Juno News - November 16, 2023


The embarrassing state of the Canadian military

Topics
attrition crisis James Topp and military protests
Hosted by
Harrison Faulkner
Mentioned
James Topp Gregory Chan Wayne Iyer Dallas Alexander Robin DiAngelo Ben Richards
Alberta Covid emergency inquiry recommends greater protection of civil liberties Freedom wins in Argentina! Is Canada next๏ผŸ

Episode Stats


Length

9 minutes

Words per minute

170.45

Word count

1,659

Sentence count

91

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Toxicity

3

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

The state of the Canadian Armed Forces is so bad that the Chief of the Defence Staff, Wayne Ayer, who oversaw the implementation of unconstitutional vaccine mandates, has to routinely go on national television and tell the world that Canada can t defend herself. And as we speak, Warrant Officer James Topp, a man who, as you know, in 2022 marched across Canada from Vancouver to Ottawa over 4,000 kilometers in protest of the mandate, is currently in a court martial hearing after pleading guilty to two counts of conduct prejudicing good order and discipline.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Just over 100 years ago, Canadian soldiers were the most feared troops in World War I.
00:00:12.000 Canadians were the shock troops, the most lethal trench raiders of all the Allied forces.
00:00:17.000 In short, our enemies feared us, whereas today our enemies can't stop laughing at us.
00:00:24.000 The current state of the Canadian Armed Forces can, at best, be described as dismal.
00:00:29.000 An attrition crisis, a morale crisis, and another $1 billion cut from the defense budget all happening at the same time.
00:00:37.000 The state of the Canadian Armed Forces is so bad that the Chief of the Defense Staff, Wayne Ayer,
00:00:42.000 a man who oversaw the implementation of unconstitutional vaccine mandates,
00:00:46.000 has to routinely go on national television and tell the world that Canada literally can't defend herself.
00:00:52.000 I am concerned about our ratings. I am concerned about our ability to respond at scale and at speed.
00:00:58.000 What are the limitations that you're facing right now with equipment and personnel meaning for what you're capable of actually doing?
00:01:08.000 So it comes down to readiness. And what I mean by that is our ability to respond at speed and at scale with the right capabilities.
00:01:16.000 You know, we can still respond pretty fast, but are we big enough for what the requirement is?
00:01:23.000 And as we speak, Warrant Officer James Topp, a man who, as you know, in 2022 marched across Canada from Vancouver to Ottawa over 4,000 kilometers in protest of vaccine mandates,
00:01:36.000 is currently in a court-martial sentencing hearing after pleading guilty to two counts of conduct to the prejudice of good order and discipline.
00:01:44.000 The disrespect shown to James Topp, a man who gave hope to hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Canadians during his March for Freedom in 2022 at this military show trial,
00:01:54.000 is a perfect symbol of the sad and pathetic state of the once feared Canadian Armed Forces.
00:02:02.000 We're going to discuss what's going on with James Topp and take a deeper look at the embarrassing state of Canada's Armed Forces.
00:02:08.000 But first, drop a like in the video, help us out with subscribing to the True North YouTube channel,
00:02:12.000 and the comment question for the episode is this, is James Topp a Canadian hero?
00:02:18.000 Let me know your answer in the comments, and let's get into it.
00:02:20.000 Quite honestly, it's hard to imagine something more embarrassing for Canada than having Canada's top soldier,
00:02:26.000 the Chief of the Defence Staff, Wayne Ayer, on Remembrance Day, telling the world that he's very, very concerned about Canada's combat readiness.
00:02:35.000 In non-military speak, that just means that there aren't enough troops to defend the country.
00:02:40.000 In fact, the military is trying to fill 10,000 open positions.
00:02:44.000 An internal Canadian Armed Forces briefing from 2022 described the situation as a workforce crisis.
00:02:51.000 The attrition rate in 2021 and 2022 was at 9.3%, up from 6.9% the year before.
00:02:59.000 More troops are leaving, and nobody is signing up. 0.92
00:03:02.000 Maybe the reason that nobody is signing up to the Canadian Armed Forces is because those that do sign up get treated like garbage. 0.63
00:03:09.000 Take, for example, the soldiers that have been stationed in Latvia for a NATO training mission. 0.85
00:03:14.000 Those troops have literally had to resort to buying their own helmets.
00:03:18.000 Oh, and if that wasn't enough, here's a story of Canadian troops going into debt to keep themselves fed while on deployment
00:03:24.000 because the Canadian government isn't able to reimburse them fast enough.
00:03:28.000 I can't understand why nobody would want to sign up and go on deployment.
00:03:31.000 Having to buy your own helmet and equipment and going into debt for food? What's wrong with that?
00:03:36.000 And to make matters even worse with the attrition crisis,
00:03:39.000 Canadian troops are leaving the ranks because they can't even afford to buy a home.
00:03:44.000 They're leaving the military because of a lack of affordable housing.
00:03:48.000 So they're not being reimbursed for food purchases fast enough.
00:03:51.000 They're having to buy their own helmets and equipment, and they can't afford a house when they return to Canada.
00:03:57.000 And just to show our brave troops, the ones that have managed to stick it out this long,
00:04:01.000 how much our government respects their sacrifice and bravery,
00:04:05.000 the federal government cut another billion dollars from the defense budget.
00:04:08.000 And you know, nothing quite like enforcing an unconstitutional vaccine mandate on the troops
00:04:14.000 in order to strengthen our combat readiness, right, General Air?
00:04:17.000 A few months ago, the Military Grievances External Review Committee
