Juno News - What's the future of Canada's military？

00:00:00.000 the other day Jonathan Vance chief of the defense staff announced his retirement from being Canada's

00:00:10.380 top soldier and there'll be a lot of conversation in the days and weeks to come about who will

00:00:15.000 replace them who they're looking for in a candidate but I think we should have another

00:00:19.020 conversation as well a bigger picture conversation about what we want out of Canada's military out of

00:00:25.640 Canada's national defense in the years moving forward and now is the perfect time to have that

00:00:31.180 conversation go big picture talk about the things we actually want to achieve on the world stage and

00:00:36.800 the things we want to achieve at home here in Canada for our own safety and security I got just

00:00:42.360 two ideas that I want to put forward right now one of them has to do with arctic sovereignty a major

00:00:48.000 issue right now and we are dropping the ball on it yes we are getting various arctic offshore patrol

00:00:53.700 ships to be able to go out and explore the arctic a little bit more and the good news is those orders

00:00:58.940 were put in hopefully those vessels will be ready on time on schedule we also need to bolster the

00:01:04.400 Canadian Rangers that force made up of largely first nations Canadians who are out there protecting the

00:01:10.300 northern frontier they have not been all that well served with equipment and more we need to do more

00:01:15.620 for them and we need to bolster them the second is we're talking about China a whole lot more and

00:01:22.280 we're talking about them largely in in diplomatic and economic ways but make no mistake about it

00:01:28.500 China is increasing their military they are increasing their navy Asia Pacific is increasingly

00:01:34.220 going to be a zone of interest for Canada when it comes to our defense strategy it's a good thing that

00:01:39.800 we are rebuilding our shipbuilding we have a major national shipbuilding strategy I think we're not

00:01:45.220 thinking big enough at all we need a much longer term objective I think Canada needs an aircraft carrier

00:01:52.860 likely to be positioned on the Pacific on the west coast now we would be years away from that happening

00:01:58.840 probably decades from delivering that but if we don't talk about it more and push for the issue more

00:02:04.200 now we won't even get it decades from now so those are just a couple of my ideas there are many others

00:02:10.360 that I know people have out there and that are worth airing out and hashing out because I think now

00:02:14.820 with Jonathan Vance stepping down is the time to have those conversations

Juno News - July 26, 2020