of a money sink to meet obligations.
The US has been consistently signalling that it is considering annexing us since Donald Trump was re-elected in November of last year... the politicians are unlikely to say it outright but I think this is pretty clearly aimed at the US and making it too costly to do so.
The US invading Canada isn't a realistic possibility. Any attempt to do so would trigger a civil war within the US, to say nothing of obliterating the geopolitical system. Attempting to annex in any way shape or form is currently nothing more than the musings of an old man, the only way any territorial changes could happen are through peaceful, mutually agreed upon transfer.
If the US were to seriously entertain the notion of invading its neighbor, 300,000 poorly trained reservists aren't going to seriously change the calculus. Canada is strong per capita but it has a fraction of the absolute population, military strength, and economy of the US. Nearly all of its major population centers are within extremely close proximity with the US border. It's military and economy are both heavily intertwined with the US, regardless of what rhetoric is being thrown around. A reserve force is for freeing up the active military to be used most effectively, defending key chokepoints, launching offensives, and operating complicated equipment, with the reservists doing things like preparing defensive lines, manning low risk areas, and supporting logistics. In a war between the US and Canada, the US would be able to launch large assaults with professional soldiers in multiple places with no natural obstacles over the short distance between their origin and objectives. There would be little for reservists to do to help - there would be no low risk areas to man, no defenses to prepare, very little in the ways of logistics to be concerned with. If Canada had serious concerns about the US invading, its money would be better spent on disentangling its armed forces from the US, acquiring counters to US systems, and establishing defensible positions between its border and major population centers.
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> the politicians are unlikely to say it outright but I think this is pretty clearly aimed at the US and making it too costly to do so.
lol this makes zero impact on that. The Canadian government doesn't even think it's own solder would fight the USA or sadly even run an insurgency. It's the consequence of trying to minimize nationalism and being cultural dominated by the USA for decades.
If the USA wants Canada it gets Canada.
Canada would be insane to not beef up its military at this point. Mexico should, too.
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https://archive.is/G4oZo
I believe this is a crafty method of reviving "Participaction" without Hal and Joanne.
Well played, Mr. Carney!
This is likely an attempt to appease Trump on one of the many silly demands he's making in the silly tariff negotiations, this one being increased military funding. Gotta find something to spend money on.
* The article speaks of this personnel like reservists, but could the training also apply to helping defend public infrastructure and institutions, where they work? (For example, if there ever be a need to quickly hand out firearms on-site, or if ever there was a need for random people to know how to observe and report threats?)
* Could this training be practice, before mass military training of most adult citizens?
> The article speaks of this personnel like reservists, but could the training also apply to helping defend public infrastructure and institutions, where they work? (For example, if there ever be a need to quickly hand out firearms on-site, or if ever there was a need for random people to know how to observe and report threats?)
Can't quite imagine the threat that would cause a need for this in Canada, but sure. Edit: I guess in the north the training would be useful for polar bear defence...
> Could this training be practice, before mass military training of most adult citizens?
Probably not politically viable unless we were invaded (and border conflicts in unpopulated areas don't count). Not logistically viable after the US invades us, and they are the only contender.
Maybe you could manage to make a volunteer based reserve program attractive enough to get a significant fraction of adult citizens? If you could that might be politically viable. I doubt the current government is anywhere near ambitious enough to try.
To fight whom exactly?
im of two minds, where on the one hand having some basic physical competence and responsibility can only improve civil servants, but on the other, the civil service is now stacked with radical partisans, and arming them and organizing them as paramilitaries is going to go exactly how you'd expect.
Odd how this is on front page of HN but buried way down my feed on (Canadian) Google News and doesn't seem to be front-page news?
Do you have to be a public servant or retired Canadian Forces, or do they take portly middle-aged out of shape software engineers, too? Asking for a friend.
Haven't shot a gun since Bible Camp when I was 12. Could be fun.
> Federal and provincial employees would be given a one-week training course in how to handle firearms, drive trucks and fly drones
What is the use of these "professionals"?