00:04:21.000 found that the Canadian Armed Forces vaccine mandate was unconstitutional.
00:04:26.000 A little late, don't you think? Seeing as how thousands of troops were forced to leave the Canadian Armed Forces
00:04:31.000 for not taking the jab.
00:04:33.000 In fact, of course, it turns out that General Wainair was warned specifically
00:04:37.000 that ordering troops to take the vaccine may not constitute a legal order,
00:04:41.000 and it could be challenged later on.
00:04:43.000 But he went ahead and did it anyway.
00:04:45.000 One of the troops that was forced to leave the Canadian Armed Forces
00:04:47.000 after the vaccine mandate was put in place was Dallas Alexander.
00:04:51.000 A JTF-2 sniper who was part of the four-person team with the longest recorded sniper kill in history.
00:05:00.000 So because of a vaccine mandate which has now been deemed to be unconstitutional
00:05:04.000 and which the General was warned about in advance,
00:05:07.000 Canada lost one of the best snipers in the world.
00:05:10.000 Another soldier who was forced to leave the Canadian Armed Forces
00:05:12.000 after the mandates came into place was Warrant Officer James Topp.
00:05:16.000 In February of 2022 in Abbotsford at a protest, James Topp wore his uniform and dared to criticize vaccine mandates.
00:05:24.000 Something, as you will all be able to vividly recall, back then was deeply forbidden.
00:05:29.000 Because of daring to speak out, James Topp was dishonorably discharged from the military.
00:05:34.000 But instead of just sitting around and doing nothing, James Topp took his protest nationwide.
00:05:39.000 He stood up for millions of Canadians who lost their way of life, who were unable to put food on their table,
00:05:45.000 who basically lost their right to do everything they were promised they could as Canadians
00:05:50.000 because they didn't take a vaccine.
00:05:52.000 James Topp marched across Canada, embarked on the March for Freedom,
00:05:57.000 4,000 kilometers from Vancouver to Ottawa to raise awareness for Canadians who just wanted to live a normal life.
00:06:05.000 Look at these scenes of Topp marching and walking his way through Canada.
00:06:10.000 Thousands of Canadian flag-waving patriots waited for James Topp at the War Memorial in Ottawa
00:06:16.000 as he finished his monumental march.
00:06:19.000 Topp brought hope to millions of Canadians and was a symbol for the world of what the best of Canada really looks like.
00:06:27.000 In Topp's march across Canada, he displayed the traits that made our boys the most feared soldiers in World War I.
00:06:35.000 That same courage and conviction that put this country on the map.
00:06:39.000 But how was James Topp treated by the legacy media and the left in this country?
00:06:43.000 He was accused of being a racist.
00:06:45.000 In fact, one journalist even accused him of being a white supremacist.
00:06:49.000 And today, as he is learning his fate for daring to speak out and speak up for the rights of Canadians,
00:06:56.000 he is being labeled as an anti-vaxxer.
00:06:58.000 And to see what the military really thinks of James Topp and his march for millions of Canadians,
00:07:03.000 look no further than the quotes coming from the prosecution in his sentencing hearing.
00:07:08.000 Prosecutor Major Ben Richard told the court-martial that Topp's actions could have spurred protests similar to the storming of the United States Capitol on January 6th, 2021.
00:07:21.000 They're literally saying that Topp's peaceful march across the country could have created a January 6th moment.
00:07:28.000 They even found a Lieutenant Colonel willing to bash James Topp in a written statement submitted to the court.
00:07:33.000 According to Lieutenant Colonel Greg Chan, James Topp's protest hurt morale and recruitment into the force.
00:07:41.000 When asked if Chan had any evidence to say that Topp's historic march across Canada hurt morale,
00:07:47.000 well, turns out Chan had zero evidence for that claim.
00:07:51.000 I'm sure it made for some good headlines in the legacy media, however.
00:07:54.000 Yes, it's James Topp's fault that nobody wants to sign up for the military.
00:07:58.000 It's not people like Greg Chan who are putting people off. Surely not.
00:08:02.000 It's definitely not the military hosting drag queen bingo nights for the low recruiting numbers.
00:08:08.000 That's definitely not what's driving the attrition crisis.
00:08:11.000 Or definitely not the critical race theory training sessions that soldiers are forced to sit through,
00:08:16.000 where they are recommended to read books like White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo.
00:08:21.000 Or what about the Department of National Defense workshops titled
00:08:25.000 Weeding Out Xeno Racist and White Supremacist Elements from the Canadian Armed Forces.
00:08:31.000 Workshops about weeding out Xeno racists in the Canadian Armed Forces are definitely not the reason for the attrition.
00:08:38.000 It's James Topp and his protest.
00:08:40.000 Maybe the Canadian Armed Forces just need to create more recruiting ads like this one to try and get more transgenders to join the forces. 0.99
00:08:49.000 I knew that I was different. I was always, I always felt more comfortable with, with feminine forms.
00:09:00.000 So it's something I worked really hard to suppress. It's something I worked really hard to hide.
00:09:06.000 I didn't let people into what I was wrestling with, but I found ways to express myself in other ways which were safe.
00:09:15.000 Even opening up the ranks to permanent residents, non-Canadian citizens, which is what we're doing right now, by the way. 1.00
00:09:21.000 Take that in. Non-citizens of Canada can join the Canadian military.
00:09:25.000 Even doing that hasn't solved the problem.
00:09:28.000 As General Wayne Eyre says, he's still very, very concerned about readiness.
00:09:33.000 What a shocking disgrace all of this really is.
00:09:37.000 All right, everyone, that's going to do it for us today on the show.
00:09:39.000 Thank you so much for tuning in.
00:09:40.000 My name is Harrison Faulkner and this is Ratioed.