True Patriot Love - Is Canada Building The Wrong Army？

00:00:00.000 patriotic means looking up for each other and fixing things together true patriotism is being

00:00:13.040 in the country you love surrounded by people you love and great weather being a patriot is being a

00:00:17.840 part of your community and caring for it it doesn't matter who you are or where you're from

00:00:22.160 patriotism is the one thing we all share it's okay to be critical of government and still be a

00:00:28.400 patriot it's gratitude to your country of course i'm a patriot i'm canadian it's my home well

00:00:34.320 actually true patriot love is the mission

00:00:41.440 hi thanks for joining us i'm mike wixson this is tpl media true patriot love tplmedia.ca where by the

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00:01:05.120 watching or listening to this right now we talk about everything that the news kind of brushes

00:01:10.960 over and then we go a little bit deeper and find stories and people that are making a difference

00:01:15.600 to canadian life every day so stay with us today will be no exception brian istid joins us he is our

00:01:22.640 in-house correspondent here on all matters defense and military how's it going brian very well sir how

00:01:29.200 are you i'm good thank you uh of course i am uh battling a storm here in toronto as we record this

00:01:36.960 and uh i'm told that my car is completely buried in the parking lot but uh if i need if i need to

00:01:43.440 i'll call in the military it wouldn't be the first time we've done that over a snowstorm in toronto

00:01:47.600 listen i appreciate you talking with us i'll encourage everybody to go back to our last episode

00:01:53.040 where you and i talked about a number of things including espionage at the highest levels in our

00:01:58.000 military and of all things the most popular comments that we got on that episode were about

00:02:04.000 new uniforms for female uh military members so go back and check that out today's topic 0.98

00:02:10.400 based on an article uh canada is building the wrong army uh i wanted to dive a little bit deeper on

00:02:16.720 that brian yeah for sure thank you so andrew latham wrote a a really great article for real clear

00:02:24.560 defense.com where he mentions just a number of deficiencies where i agree with almost everything

00:02:30.160 he outlines i encourage the audience to go check out this article it's very well uh it's very well

00:02:35.200 written um just there's so many gaps between the training um the geography the mission set

00:02:43.760 uh the technology where there's there's so many holes in canadian military growth or lack of it

00:02:51.840 that he identifies in this article and he's i believe he's almost spot on with the things that

00:02:57.360 he's saying i'm definitely biased because of uh a few years of an inventory background so he doesn't

00:03:02.720 he kind of neglects to talk about how well how well trained and versatile the canadian infantry is in

00:03:09.600 my opinion compared to any other nation that i've worked with or trained with i would put a canadian

00:03:14.240 infantry soldier up against anyone in the world even some special operations communities they're

00:03:18.640 just very well trained the the savvy soldiers anyway um but yeah please check out this article and uh

00:03:24.960 where did you want to go with the direction here well you know what if you don't mind to start with

00:03:29.200 uh you highlighted one uh element uh of our military our infantry and it makes me wonder does that

00:03:37.440 mean that most militaries have a specialty is that just our specialty or is it that's the one area

00:03:44.240 where we shine and in most other areas we're lacking great question i am obviously biased because of my

00:03:53.280 infantry training in the reserve and for sort of a brief period in the reg force but i believe it just

00:03:57.920 stems to the quality of the the the trainer and the trainers who train the trainers and the and that

00:04:04.560 sort of um cyclical system that turns over every year where you get uh infantry soldiers and platoon

00:04:10.480 commanders out in gauge town every year to sort of do your dp1 your sort of your basic sort of battle

00:04:16.400 school um i i was super fortunate to train with uh just absolute gladiators of men and women that were

00:04:25.520 just super switched on able to go above and beyond doing things that i didn't think i was capable of

00:04:30.640 doing and then they're doing it right beside me uh sometimes significantly younger sometimes

00:04:35.440 significantly older it's just about finding the right soldier who can dig deep at the right

00:04:41.200 time and and give you that level of versatility and agility that you need i wish he would have

00:04:45.360 touched on that a little bit in the article but everything else he said is is pretty bang on in my

00:04:49.680 opinion what are some of the other uh key points that he made that you think okay yeah this was right

00:04:54.800 spot on and this is making a difference right now we could be ahead if it wasn't for this uh um i'll

00:05:02.240 pivot a little bit from answering your question specifically to something that i think is really

