Daydream Notes

But: https://archive.ph/Q8K1W quote: A new report paints Canada’s military police leadership as shutting down complaints, ignoring parliamentary-mandated civilian oversight and bungling investigations to the point where a criminal convicted of attempted murder almost went free. The report by the Military Police Complaints Commission, a civilian watchdog created by Parliament, outlines a deteriorating situation in which the office of the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal has been resisting independent oversight. “The situation escalated from resistance to outright refusal to respect the oversight regime mandated by Parliament,” commission chairperson Tammy Tremblay wrote in her annual report released Tuesday. At times the office of the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal, or CFPM, has shut down complaints into police actions before they could be heard, the MPCC report noted. The CFPM has also refused to provide information needed for the commission to carry out its oversight f...

By 2030 Canada was going to decide what would replace the CP-140 long range Anti-Submarine Warfare [ASW] aircraft. The DND  planned a competition to "assess needs and products", but because America has been complaining to the PM about Canada being shit at natsec, the logical move was to buy some American shit to hopefully shut them up. In an almost singularly odd move, the baksheesh to America was to buy Boeing P-8s, the 737 based ASW aircraft. This move was objected to by everybody Like the premiers of the two biggest provinces asked for a competition, the standing committee on defense unanimously asked for a competition, the Canadian arms industry has been apoplectic to be cut out of not only a major purchase, but a major purchase where Canada is in fact quite technologically capable at, ASW warfare. Which, naturally, the P-8 doesn't use There's also the CP-140 Aurora (Canuk Orion), which is just finishing up a $400 million dollar upgrade. This was to kee...

I'm not quite sure when I realised this, but it has dawned on me that a lot of people do not understand why militaries exist. Perhaps this is part of what happens when you stop teaching civics in school, or the increasing alienation of the post-industrial world from the military sphere. In Canada, at least, I feel part of the story is being in America's cultural shadow. American culture, I think, sees the military as an essential part of its self-identity. While any debate might circle around its use and its size, the existence of a military is taken as granted. This uncritical acceptance means that most Canadians don't really have a jumping off point for discussing why Canada – or any nation – needs a military. So, I thought I'd write a basic explainer as to 'why a military.' While as a Canadian I'm going to be often using Canada as an example, I think the basic framework I'm going to lay out here will work for any nation, since the basic rationales for...

  Current head of CF lied about knowing about another senior officer's sexcrime In other words, it is Monday. But when you dig into the details a bit: Despite allegedly knowing of the allegation, Acting Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Wayne Eyre confirmed Trevor Cadieu as the new army commander following the approval of Cadieu’s promotion to lieutenant general on Aug. 8. In a statement to this newspaper, the Department of National Defence said Eyre only found out about the allegations against Cadieu when he was informed by military police on Sept. 5. But the alleged victim, as well as an email from Cadieu himself, tell a different story. In an email sent to his alleged victim on July 11, Cadieu writes that Eyre had been informed by other officers about the allegations. “The CDS can’t ignore what he’s been told,” Cadieu wrote to the woman, a former Canadian Forces member. “Naturally, as painful as it is to write this, the CDS needs to makes (sic) decisions about my ...

Since January 2021, the Canadian Forces (CF) has been lost in a scandal supercell, which the leadership didn't see coming, but everybody else in the CF and outside of it did. The other thing I can observe: so the Defense Minister is Harjit Sajjan. He was a police detective in Vancouver, and also rose to the rank of Lt. Col. in the Canadian Army. On the one hand, you can see that somebody with lots of experience in the military is the sort of person you want in the role, IE because they should know their stuff. There's a distinct drawback, now obvious: if you come up in these circles, you might have the same blind spots. Things start with the recently retired General Vance. Remember when the smack talk was all about "why did you take so long to say 'actually, maybe CF personnel shouldn't belong to right wing terror groups'?" Gen. Vance investigated for sexual impropriety Naturally:   quote: Vance was also the driving force behind Operation Ho...

One lesson Canada took from the Second World War was that their previous military procurement strategy didn't work. Up until that point, Canada had always relied on buying hardware, like aircraft and ships, from the UK and America. What Canada discovered after following the UK into war in 1939 was that when a major war happens, both those nations are suddenly too busy with their own needs to sell to Canada. This proved a particular issue when defending Canada; for several years, German U-boats could operate in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and off Canada's coast while resources to hunt them were so lacking that America and the UK had to assume aerial anti-submarine patrols until Canada could get its collective shit together.  So at the end of the Second World War, Canada followed a strategy of building some defense industry, and some purchasing from its allies, depending on what native industrial strengths it could utilize. One of these places was surface ships for the Royal Canadia...

Tent of Construction, Quidi Vidi. The warming shed. Vimy under construction. As anybody who uses their garage can tell you, keeping it dry when doing something is a help. On May 26th, the ship with the disassembled Vimy finally entered St. John's harbor. Vickers contracted the Teamster Lester, who hauled the massive shipping crates containing the Vimy and its spares to Quidi Vidi. There the Vickers crew set to work doing what its rivals had done: figuring out how to assemble an aircraft with a full set of tools but none of the structures or jigs, cranes, etc they normally would use, in an open field where the wind blew very cold. A tent gave some shelter, but they still needed a warming shack on the premises. Frequent rain squalls were also cold, and meant all work had to stop to cover completed sections in tarpaulins. It was cold enough that soldering irons warmed in a fire would often cool before they could be applied. Despite the difficul...