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.
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?
In that case, how does the week's training help at all?
Maybe it's helpful just for you to understand the way the military is organised: if you are conscripted you should report to this base, you'll sleep here, your commanding officer will be someone from this branch of the armed forces, you'll be in a group of X people sharing Y shifts, etc.
Everyone in the military should be trained with weapons. If it comes down to it, even the guy who mops the floors is going to need to pick up a rifle if the situation is dire enough. It helps if he held one before at least.
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.
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.
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?"
That's now 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.
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.
I think "Nukes might fly overhead and end the world [...] but other than that we were safe" agrees that Canada would not thrive during a global thermonuclear war.
Agreed. Also, even if Canada were to shut down all NORAD radars and command posts on Canadian territory and to kick out every US soldier and to tear up all agreements with the US,
Canadian cities and important Canadian infrastructure within 100 miles of the US border (i.e., most Canadian population and infrastructure) would probably get nuked in a nuclear war just so that the US cannot rely on those resources during the US's recovery from the attack.
A large nuclear exchange between great powers (and currently there are 3 great powers, the US, China and Russia) would be followed by the use of conventional military forces. E.g., The US would try to capture and hold major ports of the power or powers that attacked it because holding ports is a very effective way of denying the power the ability to deploy its own conventional forces outside its own territory and the ability to rebuild its nuclear stockpile. Military planners in the power or powers that planned the nuclear strike on the US would know that and consequently would realize that it is essential to slow down the US's recovery from the strike as long as possible.
In summary, if the US ever endures a large nuclear strike, it is very likely that Canada gets nuked, too. Canada's kicking out the US military and declaring the US to be its enemy might cause a minor reduction in intensity of the nuclear attack on Canada, but is very unlikely prevent it altogether.
Yes, Switzerland was able to avoid any attacks from the UK, the US or the USSR during WWII despite sharing a border with Germany, but that was probably near thing. Also, Switzerland was very hard for Germany to invade because of how mountainous it is; in contrast, most of the cities and infra in Southern Canada is separated from the US by nothing but plains. Also, Switzerland invests very heavily in its military capacity, e.g., every Swiss male must do military service, e.g., every bridge in Switzerland is engineered to be easy for Swiss forces to blow up.
> A large nuclear exchange between great powers (and currently there are 3 great powers, the US, China and Russia) would be followed by the use of conventional military forces. E.g., The US would try to capture and hold the major ports of the power or powers that attacked it because holding those ports is the most effective way of denying the power the ability to deploy its own conventional forces outside its own territory and the ability to rebuild its nuclear stockpile.
Do you have a source for that? Because that's pretty unbelievable action to take after a full nuclear exchange that leaves every major city and military base in ruins. I'd expect most if not all the US's force-projection power would be gone immediately after a nuclear war. Sure, maybe there'd be aircraft carriers out in the ocean, but with limited ability to resupply, they'd probably lose their effectiveness sooner than later.
The Soviets had no hope of capturing any ports or any territory in the continental US: to do that would mean first destroying the US Navy, and they knew they could not do that. So, their plan focused on the next best thing: namely capturing the part of the European plain they did not control already (namely, West Germany, the low countries and maybe the part of France occupied by the Germans in WWII) then hoping that this new political entity consisting of the USSR augmented by Northern Europe could over the next few decades outpace the US in economic capacity, allowing the USSR (decades in the future) to build a fleet more powerful than the US fleet. George Friedman has talked more than once about this as being the logical goal of the Soviets if there ever had been a hot war between the USSR and the US.
One Soviet war plan that was made available to Western scholars in the 1990s anticipated this invasion of Northern Europe (with conventional forces) starting immediately after the Soviets make a large nuclear strike on Western Europe. Note that tanks crew are basically immune to nuclear fallout provided they are trained to operate in fallout. Also, fallout is not like Chernobyl: it dissipates very quickly so after 3 weeks soldiers not inside tanks will be able to operate in what were 3 weeks earlier very deadly fallout plumes. (Also, the plumes never cover the entire attacked territory, but only about half of it: its just that it is impossible to predict which half.)
This particular plan avoided any attack on Britain or France (and I presume also the US) to make it less likely that Britain and France will choose to use its nukes on the USSR, but hits West Germany, the low countries and NATO airbases in northern Italy really hard to soften them up for the invasion by tanks. In summary, the plan was to grab territory, then dare NATO to take it back or to nuke the USSR in retaliation (knowing the USSR would probably respond in kind to any nukes France, Britain or the US launch at the USSR).
I've also heard experts other than Friedman say that Soviet planners always believed that a nuclear exchange would be followed by war between conventional forces.
I heard years ago from some expert that if the US ever decided that China must be suppressed as much as possible by military means, it would be foolish to try to capture the whole country (i.e., it is too big and too populous for the US to try to do what it did to Japan at the end of WWII) so capturing and occupying its ports (which of course the Western powers held collectively for decades in the past) would be the likely military goal. I figure the same thing is true of Russia. Note that as long as it has Denmark on its side, the US would not even need to occupy St Petersburg: no ship from St Petersburg is getting into the open ocean if Denmark does not want it to. Ditto Russia's ports on the Black Sea and Turkey. I.e., Russia has geographical constraints that give it even less access to the world ocean than China has. In my mind, in any existential conflict with Russia, it would be natural for the US to try to take away what little unfettered access to the world ocean Russia does have.
All that is assuming a limited nuclear exchange is possible, without further nuclear escalation. I find that pretty unbelievable.
> One Soviet war plan that was made available to Western scholars in the 1990s anticipated this invasion of Northern Europe (with conventional forces) starting immediately after the Soviets make a large nuclear strike on Western Europe. Note that tanks crew are basically immune to nuclear fallout provided they are trained to operate in fallout.... This particular plan avoided any attack on Britain or France (and I presume also the US) to make it less likely that Britain and France will choose to use its nukes on the USSR, but hits West Germany, the low countries and NATO airbases in northern Italy really hard to soften them up for the invasion by tanks. In summary, the plan was to grab territory, then dare NATO to take it back or to nuke the USSR in retaliation.
If the USSR nuked non-nuclear NATO, they just assumed their opponents wouldn't retaliate with nukes at all? At a minimum I'd expect the Warsaw Pact countries would have gotten nuked in retaliation. And, IIRC, NATO planners anticipated an attack along these lines, and had nukes lined up to directly target the attacking communist military formations (so those formations wouldn't just be dealing with fallout).
> I heard years ago from some expert that if the US ever decided that China must be suppressed as much as possible by military means, it would be foolish to try to capture the whole country (i.e., it is too big and too populous for the US to try to do what it did to Japan at the end of WWII) so capturing and occupying its ports (which of course the Western powers held collectively for decades in the past) would be the likely military goal.
It's a completely unrealistic goal. If China hasn't been nuked to oblivion, I don't think the US could ever dream to hold its ports against a counterattack (especially given China's rate of modernization and sheer industrial capacity). If China has been nuked to oblivion, the US would almost certainly be wrecked as well, and in no state to send over anyone to hold Chinese ports.
