An appropriate time to discuss funding for Canadian military

Several are dead and dozens injured in a horrific accident at a military base in Alberta. The incident should spark a debate about the level of funding for and the function of Canada’s armed forces.

According to initial reports, four soldiers were killed in a training mishap that sparked a fire at CFB Wainwright on Saturday. Several dozen remain in hospital in one of the worst military training tragedies in many decades. In 1988 six military engineering students were killed and several injured at CFB Chilliwack when 27 kilograms of explosives detonated prematurely. Similarly, six teens died and dozens were injured when a live grenade exploded at a cadet camp in Valcartier, QC, in 1974.

As per their secretive anti-democratic nature, the military has not been forthcoming with information about the incident. It took them most of a day to respond to journalists about whether the disaster was thought to be the result of malicious activity. And military, as well as government officials continue to suggest the disaster was cause by “fire”, ignoring the (probable) role firing munitions played in the disaster.

As public attention is focused on Canada’s armed force it’s a good a moment to recognize that there are many good reasons to substantially reduce the public resources devoted to the institution. Below are an updated “Top 10 reasons to defund the Canadian military”, which I initially published with the release of my 2021

• Bloated government? Misplaced priorities? The military is by far the largest Canadian government department, employing the largest number and purchasing the most equipment. In 2026 the budget of the Department of National Defence and Veterans Affairs has reached $65 billion, about 35 times Environment and Climate Change Canada’s resources.
• DND has the country’s largest intelligence-gathering capacities. In recent years it has spied on Black Lives Matter, Idle No More and peace activists.
• The Canadian Forces (CF) is “hostile” to “LGTBQ members”, concluded former Supreme Court justice Marie Deschamps in 2015. Members suspected of being gay were systematically purged from the CF until 1992. In the 1960s military researchers and funding played a central role in an effort to develop a “fruit machine” to detect queers.
• DND/CF has the largest PR (propaganda) machine in the country, employing upwards of a thousand “public relations professionals” to influence the public’s perception of the military. In 2021 the military, reported the Ottawa Citizen, established “a new organization that will use propaganda and other techniques to try to influence the attitudes, beliefs and behaviours of Canadians.” Previously the head of CF called for the “weaponization public affairs”, which proposed a plan to induce positive coverage and deter critical reporting. Journalists producing unflattering stories about the military were to be the target of phone calls to their boss, letters to the editor and other “flack” designed to undercut their credibility in the eyes of readers and their employers.
• The CF has been a hot bed of white supremacy. For decades institutional racism was explicit and imposed from above with the force only wanting those of “Pure European Descent and of the White Race.” Despite making up 20% of the Canadian population, visible minorities today constitute 10% of the CF. Unsurprisingly, the CF has attracted many with extreme right-wing beliefs, including an individual who recently shot up a synagogue in Belleville.
• The Canadian Special Operations Forces Command (CANSOFCOM) is a secret army within the army. The government is not required to divulge information about their operations so they can be deployed on controversial missions and the public is none the wiser. Canadian special forces have (probably) operated in Haiti, Bosnia, Rwanda, Kosovo, Central African Republic, Congo, Peru, Iraq, Libya, Colombia, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
• The CF is the institutional embodiment of ‘toxic masculinity’. For example, it wasn’t until 2000 that the submarine service was opened to women. In 2015 supreme court justice Marie Deschamps found a “culture of misogyny” in the CF “hostile to women” with hundreds of sexual assault complaints implicating CF members.
• Canadian warships regularly deploy across the globe from the Caribbean to the North Sea, Persian Gulf to the Black Sea. They also waged war on Libya in 2011, helped the 2003 US invasion of Iraq and supported the 1998 bombing of that country. Canadian warships were also dispatched to force Costa Rica to negotiate with the Royal Bank in 1921, to protect British interests during the Mexican Revolution and to back a dictator massacring peasants in El Salvador in 1932.
• Canada’s armed forces have an immense ecological footprint. They’ve littered the landscape with tens of millions of bullets and shells as well as polluted dozens of lakes with ordnance. They continue to conscript animals in experiments and during warfare. DND is far and away the largest emitter of Green House Gases in the federal government, representing over half of all federal government GHGs.
• The Canadian military has fought in nine wars with only one of them morally justified.

Support Yves’ work. Donate Now.