00:05:06.080 important there's two it's a two-part here so the canadian geography where he mentions is very

00:05:11.040 important so we have so much northern space to monitor in terms of coastline airspace you know what

00:05:18.240 i mean stretching from uh like the yukon you know what i mean all the way up to the arctic so much of

00:05:23.120 that is canada and then you have greenland and we won't necessarily go into what's going on in

00:05:27.200 greenland right now it has nothing to do with this but greenland never knew it was going to be

00:05:31.120 such a hot topic did it wow yeah me neither me neither but um we just we don't have the capacity

00:05:36.960 or the agility to monitor that much space effectively for a capable opponent as russia china

00:05:44.960 um to a certain extent maybe north korea i don't know exactly what their icbm capability is

00:05:49.760 intercontinental ballistic missiles but there's just there's so many holes there that we are

00:05:55.200 lacking just because of the manpower that we and uh that we just don't have so we can't we don't have

00:06:00.960 the enough planes we don't have enough systems we rely heavily on norad and the us infrastructure to

00:06:08.320 keep an eye on all this stuff and if without that we would be completely um no bueno so this is

00:06:15.520 something that uh he touched on and i completely agree with it the second part of this is most of

00:06:21.760 the audience uh that's watching this is probably familiar with the asymmetric battle space of the

00:06:26.320 afghan war maybe the first gulf war obviously we could go all the way back to world war one and world

00:06:31.040 war two but that battle space is not the wars that are happening now you still need to learn that in

00:06:36.480 your battle school because you need to be able to fight a war not the war in my opinion but and the

00:06:42.960 opinion of all the trainers but a capable opponent in a kinetic environment like what's going on in

00:06:48.880 ukraine and potentially in europe right now um we we just have not faced a war of this magnitude or

00:06:55.040 technological advancement or a war of attrition since essentially world war ii so nothing's even close

00:07:01.680 so that the skill gaps um the technology gaps that there's there's so many areas where we have deficits

00:07:08.400 not saying that we are not capable at all there's like i said the infantry special operations community

00:07:15.040 there's super capable men and women that can act as what's called a force multiplier so one of them i

00:07:19.760 would put up against two three four plus of another nation's military depending on where they're from

00:07:24.720 or what their skill sets are so we have these force multiplying abilities or capabilities but there's

00:07:29.760 there's just so much land to cover there's it's now a symmetric fight or an asymmetric fight i would

00:07:35.200 argue on our behalf whereas if i'm not talking about fighting alongside nato or the us if canada

00:07:40.400 was attacked and we had to defend ourselves on our own we would be in a pretty rough spot i i think

00:07:45.280 another thing that he didn't sorry another thing that he didn't touch on the article is that we've

00:07:49.440 had this we've had this leadership or lack of it for the better part of the last decade where i don't

00:07:57.120 even like using the word leader it's more of an activist mentality we have we have folks at the top

00:08:02.960 that are capable of affecting real change that are more worried about optics and tampons in the men's 0.74

00:08:09.040 bathroom than they are about equipping housing training you know what i mean taking care of the

00:08:13.760 people in the military so all of this comes sort of full circle to just a dramatically underprepared

00:08:19.760 nation in my opinion and not for the lack of skills of the very hard-working folks that are there a lot

00:08:26.160 of them it's just there's a there's a serious deficiency in leadership that needs to be adjusted

00:08:32.320 it strikes me as odd that uh you know canada spent roughly 30 billion dollars 40 billion dollars

00:08:38.240 depending on the accounting method that you take a look at on our military uh in the last year let me

00:08:43.600 let me put that up against some other countries uh south korea 50 billion uh united kingdom 71 billion

00:08:49.520 uh 266 billion china 126 billion russia and 895 billion the united states of course we're a far cry from

00:09:01.600 that but one of the things that i'm seeing in this list is um they've spent a significant more uh

00:09:09.200 significant bit more money than we have while we're sending 22 billion dollars to the ukraine to support

00:09:15.440 their army their military and uh our efforts there of course but that's not retained into our

00:09:23.120 defense budget overall which when you think of defense maybe uh in a theater someplace else in the

00:09:29.680 world but when it comes to as you point out uh brian really astutely we have this enormous exposure on

00:09:36.320 the north it just occurs to me that even just budgetarily we're not really putting any focus on our

00:09:44.720 our defense of our own sovereignty of our own uh you know our own safety