> (which of course the Western powers held collectively for decades in the past)
That was a loooong time ago, when China was basically at a pre-modern technology level and comparatively extremely weak. That's not the case anymore, and China is now arguably the more powerful country (in the ways that matter to such a conflict) than the US.
Basically, contrary to what many many chatterers on the internet say, "nuked to oblivion" is not a thing. A nuclear strikes with thousands of strategic nuclear weapons against a country as large as the US, Russia or China temporarily degrades the country's economic and military capacity, then it bounces back. It is difficult to predict how quickly it bounces back, but it does not take multiple decades.
I'm not saying it is realistic for the US to hold Chinese ports in 2025. The expert I heard talk about it was talking many years ago. I figure that if it was true of China many years ago, it is true of Russia today.
The problem with a large military invasion of North America would be its difficulty to disguise. There's a lot of water buffer that prevents border skirmishes from escalating with easy supply routes to keep an invasion running.
You missed an important point which is that Switzerland under the guise of neutrality helped the germans finance the war. For most of the time it very much was not in Germanys interest to invade. If their track record is anything to go by, if they had it probably wouldn't have taken them very long. Very few military lessons can be learned from the Swiss for the simple reason they have never fought in a war. As a Brit i'm obligated to point out that it's a similar story with France because they have never won a war.
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
outside edmonton and calgary the vast majority of the canadian population is within 100 miles of the US border. now imagine the logistics of a land invasion from northern canada. Shortest distance would be 1600 miles of wilderness. If you went from alert it would be more like 2500 miles of wilderness and several water crossings. All while you are being absolutely pummeled by US air support. It would be a suicide mission that would make the Kokoda Track campaign look like a boy scout trip.
It is such a different situation in europe. Helsinki is 100 miles from the russian border with road, highway, and rail connectivity and within reach of most of Russias air power.
Canada is not afraid of an invasion through the north. They fear an invasion of the north. They fear the north itself being taken, not that someone is going to drive south.
> 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.
> So maybe he should'nt've have broken laws. Not give them anything to pursue.
It's not so simple: 1) everybody breaks laws, and 2) in at least one case those laws were stretched and abused in unusual ways to specifically target him (his felony convictions, which unsurprisingly were immediately turned into an electoral attack). I'm not a Trump fan, but I'm not a Democratic partisan either, and I think that prosecution was really, really gross.
> laws were stretched in unusual ways to specifically target him
Sure one man's campaign finance violations/embezzlement (I can't recall the details) are another man's politically motivated prosecution. That wasn't the only case against the guy though. It was the only case that concluded. Winning the election saved his skin. He was cooked otherwise.
>> laws were stretched in unusual ways to specifically target him
> Sure one man's campaign finance violations/embezzlement (I'm hazy on the specifics) are another man's politically motivated prosecution.
Come on, don't be lazy: it's clear you're totally unfamiliar with the case, and a snowclone dismissal isn't clever. The tl;dr is he was actually guilty of a misdemeanors, which where promoted to felonies through unprecedented prosecutorial maneuvering. And it's pretty clear that maneuvering only happened because the prosecutors wanted to get Trump personally for something, and spend a lot of time looking and strategizing how to do it.
If a prosecutor looked at your conduct that closely, for that long, they could almost certainly nail you (or anyone) for a felony, too. And it's pretty important for a fair and democratic legal system that they don't target individuals like that.
"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.
I personally can downplay them as a joke because it is a joke. The mostly likely path forward for anything like that would instead a certain oil rich province voting themselves independent and then asking the US for aid or to join.
And, if it wasn't a joke, then that's even more of a reason to consider meeting your 2% NATO agreement instead of just phoning it in.
I can't take anything you say that serious because of the rather extreme bias. 'buy Greenland" I think seize is a better word if your avoiding the term invade.
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.
Did you respond to the wrong comment or is this flying way over my head? I'm not actually sure how you arrived at talking about children needing to learn another language from this article that doesn't discuss language?
If, for example, society sees fit to deprive me of my right to security (for instance, perhaps it deigns to throw me in jail if I defend myself against a home invasion), then society doesn't get to demand I give my life for its security.
In this way, it is society that has broken the contract with me, releasing me of my obligations to defend it. Most people who claim "duty and obligation to society" conveniently forget this is possible. By accident, I'm sure.
How much raising of the typical pleb draftee do you think is done by the politician declaring the war? Society is just a collection of people. Even if there is some original debt from being raised that forms a binding contract with a minor that never consented to it, which I don't take on face, it's hard to imagine how politicians declaring a draft trump the senior shareholders of that contract (the family that did the bulk of the raising).
In any case I would hope we would reject the notion that you can become a slave and made to die for the state because you allegedly owe them for something they did for you before you were old enough to even wittingly object or agree to it.
I mean yeah we've famously even had full on invasion war plans drawn up in the past that leaked. Canada isn't going to do anything that changes the USA's ability to steam roll over the country.
Yep - the US is bad at fighting insurgencies, but a state military? Over in days. This does not materially change between Canada’s current military vs 5x their current military.
But fighting pissed-off indigenous Canadians? I wouldn’t sign up for that part.
None of this is relevant because the US does not want to own Canada.
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).
If so, the capital did perfectly fine breaking it up, they were just politically hamstrung. But otherwise, it took all of an afternoon and a couple horses to break up that nonsense.
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 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 US invading Canada isn't a realistic possibility. Any attempt to do so would trigger a civil war within the US
If you had told me this last year, but replaced "invading Canada" with "sending armed military forces into cities under false emergency declarations", I would've also agreed. But here we are. Which state wants to be the first to defect and pit it's national guard (half of whom would probably desert) against the US military?
>If Canada had serious concerns about the US invading...
It's best course of action would be the same as any individual preparing for a doomsday scenario: make friends with those around you. If the US invades or even just encroaches on Canada, I wonder if every European country would realize they're next. Canada can't beat the US alone, but it's allies could make it an extremely painful and unpopular war for the American public.
If the United States tries to seize Canada they will do so after a protracted blockade in winter that coincides with air strikes on Canadian infrastructure.
A lot of Canadians talk big talk about some sort of insurgency like Iraq, Afghanistan or Vietnam but all those places have borders with other countries that can enable smuggling of supplies to the resistance.
Canada will be blockaded and after a period of cold and hunger the Canadian people will give up.
How are you going to blockade an almost 9000 km long border(with a huge variety of terrain) and a 243,000 km long coastline? The US can't even stop drugs and people coming through the 3,145 km border with Mexico. This argument also presumes that no Americans would smuggle supplies to Canada which seems unlikely to me because lots of Americans & Canadians are either related or friends.
Because the group of men fit to fight such a war would rather rebel against the government than fight a brother war. From lowest recruit to highest general.
Much as is the case in the US and Canada, families and friends transcend the borders of Ukraine and Russia. That wasn't enough to stop the Russian invasion of Ukraine. While Americans enjoy much, much broader freedoms of expression (albeit that's also under great threat), I wouldn't imagine the reaction from our American "brothers" would be much different from Russian when it invaded its "brother".
