Should spend more, 220m seems a bit low.
My first thought too. Why aren’t we sending more? Russia is frankly the biggest threat to Canada’s territorial integrity IMO, so even if it wasn’t simply “the right thing to do” it’s super duper in our interests to see Russia lose as hard as possible in Ukraine.
Absolutely. Many of our arctic islands are desirable and valuable to Russia for annexation and Ukraine has made it perfectly clear they’re shameless in their conquests. I know America’s sphere of influence makes it far less likely they’d snatch land across the arctic versus in Ukraine, but if it’s uninhabited and remote, the American public’s exhaustion on supporting Ukraine may lead them to quietly abandon the area with little fuss…
Not to mention that I consider the US to be the second-biggest threat to our territorial integrity, so I wouldn’t want to rely on them to protect our sovereignty.
Third-biggest threat is Denmark. Hans Island is Canadian! Grumble mumble…
I would argue that, because of the war in Ukraine, Russia no longer poses any threat to Canadian territorial integrity. They have 315,000 casualties - dead and injured - in this war. To put that into context, that is almost 90% of the initial deployment into Ukraine. They have spent so many resources into a war that they are actively failing in, there is no plausible means by which Russia can pose a threat to our territories within at least one or two generations. And just consider that the quality of the average Russian soldier has deteriorated significantly for so many reasons, but one most worth noting - it’s barely a week of training for the average Russian recruit, and then straight to the frontlines in either Bakhmut or Avdiivka.
Look at any population pyramid with Russia, and you’ll see that they are massively suffering from a lack of young people. And unlike Canada, which has many pro-immigration policies and attitudes which can attract a lot of people to make up for our lower birth rates, Russia is NOT a place where people want to emmigrate to, in large both because of its dire economic outlook (especially with all of the sanctions imposed by the US and the West), and also because it is insanely bigoted towards anyone who is not from Moscow or St. Petersburg.
Russia is wildly fucked, even if they were somehow to turn this around and somehow secure everything they ever wanted from Ukraine. If they are struggling this much with a former Soviet country almost next door to Moscow, there’s no way they will ever be able to project their force beyond their shorelines. Their navy, or whatever boats they can use on the Pacific Coast, will never have enough supporting troops to ensure they could hold any amount of Canadian territory for any extended campaign, especially since their logistics is raw dogshit.
And that is all without talking about the massive, US-sized elephant in the room.
To that point, I’m just some idiot that’s lived in the city for 25+ years. I could probably go upstairs and grab some clothes and a backpack, and be better equipped for full-on war than actual russian conscripts. Just give me a sniper rifle and some ammo, and I’m more of a threat than a dozen or more Russians.
We aren’t sending more equipment because we don’t have more. Canada’s Army (and Navy, and Airforce) is destitute, and we had to scrape the barrel to find the equipment we did send. We do help with more than just equipment though - we have an ongoing mission training Ukrainian soldiers that has been operating since 2015.
This might be a good opportunity to shift away from conventional artillery towards fully guided and more mobile systems like HIMARS.
Anyone who has followed this conflict closely can see alarming gaps in the Forces’ equipment. The lack of systems like self-propelled guns, rocket artillery, and weaponised drones / loitering munitions would put our troops in a seriously bad position if push came to shove.
