Commentary
In April 2023, then-Defence Minister Anita Anand
claimed a $400 million National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System provided by Canada was “en route” to Ukraine. But it wasn’t, and still isn’t. So if you’re concerned about instability abroad, our broken government, and the ominous juxtaposition of the two, it’s worth pondering how such a bizarre thing could occur.
Of course, Anand might have just said it to get good press of the sort the initial NASAMS promise produced in January 2023, when Ukrainian President Vlodymyr Zelenskyy duly Tweet-thanked Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for “your true leadership in standing for democracy and human rights.” But it would be too silly for it to have been a brazen lie given how fast such lies disintegrate.
It’s far more likely that when Anand asked if it could be sent quickly, her senior public servants offered vague reassurances, to avoid contradicting the minister or involving her in complex, even contentious policy issues. But then the question becomes how could she have been satisfied with that response, and with not being on top of this file or what was happening in her department generally?
The answer, I fear, is the blithe self-assurance of many politicians including ours that their true leadership and compassion loft them high above messy procedural details and basic facts. Remember Steven Guilbeault touting letters from ordinary Canadians “Jill” and “Bob” thanking him for the carbon tax, and
when pressed his department said they couldn’t be “found”? And now Blacklock’s
reports that “Immigration Minister Marc Miller allowed 807,000 foreign students to work unlimited hours in Canada” and “said foreigners were not ‘taking jobs away from other people’ but never asked his department for data.”
It’s how they roll. Their sublime conviction of their own excellence includes certainty that the facts must support them, so they say so and then rush to the next photo op.
It might sound silly. And it is. But do you really think Chrystia Freeland regards our fiscal situation as a mishandled mess, or the PM considers himself divisive? Or Anand knew before departing defence in July 2023, or her successor Bill Blair knew before reading it in last week’s newspapers, that the NASAMS had not shipped? If so, do you think he was pushing to get it done and knew what was holding it up? If not, why not?
Everyone who follows public affairs, except possibly our defence minister and his colleagues,
knows we don’t have our own advanced weapons. But here’s the billowing bureaucratic fog Blair authorized last week: “A National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System has been purchased from the United States, through a Foreign Military Sales case. Details on plans, including delivery timelines, are still under development with the United States.”
Shades of “Yes Minister’s”
classic Bernard Woolley line that “‘under consideration’ means we’ve lost the file; ‘under active consideration’ means we’re trying to find it.” Or “
Raiders of the Lost Ark’s“ “We have top men working on it right now.” “Who?” “Top... men.”
DND’s unctuous blather sounds reasonable, and the classic passive voice smooths over petty considerations like who’s considering what, or why elementary things like timelines took nine months when even our politicians must know Russia is shooting at Ukraine
now. As Ukrainska Pravda
wrote on Jan. 8, “Ukraine’s Air Force explains mixed air defence results in latest Russian attack: too many ballistic missiles.”
Now you might claim the state of defence in Canada doesn’t say much about the state of government since politicians and citizens don’t take it seriously. Including
having 13 ministers of defence in the last 30 years with no time to master details. But leaving aside similar dysfunction across the policy board, if our political system brushes aside security it’s not a sign that the thing is working properly.
We’re currently in a perilous international moment because we almost always are because our tyrannical enemies chronically regard us as weak-willed. Most grasp our capacities. But they doubt our resolve. Thus in 1941 Japan’s leaders knew the United States would win a sustained war but thought its people lacked the grit to wage one. And the price of failure to deter was high.
As on Ukraine, where Putin believed our endless signals of irresolution. And yes, I initially thought Russia would win quickly but still wanted to send as much Western help as was consistent with avoiding nuclear confrontation. With Ukraine having bloodied the Russians to the point of apparently destroying their pre-war army, leaving the Kremlin scraping the bottom of the recruiting barrel, sustaining aid becomes doubly urgent given the typical conclusions that collapsing Western resolve would encourage, from North Korea to the PRC to Hamas and Hezbollah.
Instead our defence ministry openly operates in a fantasy land where words are deeds, wishes are horses, and questions are impertinent. We must understand why, in order to make it stop.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