Your use of "brother" is apt. There's a Ukrainian joke that goes something like:
"A Ukrainian man and a Russian man are walking together. They happen upon a $20 bill on the sidewalk. The Russian man says, 'Let us share it as brothers'. The Ukranian man says 'No, let us share it equally'".
I guess we'll find out when it happens (or not happens).
The only realistic scenario I can think of when your American "brothers" would go to war across the border is if the Canadian government commences war against its own population. Then I could see the US government intervening, or US fighters independent from the government taking sides in Canada.
The US military being deployed is doing things like cleaning up trash, guarding federal buildings, and otherwise goofing off. There's zero indication they'd be easily swayed. Reserve Generals have directly stated they will defend the state, not follow the Presidents orders.
> 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.
A possible scenario: Alberta votes for independence, and then applies to join the US - similar trajectory to how Texas went from Mexico to the US via independence, albeit likely much more peacefully
Is this actually going to happen? Probably not. But personally I think it is more likely than all the other farfetched scenarios some people here seem to be taking seriously
> The US invading Canada isn't a realistic possibility
Of course it is. Troops would just be moved to “temporarily” occupy shit we want. (Or move to liberate Alberta.) Hell, you could probably do it with ICE agents.
> Any attempt to do so would trigger a civil war within the US
You’d take up arms against the U.S. because it invaded Canada?
Of course you wouldn’t. Neither would others. It would be brushed way as an another atrocity.
> 300,000 poorly trained reservists aren't going to seriously change the calculus
It’s people you have to shoot through. Hong Kong versus Ukraine. Raises the costs from a low-effort political gambit to a real military campaign.
This comment reminds of one on HN from Kharkiv on the eve of the invasion. If you assume something can’t happen or cannot be opposed, that’s indistinguishable from an invitation for an autocrat.
> The US invading Canada isn't a realistic possibility. Any attempt to do so would trigger a civil war within the US
Ok, maybe, but then:
> 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.
Given your earlier claim, surely you must believe that if they defied your wisdom and chose this course of action, they wouldn't be able to do this because they would have to devote a substantial fraction of their military capacity to domestic counterinsurgency efforts, leaving far more limited combat power to actually execute the invasion?
Yes but presumably other NATO members would counterattack, e.g. the UK has Trident missiles capable of significantly degrading the US. Modulo any kill switch those might contain.
> 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 Mexico wants to deter America, their best bet by far is to pose a credible insurgency threat. And in that regard, between the number of Mexican nationals and sympathizers in America, the number of guns in Mexico, the national pride of the Mexican people, and their established proficiency with asymmetric warfare (at least from their cartel elements)... I think they've got their bases well covered. Mexicans have the capacity to make an invasion of Mexico be extremely painful to the American public.
But Mexico using conventional military force to deter America? That's completely absurd.
Except America has shown that it would rather chew through all it's resources and capability than accept that "The public here doesn't want you, that wont change, go home and save the effort"
How many people in the middle east did we blow up or kill? For 20 years. For a supposed outcome we had no chance of ever getting. Multiple presidents even.
The deterrence effect of an occupation didn't stop Russia, did not stop the USA, does not stop someone who believes you can just bomb the occupied lands harder until all resistance is "quiet", and doesn't seem to be stopping China from preparing itself for the occupation of Taiwan.
That Mexico has zero tanks or infantry fighting vehicles or real self propelled artillery might tell you how they've felt about the odds of the US actually invading again.
(IMO they should get some of these things even if there's no chance of the US invading, given how much firepower some of the cartels have.)
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.
Can they be allies with neither? They are trying to improve relations with the EU and, most importantly, are members of NATO (where the US is also a member).
Economically not really. China and the USA are the top economies, and China is only going to get more economically powerful, alignment with one or the other in trade at least is inevitable. The EU will be making similar decisions to Canada, and I doubt Canada is going to detach from Europe.
It's always funny how people get this backwards: China being an export economy means that the whole world is dependent on them, not the other way around.
> China is completely dependant on other countries for it's economic power (mostly the US) as an export economy.
That is Trump's big lie, but it has no basis in reality. This was the cornerstone of Trump's whole pressure agenda on China, and it imploded quickly when the Chinese indicated "We don't care about the American market, trade is only 5% of our GDP, and we have lots of trading partners."
> They're also staring down a demographic crash, soon (10 - 15% drop with 25% of the remaining polution over 65).
Investments in AI and automation make that iffy, investments that, beyond AI, the USA is not making.
> They are basically at their peak right now.
That is the core of Trump's big lie on China, and again, has no basis in reality.
Real question: Is any serious person advocating Canada abandon the West for China? What's their analysis here? If anyone has an article I can read I would love to do that.
>Real question: Is any serious person advocating Canada abandon the West for China? What's their analysis here? If anyone has an article I can read I would love to do that.
Which this 'imminent' factor never happened, but what was imminent was right before this was the announcement of various auto manufacturing moving production out of canada. Not really much to do with china, more of a screw you to the big 3.
China and Canada dont have a free trade agreement. The FIPA agreement is likely to be ended soon as it's possible.
Going from the antagonistic to a major trade deal and changing to chinese alliance would be a bizarre change though.
With the qualification that Canada has absolutely no intention of abandoning the West, merely the US. The intent of the government and people is absolutely to strengthen ties to western Europe, not weaken them.
> Canada right now is trying to figure out if the greatest [threat?] to their security is China or the USA.
How do you get China in that list? Canada would most likely be challenged over their stake in the Arctic and Russia is plainly the greatest threat in that regard, not China. Russia has invested a great deal into arctic exploration and exploitation and pretty clearly sees the region as free real estate up for the taking. America too has a large stake in the Arctic, but has developed comparably fewer arctic capabilities than Russia. For Canada to have any chance of repelling a Russian invasion of their arctic territory would require America to help them, which under present American leadership would be a piss poor position for Canada to be in (not only because Trump has suggested annexing Canada himself, but also because he's said similar about Greenland, underscoring America's own desire to take that same arctic territory.)
Now, I don't doubt that China would also like the Arctic for themselves, but from Canada's perspective, the relative threat of China must be less than that of Russia and America.
Russia can't even invade Ukraine right, I think the world sees them as pretty washed up as far as national security goes (besides them having nukes). China is like Russia, except richer, more disciplined, and not dumb. Canada also has a higher GDP than Russia despite having a much smaller population.
Russia's arctic operational capability is world class, exceeding even America by far. America could at least try to engage Russia with submarine warfare and long range missiles, but what could Canada do themselves, muster a few hundred native locals armed with century old rifles? Canada would be forced to go to America for help, which might end up in Canada giving up some mineral rights at least, if not substantial chunks of territory in whole.
Now, however unlikely you think Russia is to actually start some kinetic shit in the Arctic, I think you're crazy to rate their threat lower than China. China being richer, more disciplined and less dumb only makes the relative threat to Canada even smaller. Russia, being relatively dumb, undisciplined, poor and increasingly reliant on oil exports to prop up their economy makes the probability of Russia daring to start shit higher, not lower.
