Increased defense spending and better relations with the U.S. were key planks of the Conservative Party's winning election campaign last month, amid a national debate in recent years over whether Canada's role in global affairs has diminished, including books with titles such as ``While Canada Slept: How We Lost Our Place in the World'' by Andrew Cohen.
Canada has the smallest population of any of the G-8 countries, and only Russia has a smaller economy.
Over the past year, Flaherty's predecessor, Ralph Goodale, sought to be taken more seriously by the club's bigger members by underlining the potential for Canada's oil reserves to lower energy prices and curb the industrialized world's dependence on the Middle East.
Crude Production
Canada's oil output is projected to rise to about 4 million barrels a day in 2015 from about 2.5 million barrels today to make the country the world's fifth-biggest producer of crude, according to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000082&sid=aiy2yN5LKCn4&refer=canada#
[Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on February 12, 2006]
Note: http://www.bloomberg.co...
Canada's New Focus On Defense May Raise G-8 Clout
Posted on Saturday, February 11 at 10:46 by jensonjContributed By
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Its this quote about "global governance" that bothers me the most. We know that all of the major Canadian political parties favour an increased military presence around the world to help fight the bogus "war on terror". That in and of itself is bad news. But even worse is the growing consensus among the global capital imperialists that the globe needs to be governed by one body, and that the G8 or possibly the UN is tagged to be that governing body. Canada is apparently up to speed and willing to go along with this, staging deals in the back rooms and making sure that the citizens are not aware until it is too late.
One world, one government, few shareholders, many slaves. Heil!
The one thing this article doesn't even hint at is that the Harper government could fall at any given moment. I wish they would include that because then I'm not so humiliated by the fact that we have such idiots running our country and that many of us did not elect them. (I'm sorry non-Bush voters in the USA)
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"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music." Friedrich Nietzsche
And yet we already spend a fair amount of our money on our military, but as we see some want to increase that. For what I ask? To fight terrorism? A standing army is rather useless against terrorism. But that clearly is not the point, it's $$. While Canada may not be tied down by the shackles of the military industrial complex, there are enough people in powerful positions, who with their vested interests, want to see this through. Not for our collective benefit of course, but for their own bottom line.
So to achieve their goals, they wrap up the 'needed' increase in spending and militarization of our society with scare tactics, lies and half-truths.
And my final thought here - what they hell are we going to go spend more money for, and on what, when we have not even had a discussion as to what we want to do with our military? Are we peacekeepers/makers, follow NATO, follow the UN, or some combination there of. We have not had this discussion, so it is absolutely useless to go spending money on a military that we don't even have a clear goal for.
Screw raising our G8 clout. Most of the G8 are busy arming themselves against their own national best interests, while their citizens see their infrastructure break down, their schools age, their health systems deteriorate, and their standards of living drop. If we want to raise our clout we should return to our Pearson era standing of doing what is right for the world, and not what is right for multinational corporations and the already wealthy.
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If there was ever a time for Canadians to become pushy - now is the time - for time is running out on this nation called Canada.
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"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music." Friedrich Nietzsche
We pride ourselves on our Peacekeepers, then how about making sure they have the best possible gear available, when and where they need it.
Standing armies stationed at home can be readily deployed for service in areas struck by natural disasters such as the ice storms that hit central Canada some years ago.
We have arguably the world's longest coastline, how about buying some old USAF B-52's and refitting them for high altitude ocean patrol and surveilance against smugglers and people trying to sneak into the country using small boats? With high efficiency turbofan engines, range would be increased greatly.
Just a couple of ideas off the top of my head for a purpose built military.
As for foreign wars, we'd only go in as Peacekeepers with the following condion: We will not fire first or start a fight, but we will return fire when fired upon and finish any fight anyone cares to pick with us. If the UN cannot accept those terms we stay home. Period.
No more Somalia disasters for us.