Ignoring our leader’s geopolitical belligerence towards Russia has cost Canadians greatly. Hundreds of billions of dollars are being wasted because we failed to restrain our leaders from ousting an elected government and promoting NATO expansion.
A friend recently emailed saying Canada has funnelled $50 billion into Ukraine since the 2014 ouster of elected President Viktor Yanukovich. I’m not sure it’s quite that high but even that figure would be only a part of the cost born by working class Canadians for our leaders’ belligerence.
At the 32nd Ukraine Defence Contact Group meeting yesterday Ottawa announced $50 million to pay for drones. Ten days ago, Ottawa announced $200 million to pay for US arms as part of a deal Donald Trump organized with NATO countries to prolong the proxy war without footing the bill. Canada will thus directly subsidize the US military industrial complex. Elbows up everyone!
At this point it’s hard to see how prolonging the war benefits Ukrainians. More and more videos show people fighting with conscription officers and polling suggests most Ukrainians want to end the war through negotiations. Unfortunately, Moscow seems to be pressing its advantage. With little chance Ukraine will reverse their steady territorial gains, Russia is demanding greater concessions.
Russian actions have, of course, been brutal. The cost born by working class Ukrainians has been terrible. While significantly less, the cost to ordinary Russians has also been great. The cost to the working classes in NATO countries has also been substantial. Youth organizations in Germany have recently begun demonstrating against the creep towards conscription.
In Canada’s case the costs have already been significant and they are rising. Mark Carney’s radical militarist turn is intimately connected to the proxy war. He’s agreed to meet NATO’s outrageous military spending targets (NATO’s 2% of GDP on military is nearly 3 times the proportion Mexico spends on its military and the new 5% of GDP target about 7 times.)
Recently, the government announced plans for a 300,000+ person reserve force. In discussing the plan last week military minister David McGuinty cited a purported threat from Russia.
A leader of the self-described resistance to Trump, former NDP MP Charlie Angus is celebrating what he’s dubbed a “people’s army”. Angus claims it’s a response to the annexationist US president. But McGuinty didn’t mention the US and Canadian military leaders have sought to deepen ties with their US counterparts amidst Trump’s threats.
Angus believes the “people’s army” should work with the Ukrainian armed forces. A longtime member of the NATO Parliamentary Association, Angus is an aggressive proponent of the alliance’s proxy war. He refuses to acknowledge Canada’s (substantial) role in driving the geopolitical tensions behind the war.
As Owen Schalk and I detail in Canada’s Long Fight Against Democracy, Ottawa helped destabilize and overthrow Yanukovich. Between 2010 and 2014, Canada waged a campaign to subvert an elected president who passed legislation codifying Ukrainian neutrality in the geopolitical confrontation between NATO and Russia, which increasingly played out in Ukraine.
At the height of the protests against the elected president, activists used the Canadian embassy, which was immediately adjacent to Maidan square, as a safe haven for “at least a week.” The protesters gained access to a mini-van and other Canadian material. In a story written a year after the coup, staunch militarist reporter Murray Brewster quoted officials from allied European nations accusing Canada of being “an active participant in regime change.”
While verboten today, the NDP subsequently criticized Canada’s role in the coup. According to Brewster, then “NDP foreign affairs critic Paul Dewar was shocked by the recounting of events and demanded the RCMP investigate the security breach. He accused the government of covering up the incident and endangering the lives of not only embassy staff, but Canadian citizens in the country.”
The coup led to a civil war. Afterwards Canada began devoting significant resources to preparing the Ukrainian military, which largely collapsed in the violent aftermath of Yanukovych’s ouster, to join NATO. For seven years 200 Canadian trainers through Operation UNIFIER worked to “modernize the Ukrainian Armed Forces”, noted former defence minister Harjit Sajjan, so the country could join NATO. A 2017 Standing Committee on National Defence report on “Canada’sSupport to Ukraine in Crisis and Armed Conflict” noted that “Ukraine intends … to achieve full military interoperability with NATO members” and that Canada was “actively engaged in assisting” them.
Even former Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chrétien recently admitted that NATO expansion provoked Russia’s war. According to a June Calgary Herald summary of Chrétien’s speech: “He said Putin made it clear his concern about NATO’s perceived encroachment on parts of the former Soviet Union. ‘(Putin said) that was too close for comfort… I discussed that for one-and-a-half hours.’”
To effectively oppose Carney’s radical militarist turn and the spending of billions on war that should instead be paying for public housing and other social programs we must have honest discussions that challenge the stories put forward by leaders to justify reorienting our economy to making weapons of destruction.
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