Edit: Some of you obviously don't take this seriously, so here's a question for any of you. If Russia announces they are going to be drilling oil in arctic waters that are nominally Canada's, and declares their annexation of this territory a fiat accompli, what is Canada's move? Demand help from their NATO allies, which may or may not include America? What if America declines and demands the mineral rights to Canadian territory in exchange for chasing Russia off Canada's sea floor? Canada sure as hell can't fight Russia under the ice cap themselves. Without a credible military response of their, Canada must count on having reliable and powerful allies. Russia's desire and motive are clear, they want the arctic oil. China is dangerous in their own way, the PLAN is very dangerous, but if they're going to start shit it will be over Taiwan and if it involves anybody else it will probably be the USN and maybe the JSDF, not Canada. The real threat the PRC poses to Canada is subversion of the Canadian political system, buying and bribing their way through getting anything they want from Canada. And that's not the kind of threat you can counter with military spending.
The USA is a fantastic ally! When a small aircraft was recently hijacked from Vancouver international airport, guess which Air Force came to our rescue? Thank you!!
While there’s a lot of news and media about trade wars with the USA, the vast majority 85% of it remains under the free trade agreement. China does not even come close to a free and open market for us and their state sponsored corporate espionage is a real and growing danger.
Neither here nor there, but the plane was hijacked in Victoria and then flown over to Vancouver.
(Only picking this particular nit because, as a Victorian, we constantly live in the shadow of our bigger brother, so I need to shout us out when I can. And I fly out of the flying club that the plane was hijacked from, so it's a story that's particularly close to my heart.)
China didn't strongly suggest that Canada should become its 23rd or 24th province. Also, if the USA keeps dipping its feet into fascism every other 4 year election cycle, every other western democracy is going to start pumping lots of resources into a plan B
In what world? We never had free and open access to Chinas markets and they conduct massive amounts of corporate espionage and state sponsored cyberattacks against our companies daily.
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.
> China is strong, their standing army is probably 300 million and if they invaded canada. Our <100,000 CAF will be goners.
Having 300 million people and being able to move them across the Pacific Ocean are two very different things.
Yeah, China's building a lot of landing craft. Are those landing craft capable of a 10,000 mile voyage? I doubt it. Does China have a way of loading and launching those ships 100 miles from Canada? I doubt it.
TBH I think taking land is stupid, at least taking a lot of land is stupid because you are left with a huge cost and people who hate you. The US has already gone past that point and I doubt China wants to go back this route. Taiwan for sure, but the rest of the world? meh.
I wouldn't call Russia weak. They have their strengths, one of which is insensitivity to losses. They can grind 20000 soldiers to get a small town, and nobody cares. Also, total control over population, brainwashing the youth, military-oriented economy.
Also, Russia knows how to operate in Arctic, and has real combat experience that none of NATO countries have.
> To think they'd have a shadow of a chance against NATO is a joke.
Which NATO with what army? Do you think Bundeswehr is combat-ready? Is society in any NATO country (except Poland and Finland) ready to fight?
Russians will easily take Baltic countries, for example, is it NATO? Will NATO commit into full scale war with Russia over Estonia? They don't even have guts to block shadow fleet tankers and shoot russian drones over their own territory. Or forget doing something, they can't even stop buying russian oil and gas, because their population will pay more and be upset.
Ukraine stopped them like a bag of teeth would grind teeth of someone who decided to eat them. West is not Ukrainians, even after all these wake-up calls.
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?
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.
So it looks like they think they can keep the peasants in line by going full police state with drones and ultra surveillance? Good lord.
I respect regular Canadians quite a lot, but damn, Canadian government officials seem like a social experiment in how far you can push people before they blow up in your face.
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.
> 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.
Why does this even mean? Does national identity even really matter? It's like saying Californians are basically Texans for all practical purpose. Men and women are pretty similar. To suggest that they're so similar they may as well be the same is absolutely condescending.
In the context of this whole article aka getting people to join the military it 100% matters. Do you think people are going to fight and die for a concept they don't care about?
>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.
It's condescending to describe it as a quirk, in the sense that it's no more a quirk than anything else in history. In the current climate where this sort of rhetoric has been publicly and visibly used by Russia to justify their invasion of Ukraine, and by the PRC to justify their ongoing pressure campaigns against the ROC, I also don't take this kind of wording at face value.
Wars were fought. People died, generations were involved in discourse about national identity and where borders should be drawn.
The US and Canada were both at one point British properties, so by some definitions, we also used to be unified. Then we weren't.
Is it insecure? Maybe. The reality is that in a shooting war, we wouldn't last very long against the US, in all likelihood. Under these conditions, the least I can do is to push back against rhetoric that undermines our legitimacy as our own country.
Although I don't deny it could've happened, Spain and Portugal were different kingdoms during the Iberian Union (Philip II of Spain was known as Philip I of Portugal.)
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.
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.
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?
In that case, how does the week's training help at all?
Maybe it's helpful just for you to understand the way the military is organised: if you are conscripted you should report to this base, you'll sleep here, your commanding officer will be someone from this branch of the armed forces, you'll be in a group of X people sharing Y shifts, etc.
except they say the training will include firearms and drone flight.
Everyone in the military should be trained with weapons. If it comes down to it, even the guy who mops the floors is going to need to pick up a rifle if the situation is dire enough. It helps if he held one before at least.
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.
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.
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?"
That's now 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.
Just enough to be dangerous.
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.
I think "Nukes might fly overhead and end the world [...] but other than that we were safe" agrees that Canada would not thrive during a global thermonuclear war.
Agreed. Also, even if Canada were to shut down all NORAD radars and command posts on Canadian territory and to kick out every US soldier and to tear up all agreements with the US, Canadian cities and important Canadian infrastructure within 100 miles of the US border (i.e., most Canadian population and infrastructure) would probably get nuked in a nuclear war just so that the US cannot rely on those resources during the US's recovery from the attack.
A large nuclear exchange between great powers (and currently there are 3 great powers, the US, China and Russia) would be followed by the use of conventional military forces. E.g., The US would try to capture and hold major ports of the power or powers that attacked it because holding ports is a very effective way of denying the power the ability to deploy its own conventional forces outside its own territory and the ability to rebuild its nuclear stockpile. Military planners in the power or powers that planned the nuclear strike on the US would know that and consequently would realize that it is essential to slow down the US's recovery from the strike as long as possible.
In summary, if the US ever endures a large nuclear strike, it is very likely that Canada gets nuked, too. Canada's kicking out the US military and declaring the US to be its enemy might cause a minor reduction in intensity of the nuclear attack on Canada, but is very unlikely prevent it altogether.
Yes, Switzerland was able to avoid any attacks from the UK, the US or the USSR during WWII despite sharing a border with Germany, but that was probably near thing. Also, Switzerland was very hard for Germany to invade because of how mountainous it is; in contrast, most of the cities and infra in Southern Canada is separated from the US by nothing but plains. Also, Switzerland invests very heavily in its military capacity, e.g., every Swiss male must do military service, e.g., every bridge in Switzerland is engineered to be easy for Swiss forces to blow up.