I know russians send these substandard soldiers to meat grinder ("infiltration in small groups" tactics). If they're killed with ukrainian FPV drone, it's fine, at least AFU spent a drone. Is it what Canadians are planning to do?
It is simply raising the costs for any potential invasion.
When a wannabe imperialist thinks, he can get something easy, he will take it. If he thinks, there will be unknown risks and costs .. he might not.
It will not raise any cost, these "soldiers" will pose zero threat.
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Canada has been running about 1% of gdp military spending, despite obligation of 2%; with new promise to meet 5%. a 500% increase to the size of our military in short order is the promise.
Our reserves are at about 40,000. They announced the plan to go to 400,000. 10x the size. It's not so much about any outside fears, it's just meeting our obligations.The fear about Russia or China is unfounded. The problem is that the USA our greatest ally isn't letting us use them as a shield.
>Federal and provincial employees would be given a one-week training course in how to handle firearms, drive trucks and fly drones, according to the directive, signed by Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Jennie Carignan
There's only about 300,000 federal employees. Greater on the provincial sides, but Canada isn't that big. Conscription will be necessary to fulfill these numbers
>The public servants would be inducted into the Supplementary Reserve, which is currently made up of inactive or retired members of the Canadian Forces who are willing to return to duty if called.
It says voluntary, but given the very significant % who need to join and be subject to immediate activation. I dont expect many to volunteer. Reserves at least pays you to have this cost. Conscription will be necessary. They are forcing those government employees ultimately.
> The fear about Russia or China is unfounded.
That dismisses the greatest security threats of the era with a word. Most people in that field think those threats are very well-founded. Should Canada take the risk that everything will be fine?
I don't know much about Canada's current plans and how effective they would be.
Canada right now is trying to figure out if the greatest their to their security is China or the USA. They can tie their boat to either against the other, but they can't be allies with both.
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Greatest security threat so far turned out to be USA.
Russia is weak, they cant even take ukraine. To think they'd have a shadow of a chance against NATO is a joke.
China is strong, their standing army is probably 300 million and if they invaded canada. Our <100,000 CAF will be goners. Since they havent done it, they either dont want to or there's something external to canada protecting it. Either case, an unfounded threat.
>I don't know much about Canada's current plans and how effective they would be.
Ya that original comment about russia/china wasnt a significant part of my post anyway.
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[dead]
Why don't they offer to all PRs and citizens? I'd like to learn those skills...
Why is the US our greatest ally?
36 stratagems says "Befriend a distant state and strike a neighbouring one"
The only reason you can claim russia is not threat to you is their utter corrupted incompetence which had them losing cold war. In their mindset, every single one of you here living in free democratic country, doing and thinking whatever you like are a direct threat to their dictatorship and way of existence. Canada has no reason to not be another russian gubernia, they can come up with some made up claim like they would need one.
One would laugh at all this and ignore them if they didn't have enough functional nukes to cover entire civilization few times over.
Now I am not claiming the above about every russian person, nor attacking their culture or history. Actually history yes, a bit, its pretty sad and explains why they are as they are. They consistently end up with ruling elite who thinks above, maybe apart from Gorbachev (who is despised back home). Don't ever make a mistake of underestimating how fucked up russia as a country is. I keep repeating the same for past 2 decades (as someone coming from country practically enslaved for 4 decades by them) with people mostly laughing it off, apart from last 3 years.
>The problem is that the USA our greatest ally isn't letting us use them as a shield.
I personally think that Canada can be our (US) greatest ally, but this is only true in the hard-power sense of the word if Canada does actually meet its defense obligations.
Canada has a huge coastline, directly adjacent to our most significant threats (China & Russia), yet doesn't have a navy to speak of.
We need Canada to step up to its own defense so we can keep being equal allies, otherwise Canada is a de facto protectorate and should pay for that privilege.
Just in case people miss the core message: This is something you do if you have a credible risk assessment that you think a big conflict is a possibility within the next decade or so.