00:09:52.240 yeah i i don't even know where to begin to describe the the money laundering that's going on in ukraine

00:09:57.040 right now and the placement of christian forgive me allegedly uh christopher freeland is now gonna

00:10:04.640 i saw a hilarious podcast where someone mentioned uh one of her first pieces of advice would be for

00:10:10.080 everyone in ukraine to cancel their disney plus account to make sure that the money is accounted

00:10:13.840 for and they've got enough to go around which is just priceless that's funny i have to admit i don't

00:10:19.120 want to laugh at these scenarios but it does seem absurd and and so i can understand how certainly

00:10:25.920 people in the military and the canadian public would be like okay well we don't spend anything

00:10:29.600 on military we send money to other people's battles yeah and i just having been exposed to sort of

00:10:39.440 a lot a little bit of a lot i can empathize with the men and women that are still in who

00:10:46.320 are so based on the last podcast that we did and the um the feedback that i was getting from folks who

00:10:53.280 i've never spoken to before i'm able to now the the traction it's getting people are people are

00:10:58.400 reaching out to me and i'm having very interesting conversations with senior leader current senior

00:11:02.160 leadership former senior leadership and i'm not going to out anybody obviously there'd be serious

00:11:07.920 repercussions for some of the things that were told to me and uh they were asked not to be repeated

00:11:13.520 but there is a a severe lack of trust in the current leadership and the prior cds as well

00:11:23.840 wayne air was described to me as arguably i'll say allegedly the worst cds the canadian forces has

00:11:29.600 ever seen and that sort of downhill snowballs continuing under the current cds of uh jenny kerrigman

00:11:36.320 and all of this matters all of this matters in terms of where the money goes who gets it i got a

00:11:43.360 quick update here sort of a pivot a little bit talking to a friend of mine who is suffering severe

00:11:48.720 severe physical problems based on what the doctors now believe is exposure to mold in the military

00:11:55.520 housing that was provided over an extended period of time so now he's undergoing a plethora of testing and

00:12:04.000 sort of experimenting uh treatments just because they're not really sure how to handle how many

00:12:09.200 things are going wrong with this person at once and it's not just the mold that's one of the major

00:12:12.480 contributors that they've identified in some of the testing so i i just i don't know as a junior

00:12:18.160 officer who never had any real staff training i just i'm kind of at a loss of maybe what to recommend

00:12:24.480 other than a complete burning down of the institution replacing it with people who want to

00:12:28.800 build a war fighting um military again and enabling them with the skills they're going to

00:12:34.480 need to be successful in a modern environment that includes cyber you know any potential kinetic

00:12:39.280 the logistics to support all this stuff it's it's it's very complicated and i definitely don't have

00:12:44.240 the whole picture but i'm talking to very smart people that seem to and what they're saying is not

00:12:49.200 pretty uh brian let me ask you this uh here we are we've got a moldy military in some areas to say the

00:12:57.440 very least and you point out something is it time to just restart and build the military from scratch

00:13:05.360 again that sounds fantastical but let me just paint the picture for you or maybe you could for me

00:13:12.080 we're in different times with technology we are in different times in the global communication sphere

00:13:18.240 we have uh the means of uh infiltration and espionage like never before from satellites to the internet

00:13:28.320 that we all access every day from our cell phones into our banking and and beyond the means of warfare

00:13:36.400 have changed dramatically does that put us at an advantage if we say okay we're not going to we're not

00:13:42.880 going to be the military that just does ground war or just has the ability to do engineering on the

00:13:49.440 ground we're actually going to be a high-tech army that is to be rivaled worldwide making us maybe more

00:13:57.200 useful in the battle sphere in other parts of the world where we're required is that a possibility

00:14:04.160 and does that even sound remotely right because i am often very wrong my wife will tell you this

00:14:10.640 me too um but i to answer your question short answer yes i think that is possible i think we

00:14:16.480 need to scrap just disastrous ideas like employing 300 000 public servants in ottawa to be on the front

00:14:24.160 lines uh with a week or two of training i don't know if you've ever taken a stroll through the

00:14:28.720 hallways of the public service sector of ottawa in any pick a building and go through you're not going

00:14:33.840 to find a lot of savvy motivated gladiators in those buildings so hey look i'm looking around the

00:14:38.960 studio here and i can't go throwing any stones at ottawa but i know what you're saying the average

00:14:43.520 person is not ready to go to war not and and and paul hit it right on the head um a month or so ago