> A large nuclear exchange between great powers (and currently there are 3 great powers, the US, China and Russia) would be followed by the use of conventional military forces. E.g., The US would try to capture and hold the major ports of the power or powers that attacked it because holding those ports is the most effective way of denying the power the ability to deploy its own conventional forces outside its own territory and the ability to rebuild its nuclear stockpile.
Do you have a source for that? Because that's pretty unbelievable action to take after a full nuclear exchange that leaves every major city and military base in ruins. I'd expect most if not all the US's force-projection power would be gone immediately after a nuclear war. Sure, maybe there'd be aircraft carriers out in the ocean, but with limited ability to resupply, they'd probably lose their effectiveness sooner than later.
The Soviets had no hope of capturing any ports or any territory in the continental US: to do that would mean first destroying the US Navy, and they knew they could not do that. So, their plan focused on the next best thing: namely capturing the part of the European plain they did not control already (namely, West Germany, the low countries and maybe the part of France occupied by the Germans in WWII) then hoping that this new political entity consisting of the USSR augmented by Northern Europe could over the next few decades outpace the US in economic capacity, allowing the USSR (decades in the future) to build a fleet more powerful than the US fleet. George Friedman has talked more than once about this as being the logical goal of the Soviets if there ever had been a hot war between the USSR and the US.
One Soviet war plan that was made available to Western scholars in the 1990s anticipated this invasion of Northern Europe (with conventional forces) starting immediately after the Soviets make a large nuclear strike on Western Europe. Note that tanks crew are basically immune to nuclear fallout provided they are trained to operate in fallout. Also, fallout is not like Chernobyl: it dissipates very quickly so after 3 weeks soldiers not inside tanks will be able to operate in what were 3 weeks earlier very deadly fallout plumes. (Also, the plumes never cover the entire attacked territory, but only about half of it: its just that it is impossible to predict which half.)
This particular plan avoided any attack on Britain or France (and I presume also the US) to make it less likely that Britain and France will choose to use its nukes on the USSR, but hits West Germany, the low countries and NATO airbases in northern Italy really hard to soften them up for the invasion by tanks. In summary, the plan was to grab territory, then dare NATO to take it back or to nuke the USSR in retaliation (knowing the USSR would probably respond in kind to any nukes France, Britain or the US launch at the USSR).
I've also heard experts other than Friedman say that Soviet planners always believed that a nuclear exchange would be followed by war between conventional forces.
I heard years ago from some expert that if the US ever decided that China must be suppressed as much as possible by military means, it would be foolish to try to capture the whole country (i.e., it is too big and too populous for the US to try to do what it did to Japan at the end of WWII) so capturing and occupying its ports (which of course the Western powers held collectively for decades in the past) would be the likely military goal. I figure the same thing is true of Russia. Note that as long as it has Denmark on its side, the US would not even need to occupy St Petersburg: no ship from St Petersburg is getting into the open ocean if Denmark does not want it to. Ditto Russia's ports on the Black Sea and Turkey. I.e., Russia has geographical constraints that give it even less access to the world ocean than China has. In my mind, in any existential conflict with Russia, it would be natural for the US to try to take away what little unfettered access to the world ocean Russia does have.
All that is assuming a limited nuclear exchange is possible, without further nuclear escalation. I find that pretty unbelievable.
> One Soviet war plan that was made available to Western scholars in the 1990s anticipated this invasion of Northern Europe (with conventional forces) starting immediately after the Soviets make a large nuclear strike on Western Europe. Note that tanks crew are basically immune to nuclear fallout provided they are trained to operate in fallout.... This particular plan avoided any attack on Britain or France (and I presume also the US) to make it less likely that Britain and France will choose to use its nukes on the USSR, but hits West Germany, the low countries and NATO airbases in northern Italy really hard to soften them up for the invasion by tanks. In summary, the plan was to grab territory, then dare NATO to take it back or to nuke the USSR in retaliation.
If the USSR nuked non-nuclear NATO, they just assumed their opponents wouldn't retaliate with nukes at all? At a minimum I'd expect the Warsaw Pact countries would have gotten nuked in retaliation. And, IIRC, NATO planners anticipated an attack along these lines, and had nukes lined up to directly target the attacking communist military formations (so those formations wouldn't just be dealing with fallout).
> I heard years ago from some expert that if the US ever decided that China must be suppressed as much as possible by military means, it would be foolish to try to capture the whole country (i.e., it is too big and too populous for the US to try to do what it did to Japan at the end of WWII) so capturing and occupying its ports (which of course the Western powers held collectively for decades in the past) would be the likely military goal.
It's a completely unrealistic goal. If China hasn't been nuked to oblivion, I don't think the US could ever dream to hold its ports against a counterattack (especially given China's rate of modernization and sheer industrial capacity). If China has been nuked to oblivion, the US would almost certainly be wrecked as well, and in no state to send over anyone to hold Chinese ports.
> (which of course the Western powers held collectively for decades in the past)
That was a loooong time ago, when China was basically at a pre-modern technology level and comparatively extremely weak. That's not the case anymore, and China is now arguably the more powerful country (in the ways that matter to such a conflict) than the US.
A nuclear weapon does not do very much to a tank unless it is extremely close. You are better off with a guided munition.
Basically, contrary to what many many chatterers on the internet say, "nuked to oblivion" is not a thing. A nuclear strikes with thousands of strategic nuclear weapons against a country as large as the US, Russia or China temporarily degrades the country's economic and military capacity, then it bounces back. It is difficult to predict how quickly it bounces back, but it does not take multiple decades.
I'm not saying it is realistic for the US to hold Chinese ports in 2025. The expert I heard talk about it was talking many years ago. I figure that if it was true of China many years ago, it is true of Russia today.
The problem with a large military invasion of North America would be its difficulty to disguise. There's a lot of water buffer that prevents border skirmishes from escalating with easy supply routes to keep an invasion running.
You missed an important point which is that Switzerland under the guise of neutrality helped the germans finance the war. For most of the time it very much was not in Germanys interest to invade. If their track record is anything to go by, if they had it probably wouldn't have taken them very long. Very few military lessons can be learned from the Swiss for the simple reason they have never fought in a war. As a Brit i'm obligated to point out that it's a similar story with France because they have never won a war.
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
> Denmark (they have a longrunning dispute regarding an island near greenland)
That was resolved in 2022 by dividing Hans Island. Canada now has a land border with Denmark.
outside edmonton and calgary the vast majority of the canadian population is within 100 miles of the US border. now imagine the logistics of a land invasion from northern canada. Shortest distance would be 1600 miles of wilderness. If you went from alert it would be more like 2500 miles of wilderness and several water crossings. All while you are being absolutely pummeled by US air support. It would be a suicide mission that would make the Kokoda Track campaign look like a boy scout trip.