And, as much as I'd like to focus on deteriorating Canada/US relations, it's likely a dual purpose. The Ukraine/Russia/NATO situation would be the second factor. OK, a triad, China/US is also on the radar. Whatever the weighting, it's pushed Canada to work on a mobilization framework, because the combined risk is high enough.
Which means "oh shit" feelings are entirely appropriate, panic isn't.
Any rational assessment of Canada's military capabilities, its funding capabilities, and population will lead to a determination that they're not in any sort of position to have any sort of meaningful defense or offense without the US running point.
For that to change would require generational shifts in culture and revenue generation and so on. If the US chooses not to defend them, they're exposing themselves to unacceptable risk. If the US chooses to defend, Canada isn't contributing within the same order of magnitude. If the US chose to attack, then more has gone wrong in the world than you could possibly cope with, having a few thousand more tanks, ships, and helicopters isn't going to save the day. It'd take decades to build up population, R&D infrastructure, resources, and so on, and there'd likely be a lot of pressure to not do those things and use the US military industrial complex instead.
Not saying this is good for Canada, btw, just that the reality is they've kinda coasted on US coattails for decades now, and for better or worse, they're stuck. Which should in turn beg the question - if there's no practical or pragmatic point in spending a bunch of money on military preparedness and expansion, then why's that money being spent, and who's getting paid? Why are bureaucrats being militarized, instead of a discrete, well regulated military being created to meet whatever the need was?
Strange politics.
If they arm and empower a significant local population, they do have a credible defense, because the vast majority of leaders in the world knows fighting a decently armed insurgency is extremely costly. They watched the US itself, a military that dwarfs the entire rest of the world's militaries, do it multiple times, along with Russia and a few other countries. The "cheapest" way to win against an insurgency is to literally blow the entire country up until nothing is standing à la North Korea, but that also destroys 95% of the value of taking a country which defeats the entire point of taking it.
The bureaucrats are being militarized out of desperation.
The political faction all bureaucrats in the nation belong to can't find enough soldiers. This is because they treat those soldiers with contempt- no young man wants to die for Ottawa. Plus, the volunteer soldiers that come back from Ukraine are not going to be on Ottawa's side if domestic instability ramped up, but will be familiar with the tools of modern warfare.
Ottawa is currently (and perhaps rightfully) paranoid of a domestic uprising just as much as it is of the US invading. The US is strategically wrecking the economy of Canadian citizens only a few hours away and if those citizens violently insist on suing for peace Ottawa might lose its power forever.
So, you do the next best thing- you take the faction with the political power in Canada (in this case, Ottawa bureaucrats) and tell them that if they want to keep their privileges, they must join the reserve.
The fact that if any nation decided to actually attack they'd instantly flee (bureaucrats are not known for their courage under fire; that's why they're bureaucrats!) is a problem for future them. What matters is that, to fuel the jingoism fire long enough to keep the bureaucrat faction in power, they need to be seen to be doing something, and this is that something.
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I wish I had written this. I think the exact same thing but you articulated it much better than I have been able to.
Most people haven't noticed until recently but many countries around the world have been dramatically increasing their defense spending for several years now, pre-dating and somewhat independent of the Ukraine situation. Most of it is targeted for operational capability by the end of this decade. Interpret that how you will.
As an eye-popping number that illustrates this, just the backlog of new foreign weapon sales awaiting approvals in the US is almost $1T on its own. Countries are spending tremendous amounts of money on advanced weapons right now.
I think it's just they sense that US is no longer willing to be the world police (with its good and bad), so they better either prepare themselves for defence or prepare themselves for offence to grab some lands they have been drooling over for a while.
These people will just be "drone meat" and frankly this feels like a way to fake their NATO commitments.
How can it be fake if it's defense related spending?
Because it's one week "training".
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Afaik, Canada's public service jobs are unionized. Maybe it's a trick to make people resign or if they don't, just send them to the front-lines. /s
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/carney-budget-to-slash...