00:14:50.880 when we were mentioning that there is a need or there is a ambition for a lot of young canadians or

00:14:56.800 just canadians in general i think there was actually a wide scale of the the ages of people

00:15:01.600 applying but there's a lot of people that have an interest in joining and just because of the

00:15:07.200 the laziness and the lack of follow-up there's so many of these people are slipping through the

00:15:11.520 cracks and i wouldn't be surprised if we're literally being fed psyops from the government

00:15:17.600 funded media of what the numbers are again i've mentioned this sort of briefly before but we're

00:15:21.840 we are not recruiting people as fast as we're losing people so anything you read that says otherwise

00:15:28.640 i would take with a severe grain of salt um does that answer your question yeah it does and and uh

00:15:35.200 you know frankly if if that does put us at a moment at a precipice where we have to say okay

00:15:40.560 we need to revamp this entirely and go in this direction with this kind of funding

00:15:46.160 i wonder if we would get any sort of support for that idea from the current government or any government

00:15:52.160 uh to come into power here in canada uh faced with a military that's in the midst of breakdown you know by

00:15:57.680 the way uh a comment on our last episode somebody to your point somebody put up a note that said

00:16:05.440 something to the effect of you know i signed up as a reservist and i went to my first meeting and

00:16:13.280 i didn't hear from anybody for six months i just i became disinterested and found another hobby

00:16:19.200 and i thought to myself wait a minute nobody followed up he he never got it he said he signed up he got

00:16:24.960 in enrolled he was uh you know all all set up in the system and was never notified about a single

00:16:31.680 course a year and a half went by and he just he just stopped caring in fairness that assuming this

00:16:39.680 is a real person because having spent about a year and a half in the cyber realm of intelligence there's

00:16:45.280 an overwhelming amount of internet traffic and conversation done by trolls and bots it's and this

00:16:52.320 isn't to take away from the folks that are giving genuinely helpful and insightful comments on the

00:16:56.800 videos we it's hard i appreciate that exactly so it's hard to know but let's assume this is a real

00:17:02.400 story if this guy has been in that six months or six months plus or whatever and he's not hearing

00:17:07.280 anything that's that's on him at the same time because or her because you need to constantly put your

00:17:13.200 hand up you need to ask you need to ask for work like you will get noticed you you will have to do

00:17:17.680 some courses that you might not love but if you keep getting checks in the box and you're meeting

00:17:22.560 more people and your network is expanding you you will find things and especially in the reserve where

00:17:28.320 you can i don't i shouldn't speak for maybe what it's like now but 10 10 15 years ago um it was there

00:17:34.560 was still money and there was a lot of keen folks that i met um i'll give another example so i was in the

00:17:39.280 hockey change room uh one morning with um of the base team engaged town uh playing with a mixed group of air

00:17:46.800 force uh and army guys and one of the the gentleman that drove me to the game or sorry the practice

00:17:53.280 that morning was trying to arrange a field exercise where he was going to be inserted via helicopter

00:18:00.560 with sort of just a handshake and the smile of a pilot agreeing to do this and they basically got

00:18:05.600 the okay to do it so it's again if people are not finding work it's because they're not looking for it

00:18:11.440 and they need to look for it and put their hand up otherwise uh just get rid of them in my opinion

00:18:15.520 they don't belong there okay so is that a uh is that sort of a uh general malaise that that might

00:18:23.840 take place uh in other parts of the uh military for example are there people putting their hand up

00:18:30.960 or i'm starting to get the vibe to be honest with you that putting the hand up brings me higher up in

00:18:37.120 the ranks potentially or connected into something that i i'm interested in doing but it's not necessarily

00:18:43.520 going to improve the overall state of of the military what do you think is going to be required

00:18:48.880 between now and us having ourselves defense ready in this country oh wow that's uh unfortunately i

00:18:56.800 think that one's over my head but if i could sort of just speak off the cuff here i i really think that

00:19:03.280 and and this is a direct call out for the current cds she she needs to step down she needs to step down 0.99

00:19:09.120 and identify that she is not qualified for this job after making such an asinine recommendation

00:19:14.000 of hiring 300 000 people who have zero experience or ambition you know what i mean to be in the

00:19:19.520 military what about the hundred thousand people that applied that we let slip through the cracks like

00:19:24.560 maybe we should start there and start sending people to the recruiting center that actually care