It is such a different situation in europe. Helsinki is 100 miles from the russian border with road, highway, and rail connectivity and within reach of most of Russias air power.
I think they might legitimately be worried about an invasion from the south.
They should worry more about the international flights from overseas.
Canada is not afraid of an invasion through the north. They fear an invasion of the north. They fear the north itself being taken, not that someone is going to drive south.
> 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.
> Democrats fear and loathe him, so they pursued all kinds of legal actions against him while he was out of office
So maybe he should'nt've have broken laws. Not give them anything to pursue.
> So maybe he should'nt've have broken laws. Not give them anything to pursue.
It's not so simple: 1) everybody breaks laws, and 2) in at least one case those laws were stretched and abused in unusual ways to specifically target him (his felony convictions, which unsurprisingly were immediately turned into an electoral attack). I'm not a Trump fan, but I'm not a Democratic partisan either, and I think that prosecution was really, really gross.
> laws were stretched in unusual ways to specifically target him
Sure one man's campaign finance violations/embezzlement (I can't recall the details) are another man's politically motivated prosecution. That wasn't the only case against the guy though. It was the only case that concluded. Winning the election saved his skin. He was cooked otherwise.
>> laws were stretched in unusual ways to specifically target him
> Sure one man's campaign finance violations/embezzlement (I'm hazy on the specifics) are another man's politically motivated prosecution.
Come on, don't be lazy: it's clear you're totally unfamiliar with the case, and a snowclone dismissal isn't clever. The tl;dr is he was actually guilty of a misdemeanors, which where promoted to felonies through unprecedented prosecutorial maneuvering. And it's pretty clear that maneuvering only happened because the prosecutors wanted to get Trump personally for something, and spend a lot of time looking and strategizing how to do it.
If a prosecutor looked at your conduct that closely, for that long, they could almost certainly nail you (or anyone) for a felony, too. And it's pretty important for a fair and democratic legal system that they don't target individuals like that.
"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...
There were literal statements of annexation. Brushed off by some "that was a joke" but they were made.
Lets not downplay that fact.
I personally can downplay them as a joke because it is a joke. The mostly likely path forward for anything like that would instead a certain oil rich province voting themselves independent and then asking the US for aid or to join.
And, if it wasn't a joke, then that's even more of a reason to consider meeting your 2% NATO agreement instead of just phoning it in.
I can't take anything you say that serious because of the rather extreme bias. 'buy Greenland" I think seize is a better word if your avoiding the term invade.
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.
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.
Did you respond to the wrong comment or is this flying way over my head? I'm not actually sure how you arrived at talking about children needing to learn another language from this article that doesn't discuss language?
No you have a duty and obligation to the society that raised you.
The converse is also true, however.
If, for example, society sees fit to deprive me of my right to security (for instance, perhaps it deigns to throw me in jail if I defend myself against a home invasion), then society doesn't get to demand I give my life for its security.
In this way, it is society that has broken the contract with me, releasing me of my obligations to defend it. Most people who claim "duty and obligation to society" conveniently forget this is possible. By accident, I'm sure.
How much raising of the typical pleb draftee do you think is done by the politician declaring the war? Society is just a collection of people. Even if there is some original debt from being raised that forms a binding contract with a minor that never consented to it, which I don't take on face, it's hard to imagine how politicians declaring a draft trump the senior shareholders of that contract (the family that did the bulk of the raising).
In any case I would hope we would reject the notion that you can become a slave and made to die for the state because you allegedly owe them for something they did for you before you were old enough to even wittingly object or agree to it.
I was raised by my family, thank you very much.
Thereis a huge difference between going to war somewhere and defending when being invaded
abs(ofuckinglutely) you do not.
Your obligations are your choices. Only a slave has obligations without freely chosing them.
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.
I mean yeah we've famously even had full on invasion war plans drawn up in the past that leaked. Canada isn't going to do anything that changes the USA's ability to steam roll over the country.
Yep - the US is bad at fighting insurgencies, but a state military? Over in days. This does not materially change between Canada’s current military vs 5x their current military.
But fighting pissed-off indigenous Canadians? I wouldn’t sign up for that part.
None of this is relevant because the US does not want to own Canada.
https://archive.is/G4oZo
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).
Are you referring to the "Freedom Convoy"?
If so, the capital did perfectly fine breaking it up, they were just politically hamstrung. But otherwise, it took all of an afternoon and a couple horses to break up that nonsense.
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 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 US invading Canada isn't a realistic possibility. Any attempt to do so would trigger a civil war within the US
If you had told me this last year, but replaced "invading Canada" with "sending armed military forces into cities under false emergency declarations", I would've also agreed. But here we are. Which state wants to be the first to defect and pit it's national guard (half of whom would probably desert) against the US military?
>If Canada had serious concerns about the US invading...
It's best course of action would be the same as any individual preparing for a doomsday scenario: make friends with those around you. If the US invades or even just encroaches on Canada, I wonder if every European country would realize they're next. Canada can't beat the US alone, but it's allies could make it an extremely painful and unpopular war for the American public.
> Any attempt to do so would trigger a civil war within the US
What makes you say that?
I could see heavy protests, even violent protests, as it's not something Americans want.
I'm not sure I could envision any semblance of an actual civil war, though, but perhaps I'm underestimating things.
If the United States tries to seize Canada they will do so after a protracted blockade in winter that coincides with air strikes on Canadian infrastructure.
A lot of Canadians talk big talk about some sort of insurgency like Iraq, Afghanistan or Vietnam but all those places have borders with other countries that can enable smuggling of supplies to the resistance.
Canada will be blockaded and after a period of cold and hunger the Canadian people will give up.
How are you going to blockade an almost 9000 km long border(with a huge variety of terrain) and a 243,000 km long coastline? The US can't even stop drugs and people coming through the 3,145 km border with Mexico. This argument also presumes that no Americans would smuggle supplies to Canada which seems unlikely to me because lots of Americans & Canadians are either related or friends.
> What makes you say that?
Because the group of men fit to fight such a war would rather rebel against the government than fight a brother war. From lowest recruit to highest general.
Much as is the case in the US and Canada, families and friends transcend the borders of Ukraine and Russia. That wasn't enough to stop the Russian invasion of Ukraine. While Americans enjoy much, much broader freedoms of expression (albeit that's also under great threat), I wouldn't imagine the reaction from our American "brothers" would be much different from Russian when it invaded its "brother".
Your use of "brother" is apt. There's a Ukrainian joke that goes something like:
"A Ukrainian man and a Russian man are walking together. They happen upon a $20 bill on the sidewalk. The Russian man says, 'Let us share it as brothers'. The Ukranian man says 'No, let us share it equally'".
I guess we'll find out when it happens (or not happens).
The only realistic scenario I can think of when your American "brothers" would go to war across the border is if the Canadian government commences war against its own population. Then I could see the US government intervening, or US fighters independent from the government taking sides in Canada.
how are they handling being deployed to US cities right now? I think they could be swayed into it with the right rhetoric.