Sign of the times, Canada is so afraid of the instability of America that they're low-key drafting public servants on a voluntary basis for now into the military.
Canadians are our closest brothers and sisters and it's just a historical quirk that we're separate countries at all.
I resent the implication that us being separate countries is a "historical quirk." It's condescending at best and exemplifies why we feel increasingly distant from the US.
It's like saying that Belgium and the Netherlands, or Spain and Portugal, or Germany and Switzerland are one historical quirk away from being the same countries.
It also reprises one of Russia's claims to Ukraine, and that of many other expansionist dictators through history.
Maybe the US should be part of Canada?
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> It's like saying that Belgium and the Netherlands, or Spain and Portugal, or Germany and Switzerland are one historical quirk away from being the same countries.
I think you could say this about any of those countries, although Switzerland's mountainous location means that it would always resist being part of a larger polity.
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You are the one making the assumption that I meant Canada should be controlled by the US when I meant and wrote no such thing.
And Europe _absolutely_ should unite under a single government instead of this pseudo national semi-single-currency/market with a vague poorly representative European government designed mostly just to dance around the fact that these small states are stuck on archaic nationalist ideas and can't get along with a unified purpose. The world needs the strength a unified Europe could provide to counteract Russian aggression, the growth of Chinese power, and the crumbling cornerstone of world order the US is going through.
Being offended is strange.
I've heard the same rhetoric (we're brothers, all will be fine) from many russians days before 2022 star of proper war in Ukraine. This feeling sadly means nothing in large enough scale.
I mean, it's entirely possible that a historic quirk 300+ years ago leads to an increasingly distant relationship today.
It's definitely possible to intepret this the way Russia speaks about Ukraine - "They shouldn't even be a country *except for a historical quirk", but a charitable interpretation would be more along the lines of "things could have gone slightly differently and we'd be countrymen, but instead we brothers from a different mother (country)".
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Those are examples not counterexamples.
> I resent the implication that us being separate countries is a "historical quirk." It's condescending at best and exemplifies why we feel increasingly distant from the US.
I mean that's a bit of an exaggeration. Canadians are basically Americans for all practical purpose to the degree you can barely tell them apart. It doesn't help that Canada has lacked any real national identity other then listing the few minor differences between it and the USA for decades.
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>It's condescending at best and exemplifies why we feel increasingly distant from the US.
As a Canadian, why would it be condescending to suggest that at some point in the distant past, Canada and the U.S. could have been a single country had history played out slightly differently? There is nothing offensive about it, if anything the fact that it's a claim about a historical matter only highlights how the two countries have evolved separately and independently.
Furthermore your other points are kind of bizzare. Spain and Portugal could absolutely have been a single country, and in fact they were under the Iberian Union. There are numerous other instances where the two countries came close to unifying.
The historical possibility of a unified Belgium and the Netherlands is even stronger since those two countries had been unified twice.
Germany and Switzerland however is a long shot, but at any rate I don't think anyone from Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain or Portugal would take offense or find it condescending that some historical event could have gone differently and reshaped all of Europe... taking offense to that suggestion as a Canadian, even during these times seems overly insecure and I don't think it's a sentiment shared by most of us.
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Yeah, it's not a historical quirk, really. In talking to many Americans it seems like they don't really cover loyalists at all, or what happened after the Revolutionary War. Much of what became Canada was settled by former colonists from the what became the United States who remained loyal to the crown. My hometown was founded by loyalists from New York -- including the mayor of New York City -- after the Revolutionary War.
Essentially we are even closer than many people think in terms of history, but Canadian identity was seeded from the beginning with the idea of rejecting being "American". We are indeed your closest brothers and sisters because of history, but it's no quirk at all that we're separate -- it's the entire reason we stayed separate at all.
You can also see the reverse play out -- what would become Alberta was settled by large numbers of American colonists moving to Canada, and to this day you can see the cultural impact of that in the politics and world view from the region.
Perhaps another sign of the times: commenters are responding with animosity to your suggestion that Americans and Canadians are incredibly close.
