MMMike said:
We already have a presance in the North. We also have artic communities and they are apart of the electoral system. We also have Alert and yes we could push up survelillance, but not to spend more then we'd have to. It's not like we are prepairing for people to take away large chunks of our land. The Vietnamess arn't going to land on Baffin Island. I think Harper is nuts ont his issue. I know no other territory other then the hans which Canada may or may not lose and this land has been in dispute for over a hundred years. wheres the real threat to throw millions at?
There are vast territories up there that we are not patrolling. There have been a number of foreign ships or submarines that have intruded into our seas. You don't think they will, but unless we beef up our presence there other countries can and will start claiming the Artic as their own, or more likely, international waters.
Except that we are constantly patrolling. The Canadian Rangers - Inuit and other locals who are members of the Reserves - provide a constant military presence, as well as continual Air Patrols from Orions flying out of Edmonton and Bagotville.
I like Harper's proposal, and think that it is long overdue. It ignores the facts however. Last summer we conducted an exercise in the Arctic. A couple of ships from Halifax, a group of Army helicopters and toops from Edmonton, and the Canadian Rangers participated. The lessons learned were that we are woefully unprepared for any incursion into the Arctic - we simply can not cope for all the hardships we could encounter up there, and that was during the summer. This was the first Arctic exercise conducted by the CF in probably 40 years and exposed our weaknesses very clearly. We need Ice-breaking capable ships. We need helicopters, aircraft, communications equipment, and other equipment capable of coping with at least an Arctic summer. Our troops are well trained but coping with the highly variable conditions in the Arctic stretched their training and without the aid of the Rangers we could have really lost some people. Only the Rangers really came out of it good, and they highlight the need to expand their capabilities as much as possible and interact with soldiers from the south to a much greater extent.
Harper's suggestions also ignore the reality that the forces are faced with right now. The present government expects the CF to meet all of its present foreign commitments even expanding those commitments, and meet our domestic commitments including the expanded security role after 9/11, AND train new personnel who we are expecting in greater numbers because the recruiting restrictions have been lifted. Harper's government would expect all of that while expanding our role to manning more bases in the North as well as the rest of the country. I'd like to know where he's getting those drugs that he is smoking because they must be pretty good.