The US military being deployed is doing things like cleaning up trash, guarding federal buildings, and otherwise goofing off. There's zero indication they'd be easily swayed. Reserve Generals have directly stated they will defend the state, not follow the Presidents orders.
> 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.
A possible scenario: Alberta votes for independence, and then applies to join the US - similar trajectory to how Texas went from Mexico to the US via independence, albeit likely much more peacefully
Is this actually going to happen? Probably not. But personally I think it is more likely than all the other farfetched scenarios some people here seem to be taking seriously
> The US invading Canada isn't a realistic possibility
Of course it is. Troops would just be moved to “temporarily” occupy shit we want. (Or move to liberate Alberta.) Hell, you could probably do it with ICE agents.
> Any attempt to do so would trigger a civil war within the US
You’d take up arms against the U.S. because it invaded Canada?
Of course you wouldn’t. Neither would others. It would be brushed way as an another atrocity.
> 300,000 poorly trained reservists aren't going to seriously change the calculus
It’s people you have to shoot through. Hong Kong versus Ukraine. Raises the costs from a low-effort political gambit to a real military campaign.
This comment reminds of one on HN from Kharkiv on the eve of the invasion. If you assume something can’t happen or cannot be opposed, that’s indistinguishable from an invitation for an autocrat.
> The US invading Canada isn't a realistic possibility. Any attempt to do so would trigger a civil war within the US
Ok, maybe, but then:
> 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.
Given your earlier claim, surely you must believe that if they defied your wisdom and chose this course of action, they wouldn't be able to do this because they would have to devote a substantial fraction of their military capacity to domestic counterinsurgency efforts, leaving far more limited combat power to actually execute the invasion?
Yes but presumably other NATO members would counterattack, e.g. the UK has Trident missiles capable of significantly degrading the US. Modulo any kill switch those might contain.
> 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.
If Mexico wants to deter America, their best bet by far is to pose a credible insurgency threat. And in that regard, between the number of Mexican nationals and sympathizers in America, the number of guns in Mexico, the national pride of the Mexican people, and their established proficiency with asymmetric warfare (at least from their cartel elements)... I think they've got their bases well covered. Mexicans have the capacity to make an invasion of Mexico be extremely painful to the American public.
But Mexico using conventional military force to deter America? That's completely absurd.
Except America has shown that it would rather chew through all it's resources and capability than accept that "The public here doesn't want you, that wont change, go home and save the effort"
How many people in the middle east did we blow up or kill? For 20 years. For a supposed outcome we had no chance of ever getting. Multiple presidents even.
The deterrence effect of an occupation didn't stop Russia, did not stop the USA, does not stop someone who believes you can just bomb the occupied lands harder until all resistance is "quiet", and doesn't seem to be stopping China from preparing itself for the occupation of Taiwan.
Deterrence not existing because sometimes it doesn't work is certainly... a take.
That Mexico has zero tanks or infantry fighting vehicles or real self propelled artillery might tell you how they've felt about the odds of the US actually invading again.
(IMO they should get some of these things even if there's no chance of the US invading, given how much firepower some of the cartels have.)
I'm ok with you guys taking over. You probably don't want us though.
These people will just be "drone meat" and frankly this feels like a way to fake their NATO commitments.
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.
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.
Can they be allies with neither? They are trying to improve relations with the EU and, most importantly, are members of NATO (where the US is also a member).
Economically not really. China and the USA are the top economies, and China is only going to get more economically powerful, alignment with one or the other in trade at least is inevitable. The EU will be making similar decisions to Canada, and I doubt Canada is going to detach from Europe.
China is completely dependant on other countries for it's economic power (mostly the US) as an export economy.
They're also staring down a demographic crash, soon (10 - 15% drop with 25% of the remaining polution over 65).
They are basically at their peak right now.
It's always funny how people get this backwards: China being an export economy means that the whole world is dependent on them, not the other way around.
> China is completely dependant on other countries for it's economic power (mostly the US) as an export economy.
That is Trump's big lie, but it has no basis in reality. This was the cornerstone of Trump's whole pressure agenda on China, and it imploded quickly when the Chinese indicated "We don't care about the American market, trade is only 5% of our GDP, and we have lots of trading partners."
> They're also staring down a demographic crash, soon (10 - 15% drop with 25% of the remaining polution over 65).
Investments in AI and automation make that iffy, investments that, beyond AI, the USA is not making.
> They are basically at their peak right now.
That is the core of Trump's big lie on China, and again, has no basis in reality.
Real question: Is any serious person advocating Canada abandon the West for China? What's their analysis here? If anyone has an article I can read I would love to do that.
>Real question: Is any serious person advocating Canada abandon the West for China? What's their analysis here? If anyone has an article I can read I would love to do that.
In Canada? Oh yes, many serious liberals are advocating ending with usa and becoming an ally with china. About a month ago: https://globalnews.ca/news/11490896/canada-strategic-partner...
Which resulted in the USA suspending all trade talks with Canada the next day.
But over the last decade, the liberals also have ordered various anti-china divestments: https://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article...
not to mention: https://electrek.co/2025/10/27/canada-rumored-immently-remov...
Which this 'imminent' factor never happened, but what was imminent was right before this was the announcement of various auto manufacturing moving production out of canada. Not really much to do with china, more of a screw you to the big 3.
China and Canada dont have a free trade agreement. The FIPA agreement is likely to be ended soon as it's possible.
Going from the antagonistic to a major trade deal and changing to chinese alliance would be a bizarre change though.
With the qualification that Canada has absolutely no intention of abandoning the West, merely the US. The intent of the government and people is absolutely to strengthen ties to western Europe, not weaken them.
The "West" is the USA. Europe is a joke at projecting any kind of power.
Thank you I will read these!
I mean, Vancouver is heavily financially influenced by China already...
> Canada right now is trying to figure out if the greatest [threat?] to their security is China or the USA.
How do you get China in that list? Canada would most likely be challenged over their stake in the Arctic and Russia is plainly the greatest threat in that regard, not China. Russia has invested a great deal into arctic exploration and exploitation and pretty clearly sees the region as free real estate up for the taking. America too has a large stake in the Arctic, but has developed comparably fewer arctic capabilities than Russia. For Canada to have any chance of repelling a Russian invasion of their arctic territory would require America to help them, which under present American leadership would be a piss poor position for Canada to be in (not only because Trump has suggested annexing Canada himself, but also because he's said similar about Greenland, underscoring America's own desire to take that same arctic territory.)
Now, I don't doubt that China would also like the Arctic for themselves, but from Canada's perspective, the relative threat of China must be less than that of Russia and America.
Russia can't even invade Ukraine right, I think the world sees them as pretty washed up as far as national security goes (besides them having nukes). China is like Russia, except richer, more disciplined, and not dumb. Canada also has a higher GDP than Russia despite having a much smaller population.
Russia's arctic operational capability is world class, exceeding even America by far. America could at least try to engage Russia with submarine warfare and long range missiles, but what could Canada do themselves, muster a few hundred native locals armed with century old rifles? Canada would be forced to go to America for help, which might end up in Canada giving up some mineral rights at least, if not substantial chunks of territory in whole.
