Lieutenant general Michel Mesinov joins me to talk about the state of the Canadian Armed Forces, and why it needs to be put back together. He served for 35 years in some of the top NATO appointments available to a Canadian, and they used to love him for it. Two years ago, he received the Vimy Award, which is awarded to someone who has made a significant and outstanding contribution to the defense and security of Canada.
00:00:00.000Good evening everybody and welcome to Hannaford, a weekly politics program of the Western Standard.
00:00:21.960It is October the 14th, 2024. Happy Thanksgiving. Underfunded, under-equipped, and in the last few years undermined by ideologies hostile to military virtue, this country's armed forces have for this liberal government been an eternal second thought, or third, or fourth.
00:00:41.740They have also been treated as a social engineering laboratory to the detriment of operational effectiveness.
00:00:51.960With me today is somebody who has been vocal about this issue, and cancelled as a result.
00:01:00.240I'd like to welcome Lieutenant General Michel Mesinov. He joins me today with his wife Barbara, also a retired Canadian Armed Forces officer.
00:01:09.720And we're going to talk about how deep is the rot, and how the Canadian Armed Forces can be put back together.
00:01:21.960Sir, Madam, you've both had stellar careers.
00:01:25.860Let me just quote from what they say about you here.
00:01:31.920You served for 35 years in some of the top NATO appointments available to a Canadian.
00:01:38.440You're a soldier's soldier, and they used to love you for it.
00:01:40.940Two years ago, they loved you so much that you received the Vimy Award, which is awarded to, and I'm quoting here,
00:01:48.340a Canadian who has made a significant and outstanding contribution to the defense and security of Canada and the preservation of its values.
00:01:57.900So, in Hollywood terms, when you accepted it, two years ago, you gave a speech, however, that told a few home truths about how government policy was hurting the Army, the Navy, the Air Force.
00:02:15.360And you called out the Department of Defense, and you called out the Department of National Defense.
00:02:23.260Now, you've written a book about that, and we want to talk about that and what else is in the book, which I think is a reflection on the state of Canada.
00:02:31.940But first, you were there getting this award.
00:02:35.420What did you say that upset the establishment so much?
00:02:41.080I mean, the first thing I would say is I talked about the state of our nation, and I had been, for many years, unhappy with the way our nation was proceeding.
00:02:51.820And some of the things I said, I mean, they were my opinion as a Canadian.
00:02:56.300And the fact that I was canceled for it, I mean, obviously shows that people disagreed with my views.
00:03:05.280However, I also think that many others agreed.
00:03:07.960And I talked about the complacency of Canadians, about the lack of leadership, the lack of courage in our leaders, in our current political leaders and other leaders.
00:03:19.280I talked about service and the honor of service and the need for leadership.
00:03:24.600You know, and I went through a whole bunch of different issues.
00:03:27.400But as I say, I was speaking as a Canadian.
00:03:29.740I was given this platform by receiving this award.
00:03:33.120And I thought this is my chance to actually voice my opinion.
00:04:16.940Can you just characterize for us the effectiveness of the armed forces as they are today compared with what you knew when you were serving?
00:04:25.720Well, first of all, this is not a problem that just started today or since I left or whatever.
00:04:33.580The Canadian Armed Forces have always, in my view, been underfunded and undersupported.
00:04:40.980And you described them like that at the beginning.
00:04:43.440The thing you didn't say was underappreciated.
00:04:46.180And I think that is one of the things that, you know, Canadians love their armed forces when they come out during a crisis or when they're out there on the world stage doing something that Canadians appreciate.
00:04:59.840But otherwise, the government and not only this current government, governments before have always had trouble giving them enough funding to be able to be operational.
00:05:11.460On top of what's going on now, and I've described it before as a perfect storm.
00:05:17.880Because the world is much more dangerous today than it ever was.
00:05:22.720You know, not only the technology advances and AI and quantum computing and all that stuff, but we've actually got state-on-state conflicts going on right now in parts of the world.
00:05:34.620And Canada, in my view, is undefended.
00:05:37.620So it's underfunded, underappreciated, and our country is undefended.
00:06:12.020Well, it's, obviously, you have married somebody who has also given their career to the service of their country through the armed forces.
00:06:23.520Many of the things that I think we're talking about are aimed at the advancement of women.
