{"id":58705,"date":"2021-07-22T05:56:12","date_gmt":"2021-07-22T10:56:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=58705"},"modified":"2021-07-22T05:56:12","modified_gmt":"2021-07-22T10:56:12","slug":"defund-the-canadian-military","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=58705","title":{"rendered":"Defund the Canadian Military"},"content":{"rendered":"

Defund the Canadian Military<\/a><\/h3>\n
\n

Progressives should be pushing to defund or abolish the Canadian military. But, first we need to stop bolstering its capacity to kill in US and NATO lead wars.<\/p>\n

Wednesday the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute and Canadian Voice of Women for Peace released a public letter opposing Canada\u2019s plan \u201cto spend tens of billions of dollars on unnecessary, dangerous, climate destroying fighter jets.\u201d Signatories include Canadian musicians Neil Young, Teagan and Sarah and Sarah Harmer as well as environmentalists David Suzuki and Naomi Klein. The No new fighter jets for Canada statement is also signed by authors Michael Ondaatje Yann Martel and Gabor Mat\u00e9 as well as sitting MPs, former MPs, city councillors, a Senator, MPP and former UN ambassador. Prominent international figures such as Roger Waters, Daryl Hannah and Noam Chomsky have also backed a call addressed to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.<\/p>\n

The jets are expected to cost about $19 billion but the full life cycle cost of the planes will be closer to $77 billion. These resources could fund clean drinking water on reserves, an exhaustive search of all unmarked graves at residential \u2018schools\u2019 and plenty of indigenous run cooperative housing. Or \u201c$77 billion could turbocharge a just transition away from fossil fuels\u201d, notes the letter.<\/p>\n

While the letter highlights better ways to use the resources, it also points out that \u201cpurchasing new jets will entrench fossil-fuel militarism\u201d. Fighter jets consume large amounts of heavy carbon emitting fuel and their high-altitude release point increases the climatic effect.<\/p>\n

But, the primary reason to oppose fighter jets is their violent nature. \u201cCanada\u2019s current fleet of fighter jets has bombed Libya, Iraq, Serbia and Syria\u201d, notes the letter. \u201cMany innocent people were killed directly or as a result of the destruction of civilian infrastructure and those operations prolonged conflicts and\/or contributed to refugee crises.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Defund the Canadian Military Progressives should be pushing to defund or abolish the Canadian military. But, first we need to stop bolstering its capacity to kill in US and NATO lead wars. Wednesday the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute and Canadian Voice of Women for Peace released a public letter opposing Canada\u2019s plan \u201cto spend tens […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5,6],"tags":[103,1704,5493,31466,4169,553,827,7937],"class_list":["post-58705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-geopolitics","category-liberty","tag-canada","tag-canadian-military","tag-counterpunch","tag-defunding","tag-justin-trudeau","tag-nato","tag-united-states","tag-yves-engler"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58705"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58706,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58705\/revisions\/58706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}