Now, however unlikely you think Russia is to actually start some kinetic shit in the Arctic, I think you're crazy to rate their threat lower than China. China being richer, more disciplined and less dumb only makes the relative threat to Canada even smaller. Russia, being relatively dumb, undisciplined, poor and increasingly reliant on oil exports to prop up their economy makes the probability of Russia daring to start shit higher, not lower.
Edit: Some of you obviously don't take this seriously, so here's a question for any of you. If Russia announces they are going to be drilling oil in arctic waters that are nominally Canada's, and declares their annexation of this territory a fiat accompli, what is Canada's move? Demand help from their NATO allies, which may or may not include America? What if America declines and demands the mineral rights to Canadian territory in exchange for chasing Russia off Canada's sea floor? Canada sure as hell can't fight Russia under the ice cap themselves. Without a credible military response of their, Canada must count on having reliable and powerful allies. Russia's desire and motive are clear, they want the arctic oil. China is dangerous in their own way, the PLAN is very dangerous, but if they're going to start shit it will be over Taiwan and if it involves anybody else it will probably be the USN and maybe the JSDF, not Canada. The real threat the PRC poses to Canada is subversion of the Canadian political system, buying and bribing their way through getting anything they want from Canada. And that's not the kind of threat you can counter with military spending.
"Canada right now is trying to figure out if the greatest their to their security is China or the USA."
I very much doubt that is true. Unless the Canadian government get's their information only from "truth" social.
The USA is a fantastic ally! When a small aircraft was recently hijacked from Vancouver international airport, guess which Air Force came to our rescue? Thank you!!
While there’s a lot of news and media about trade wars with the USA, the vast majority 85% of it remains under the free trade agreement. China does not even come close to a free and open market for us and their state sponsored corporate espionage is a real and growing danger.
Neither here nor there, but the plane was hijacked in Victoria and then flown over to Vancouver.
(Only picking this particular nit because, as a Victorian, we constantly live in the shadow of our bigger brother, so I need to shout us out when I can. And I fly out of the flying club that the plane was hijacked from, so it's a story that's particularly close to my heart.)
China didn't strongly suggest that Canada should become its 23rd or 24th province. Also, if the USA keeps dipping its feet into fascism every other 4 year election cycle, every other western democracy is going to start pumping lots of resources into a plan B
>China didn't strongly suggest that Canada should become its 23rd or 24th province.
China ransacked and then sank Nortel.
So? If we are going to talk about economic damage, the USA isn't going to come up looking better.
In what world? We never had free and open access to Chinas markets and they conduct massive amounts of corporate espionage and state sponsored cyberattacks against our companies daily.
They might be more worried about the recent attempts to annex them.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/25/donald...
I'd imagine the threats of annexation are more concerning than the tariffs.
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.
The idea that China is going to ship 300 million troops to Canada seems absurd on its face. There is just no geopolitical scenario where that happens.
This is more about Canada having enough troops to contribute if NATO decides to intervene in a China-Taiwan war.
> China is strong, their standing army is probably 300 million
You may want to check your facts:) The PLA is estimated to be about 3M poeple at the high end of estimates and probably closer to 2.5M people.
Which puts you at 100x too large:)
> China is strong, their standing army is probably 300 million
Maybe 1% of that. Also, numbers are important, but so are equipment, training, and leadership.
> China is strong, their standing army is probably 300 million and if they invaded canada. Our <100,000 CAF will be goners.
Having 300 million people and being able to move them across the Pacific Ocean are two very different things.
Yeah, China's building a lot of landing craft. Are those landing craft capable of a 10,000 mile voyage? I doubt it. Does China have a way of loading and launching those ships 100 miles from Canada? I doubt it.
TBH I think taking land is stupid, at least taking a lot of land is stupid because you are left with a huge cost and people who hate you. The US has already gone past that point and I doubt China wants to go back this route. Taiwan for sure, but the rest of the world? meh.
I wouldn't call Russia weak. They have their strengths, one of which is insensitivity to losses. They can grind 20000 soldiers to get a small town, and nobody cares. Also, total control over population, brainwashing the youth, military-oriented economy.
Also, Russia knows how to operate in Arctic, and has real combat experience that none of NATO countries have.
> To think they'd have a shadow of a chance against NATO is a joke.
Which NATO with what army? Do you think Bundeswehr is combat-ready? Is society in any NATO country (except Poland and Finland) ready to fight?
Russians will easily take Baltic countries, for example, is it NATO? Will NATO commit into full scale war with Russia over Estonia? They don't even have guts to block shadow fleet tankers and shoot russian drones over their own territory. Or forget doing something, they can't even stop buying russian oil and gas, because their population will pay more and be upset.
Ukraine stopped them like a bag of teeth would grind teeth of someone who decided to eat them. West is not Ukrainians, even after all these wake-up calls.
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.
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.
So it looks like they think they can keep the peasants in line by going full police state with drones and ultra surveillance? Good lord.
I respect regular Canadians quite a lot, but damn, Canadian government officials seem like a social experiment in how far you can push people before they blow up in your face.
Degens from up north indeed.
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.
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?
> 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.
> means that it would always resist being part of a larger polity.
More like it can resist in a more cost effective way and that subjugating them is worth less.
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.
Those are examples not counterexamples.
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)".
No need to interpret. The exact same line colechristensen wrote has been used by Russias about Ukraine many times.
After this past year of US political discourse, you'll forgive me for not extending the benefit of the doubt anymore.
> 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.
> 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.
Why does this even mean? Does national identity even really matter? It's like saying Californians are basically Texans for all practical purpose. Men and women are pretty similar. To suggest that they're so similar they may as well be the same is absolutely condescending.
> Does national identity even really matter?
In the context of this whole article aka getting people to join the military it 100% matters. Do you think people are going to fight and die for a concept they don't care about?
>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.
It's condescending to describe it as a quirk, in the sense that it's no more a quirk than anything else in history. In the current climate where this sort of rhetoric has been publicly and visibly used by Russia to justify their invasion of Ukraine, and by the PRC to justify their ongoing pressure campaigns against the ROC, I also don't take this kind of wording at face value.
Wars were fought. People died, generations were involved in discourse about national identity and where borders should be drawn.
The US and Canada were both at one point British properties, so by some definitions, we also used to be unified. Then we weren't.
Is it insecure? Maybe. The reality is that in a shooting war, we wouldn't last very long against the US, in all likelihood. Under these conditions, the least I can do is to push back against rhetoric that undermines our legitimacy as our own country.
Although I don't deny it could've happened, Spain and Portugal were different kingdoms during the Iberian Union (Philip II of Spain was known as Philip I of Portugal.)
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".
We have the opposite problem, where if you live in NYC or LA your vote basically doesn't matter at the national level
Yet, that compromise means NYC and LA can still field an all-volunteer army of people who tend not to be from NYC and LA.
Toronto/Ottawa/Montreal, demonstrably, cannot do that.
Which of the two strategies do you think give the cities a greater chance of survival?
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.
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...