00:06:29.440So maybe, Barbara, may I ask you, how do you view some of the initiatives that are coming out of the Department of National Defense and also Department of Veteran Affairs when it comes to memory and honor that you have observed?
00:06:43.960Well, I think that what the armed forces is doing now is they've lost their way at, you know, their objectives in recruiting, this idea that there has to be a certain percentage.
00:06:59.500And I think it's 25 that they've been aiming for to have 25% women in the military.
00:07:36.440And number two, these arbitrary quotas that we set up, whether it's women or it's, you know, LGBTQ minorities or the special interest groups,
00:07:47.460what we do when we focus on them is we reduce the standard.
00:07:53.180And I know that that's not going to sit well with a lot of people, but we do.
00:07:56.720We did it even in my day when we started, and women are going to carry packs.
00:08:07.840But then who carried the other 20 pounds?
00:08:09.880So this idea that men and women are interchangeable is stupid.
00:08:13.740The whole idea of the military in recruiting should be meritocracy.
00:08:17.460And if you reinforce meritocracy and get rid of these arbitrary quotas, then you're going to have a force.
00:08:23.560And you're also a fighting force, a capable force, and you're also going to appeal to the people who want to be in the military.
00:08:31.700Changing things so that a man or a woman can take a man's place, it's not helping us.
00:08:36.660And you can see the recruiting numbers since we started this experiment, I don't know, two years ago or three years ago,
00:08:41.880when we had that culture, the chief command and culture, the recruiting numbers are abysmal.
00:08:49.840And so when are we going to say, okay, that's enough, this experiment didn't work, let's go back to building a military that we can be proud of,
00:08:57.640and that the people who want to serve will be able to serve and not be placed, put at the bottom of the list,
00:09:02.960because they don't fit one of those little quotas that they've established.
00:09:06.420That doesn't mean that you have to be, you know, refuse to be inclusive.
00:09:09.800I mean, I think anyone who wants to serve can meet the standards, should be able to serve, and, you know, should be respected,
00:09:17.020and they should respect the others as well.
00:09:19.160However, I think what you could call it is inclusive meritocracy, where, okay, the best, you know, you recruit the best,
00:09:25.520you recruit in those areas that you know you can get the people.
00:09:29.440You talked about the 70,000 people, okay, so the armed forces completely with regular and reserve is 100,000, let's say.
00:09:35.980Right now, the word is that we're missing something like 16,500.
00:09:40.560I believe it's more than that, but in World War II, when a unit lost 15% of its personnel, it was declared non-effective.
00:09:48.480So you could actually say the armed forces are currently non-effective, and it's then, it's not just the people you're missing,
00:09:54.900it's the type of people you're missing.
00:09:56.860You're missing that middle strata there of warrant officers and sergeants, captains and majors,
00:10:01.760who've all left because they're pissed off, by the way.
00:10:04.260That's why they're gone, a lot of them.
00:10:07.440They find a lack of leadership, lack of courage.
00:10:10.740Changing the dress regulations and allowing man buns and fingernail polish and all that stuff,
00:10:17.500that has pissed off more people, I think, than it actually has attracted.
00:10:21.060So you're losing these middle managers, and you're recruiting at the bottom,
00:10:25.400you're recruiting young men and women who will take 10 years, 20 years to get to that middle management.
00:11:23.760The military responds to civilian direction.
00:11:26.900The military is under civilian control in Canada.
00:11:29.500That's a democracy, and it's a great thing and everything.
00:11:32.680However, when the military is forced to have these quotas or to say, okay, we're going to do an experiment, try to get the whole diversity, equity, and inclusion program into the armed forces,
00:11:46.360and we're going to put aside meritocracy to get more of these people from special interest groups, that's what happens.
00:12:08.700They don't get the leadership to make them the best.
00:12:11.400And I'm sure that those you saw there, yeah, they were pretty tough guys, and they went to war, and we lost young men and women.
00:12:17.600And so our country, you know, sent our brave men and women out there, and not only did we lose a bunch, a lot of them came back sick, injured, injured both mentally and physically, and it's, you know, we need to look after them.
00:12:34.460And you wanted to talk about veterans.
00:12:36.580Well, let's get into it because, you know, our veterans are being treated very poorly sometimes.