00:19:29.520 um again junior officer very little to no staff training um there's there's so much bureaucracy

00:19:38.000 surrounding the problems that exist i paul and i kind of never got around to it but if i can quickly

00:19:42.960 touch on when i was working in procurement to have a capability in the military it first it first

00:19:49.200 starts off as an ability so i was buying guns and i was buying tasers for the military police branch so

00:19:55.840 to equip a military police officer or member with a taser you need to have hundreds of thousands of

00:20:02.160 tasers and even thousands and thousands of cartridges and then you have to have the training

00:20:06.480 and then just in the training alone you will burn through thousands and thousands of cartridges so

00:20:10.800 you have to have this cyclical resupply already on order with the money already approved and the

00:20:16.160 signatures in place so that you this isn't a every time we do this it's the first time we've ever

00:20:20.640 done it type thing right but unfortunate unfortunately what i saw and okay in fairness to the

00:20:26.560 calf and some of the folks i was working with it was 2020 and 2021 or uh yeah 2020 and early times

00:20:33.120 yeah so there was a lot of folks that were not really towing the line but again these these these

00:20:37.680 problems compound based on again just the lack of motivation and leadership being shown by people who

00:20:43.600 are so comfortable to just collect a paycheck and and perform essentially what ends up being military

00:20:49.360 tourism at the rank of major and above to it's just disturbing and i really got disappointed with

00:20:55.680 a lot of the people that i thought i was going to learn from it wasn't my favorite posting of all

00:20:59.920 time that's for sure but but i wanted to get it done and i was um there was a couple folks that were

00:21:05.120 really uh uh punching above their weight there was one lady forgive me i don't remember her name that 1.00

00:21:10.000 had designed this very intricate matrix of equipment and how to allot it and how many they need and

00:21:15.600 everything and i recommended that this lady get a some type of commendation because of how impressive 1.00

00:21:19.760 it was um but those people are too few and far between in my opinion and this nothing short of

00:21:26.000 sort of corruption and laziness is just too toxic with the hope that our military uh the canadian

00:21:34.880 armed forces get some sort of uh relief in the way of budget and that the the most recent

00:21:41.680 moves that we hear about in the news that our federal government is uh putting more defense

00:21:46.720 budget they have a plan in place that our mission is to uh shore up our military it's not just us that

00:21:54.800 wants that to happen we keep hearing this from donald trump uh you know canada can't defend itself

00:22:01.040 they haven't got anything across the top we're not going to have russia as neighbors well

00:22:05.840 is there a place for us in that protection scheme you think absolutely absolutely we we just need to

00:22:14.000 fill these gaps with the people that are trying to get these jobs canadian pilots are well known

00:22:20.560 around the world to be some of the most capable and and savvy pilots on the planet and we just we

00:22:26.160 don't have we've been we've been trying to buy planes for the better part of 10 years maybe more

00:22:31.360 submarines that we don't have ships every ship has a leak in it like we we have barely any tanks like

00:22:36.240 we we have guys that want to do this work and gals that want to do this work but we we're not 0.96

00:22:40.880 enabling them to do it and we're sending all this money overseas to do god knows what with it

00:22:45.760 and i'd rather see it land in the hands of a of someone who maybe doesn't have to live in squalor

00:22:50.080 and end up with some mystery airborne illness because of where they had to live and then they just end

00:22:54.560 up getting out because of the just the super high attrition rate of people that are just miserable

00:22:59.840 because the quality of life is so bad there there are solutions here and canada's known for having

00:23:04.800 very well-trained members and we we just need to somehow dig deep and and stick to that plan that

00:23:10.560 we used to have brian i appreciate this uh listen i'm hoping in the next uh in the next week or so when

00:23:17.200 we chat one of the things i wanted to get to and if anybody has questions or they have comments on this

00:23:24.560 i'd like to talk a little bit about the modern weaponizing of war what we're using out there in

00:23:30.080 the way of weaponry in the modern uh theater of war and so i encourage you to stay with us for that

00:23:36.640 meanwhile brian istid uh thank you so much my man i appreciate your input as always and we'll make sure

00:23:44.160 people can reach out and follow you uh in the instructions and and a link to the article that

00:23:48.800 inspired this as well uh thanks brian we'll see you next time thank you sir appreciate it

True Patriot Love - January 27, 2026

Is Canada Building The Wrong Army？

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