I imagine it's hard to feel too close to people who elected a clown who wants to invade you.
It's a historic quirk that the US is a single country. It hardly feels like one most days.
The same is true of Canada, but to a far greater extent since Toronto/Ottawa/Montreal have a permanent veto on whatever the rest of the country wants. The US political system, for all its other faults, has successfully avoided this problem.
It is not a surprise that region can't find anyone else (in the rest of the economic zone over which it claims dominion) willing to die for its interests, especially when their interests have been revealed to be nothing but "loot the rest of the nation".
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american: you're the historical quirk!
canadian: no, you're the historical quirk!
native american: you're both historical twerps.
The most damning thing about this is the Canadian gov would struggle to find 300k people in the rest of the population that it would trust with skilling up in those ways. Federal public servants will be the last bastion of the values they try to force on everyone else.
It is in the process of spending vast amounts of money to remove guns from legal gun owners that are subject to absolutely amazing amounts of oversight already.
I don't think this is true. It's just much easier to bring in people when you have access to them to ask directly, basically.
In my short experience in public service, I met a great number of people who were not in lockstep with the so-called "values they try to force" (i.e. the political plans of the current government), so it seems they're not doing a great job of "forcing" those values if that's the plan.
They have enough problems keeping the people they currently have in the military on the same page.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/rcmp-caf-charges-terrorism-...
The general response to this was amazement that the MP or RCMP actually did anything about it, given what occurs within those.
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HN seems to hate this but you're right. The type of people the military relies on are not in power in Canada and haven't been for some time.
Especially when most of them are in Western Canada, which keeps threatening to leave.
This isn't using government employees for non-combat tasks to free up troops. It's more like the WWII Home Guard in the UK.
"Federal and provincial employees would be given a one-week training course in how to handle firearms, drive trucks and fly drones...The public servants would be inducted into the Supplementary Reserve, which is currently made up of inactive or retired members of the Canadian Forces who are willing to return to duty if called."
This sort of thing is usually a desperation measure in wartime. What threat does Canada see? US ICE goon squads crossing the border into Canada? Building up the regular military reserves is more normal. Further down, the article says that's happening.
A better use for a Home Guard of government employees would be civil defense. What to do when power goes out, food distribution breaks down, or gas deliveries cease.
What you're describing sounds more like what the federal budget calls the Youth Climate Corps: https://www.budget.canada.ca/2025/report-rapport/chap3-en.ht...
This reminds me of the movie 300 where an army shows up with potters and other tradesmen, while the army of Sparta were all soldiers.
Opinion: as an expat, I'm not sure who would join the CAF nowadays. Not much to be proud of in my opinion. Without exaggerating, not a single person I grew up with is doing well, and I had to leave Canada to start my family.
> the movie 300
In high-tech warfare we're seeing these days your metaphor is reversed. These artisans (potters etc) are tech engineers, mathematicians, chemists. They are quick to mobilize and become effective (operate drones, robots, cyber, complex machines).
I cannot comment on your opinion of Canada, it's too vague in my opinion.
Generally, western Armed Forces (CAF included) reduced their personnel and spending when the Cold War ended (90s). Rightly so. Since then, war is fought very differently and AF are now very quickly adapting.
Recent conflicts in near/along Levant and near/along the Black Sea, show how effective certain types of warfare are in the current climate.
> not a single person I grew up with is doing well
What is happening in Canada to cause this?
I suppose "doing well" isn't a very good metric. It's based on my feelings and experiences having traveled to 5 wealthy countries and chatting with people there. Even in third world countries, like Brazil, I didn't see people dying of opioid overdoses everywhere downtown.
root cause is believing anecdotes of people on the internet
> as an expat
How can we know that you arent a russian propaganda account, who created a legend that you live outside of Canada, when in reality you never lived there and your lies that "Canada military bad" are just written from Moscow?
How do I know you arnt a CSIS account that targets the chats of those with lived experience in Canada and tries discredit them?
I suppose it's not possible to know nowadays given LLMs and all.