00:12:41.840In your remarks at the Vimy Award, you spoke of the military contract, that is, the understanding that should exist between those people who put on uniform and are prepared to serve to the utmost, and the people who they serve and protect.
00:13:01.760Could you just elaborate what that contract looks like to you, and how we are failing in that today?
00:13:10.540I'm smiling because my wife sometimes tells me I'm pontificating, but really, I describe the moral contract as the contract between Canadians and their military.
00:13:22.280Okay, so the Canadians are represented by their government.
00:13:25.580The military is the men and women who decide that they're going to serve.
00:13:28.640A contract implies an arrangement that one side agrees to do something while the other side agrees to do something.
00:13:36.400So the moral contract is that our military men and women, they accept to go off and do the things that ordinary Canadians are not doing.
00:13:43.940They accept to go and fight for our values, fight for our country, help our country, even in Canada and domestically and everywhere.
00:13:52.160They accept to do that at the price, if necessary, of their life.
00:13:56.720So that's called the unlimited liability contract.
00:14:00.600So that's their, they accept to do this on our behalf.
00:14:03.220Now we on the other side, Canadians on the other side, their side of the contract ought to be, should be, we're going to give them everything we can to make them as successful and as protected and as safe as possible.
00:14:18.020That means we're going to give them the best leadership, going to give them the best training, the best equipment, the best education that we can.
00:14:25.880We're going to make them as successful as we can.
00:14:27.820So just look at how now that contract is broken.
00:14:30.680Our men and women still agree to go and do this, but they ain't got all the good stuff.
00:14:35.560They don't have the best training, the best equipment, the best leadership or education to be able to do those things.
00:14:41.940So I'm saying that moral contract is broken between Canadians and their armed forces.
00:14:46.680Mr. Harper, the former prime minister, put it very well, as I recall, when he talked about giving the armed forces the equipment they need and the respect they deserve.
00:14:59.220That was his understanding of the contract.
00:15:07.700And the issue becomes then as a politician, are you willing, do you have the courage to actually tell Canadians, well, we are going to spend more on the armed forces.
00:15:18.440It's going to cost more money to make them as successful as possible.
00:15:21.900And unfortunately, when you compete against other social programs, well, you can't really have social programs if you've got somebody else's army in your backyard, right?
00:15:31.440I mean, let's face it, so the first thing should be to protect, to enable our armed forces to be able to defend us.
00:15:39.120And so you need to make choices, and you need to have the courage to do that.
00:15:43.380This current government does not have the courage.
00:15:45.600That's why I said our armed forces are underappreciated.
00:15:49.700And frankly, it's been that way for a long, long time.
00:15:55.260I'm going to direct this one to you, ma'am.
00:15:58.000Is this a lack of courage on the part of the government?
00:16:03.180Or is it that they actually not only don't care about this contract, but they actually have a very different intention for the armed forces?
00:16:16.160That they want to, well, we were talking about the social engineering aspect of it.
00:16:22.720Is it that they lack courage or they don't want to?
00:16:25.440I tend to think that they don't want to.
00:16:28.540I tend to think that it's not important to this particular government that, and they use the military not as a force that it's meant to be to look at.
00:16:38.980They just, they foist on it, their ideals, their radical progressive ideas.
00:16:43.180And they, I don't know whether they just assume that we have nothing to worry about.
00:16:47.780The Americans will look after us, which seems to be a big assumption that people have.
00:16:51.800But they have certainly stripped the military of all its pride and its dignity.
00:16:56.540And they almost seem hell-bent on destroying it in some ways.
00:17:02.720You asked me about the sexual harassment side of it, Mr. Hanford, and I didn't answer you, and I apologize.
00:17:06.800But this witch hunt that started, and I'm going to call it a witch hunt because that's what it appears to be.
00:17:12.660And I have spoken on this before, and I've been accused of victim shaming.
00:17:21.580And just as I don't deny that there are predators and bad guys in uniform like there are in every other organization.
00:17:28.460And yes, these people, these predators, we should seek them out and we should, you know, draw and quarter them, as far as I'm concerned, and get them out of there.
00:17:36.900But this glee upon which they jump on these accusations, and if you were to have no idea of the military and you were just to watch the legacy media or mainstream media,
00:17:48.880you would, the assumption would be that every Canadian, every male in Canada that wears an armed forces uniform is a predator, is, you know, a misogynist, is just like a horrible person.
00:18:00.620And in my experience, that is absolutely not the case.
00:18:04.040Like the vast majority of men that I served with were good guys.
00:18:08.820They believed in what they were doing.
00:18:11.260And, you know, people will say, well, you know, didn't something awful happen to you?
00:18:15.360And there were comments that were made.
00:18:17.040And I will tell you, honestly, that, you know, how did they, how did you react to that?
00:18:21.820And I, a lot of the time, before I even decided how I was going to react to that, my buddy, my comrade beside me, male comrade, would pipe up and say, yeah, hey, that's not cool.
00:18:32.300So this idea that, that if something bad happens to you in the military as a woman, there's nowhere to turn to that every single man you work, that you're working with is as bad as the predator.
00:18:45.380And then part two of that is that when an accusation is made, boy, we go after the, the, the person and, and his life is over.
00:18:54.480And even as, when it turns out that he's found not guilty or, or there's, or the charges are dropped or there's not enough evidence to, to, to prosecute or it doesn't matter.
00:19:06.020And you can look in the news for it, for the list of, of, of our senior leaders who are finished because an accusation was made and not proven.
00:19:13.780And so I have a hard time with that too.
00:19:15.060We need to look after, I mean, our charter of rights, you're supposed to look after the accused, you know, you're innocent until proven guilty.
00:19:20.920And that just doesn't seem to be the case in the military.
00:19:25.040Well, I'm told, ma'am, that there was a very large increase in the number of complaints after a fund was established to pay out victims who proved their case.
00:19:39.940Could you talk a little bit about that?
00:19:41.800I, I really don't think I can, that, that came out, that came afterward.
00:19:47.080I, all I can tell you is that in my time in the military, there weren't very many of us and you would think I would have heard more or seen more, observed more.
00:19:57.320And I did not, I did not, not on that scale that you see here.
00:20:00.980And, and if there was a problem, usually that problem was dealt with.
00:20:04.320We have, you know, military police and we have, there's a multitude of avenues you can go to for help.
00:20:22.440When I look at, at how far the young men and women are today, I, I find it astonishing to believe that there, there are that many cases of that kind of harassment.
00:20:52.060But again, you know, perhaps it's my memory now, but when I go back to your ladies, the complaints that we usually had were, I think what most police forces have.
00:21:00.640They were domestic complaints, you know, the, like a, a, a couple and a domestic complaint there.
00:21:06.280If there was, if there was a predator case like that, he, it was dealt with.
00:21:14.280And I, I don't, I don't, I didn't, I didn't come across the, the Russell, Russell Williams case, like something like that, a predator that was sought out.
00:21:36.580So you would think that perhaps it would be easier for one of us to be targeted, but I did not see it and I did not experience it.
00:21:43.540And I mean, knowing, knowing Barbara, I mean, obviously we've been married for, for over 20 years and, and I, you know, I think she would have been the first person to, you know, go after these guys.
00:21:55.100I mean, it would have been, you know, and, and when she says, I, I just, you know, didn't see it and, you know, and those instances where there was misbehavior, they were dealt with immediately either by her buddies or, or by the, by herself or by the women themselves who also said, Hey, you know, and most, I think most of these predators are cowards as well.
00:22:14.480And if you kind of rebuff them quickly, most of them will back off, but I mean, it's, it's, it's horrible what's happened.
00:22:21.460And I think the whole question of reparations as well, in terms of, you know, looking after those that are found not guilty, who, you know, we need to do a better job and the armed forces need to do a better job.
00:22:34.860Like, I mean, this, I don't know, it's a phenomenon of this day and age that it's, it's almost like, you know, you want to wear a victim's cloak, like you want to be a victim.
00:22:44.120And I, and that, that bothers me to no end.
00:22:46.760I mean, you know, women of my generation, we made our way and we did some fighting and we got to where we were.
00:22:53.620And now to be suddenly, I need, you know, I need trauma leave because someone said, well, you're looking hot today.
00:22:59.400Like, come on, like we need to, we're, we're not doing the women today.
00:23:03.400I don't think we're doing us any favors by, by jumping on the victim's bandwagon and not fighting for yourself.
00:23:10.240I think that has to be, and it's promoted this to be a victim.
00:23:14.660It's almost like it's, it's something that is coveted if you can prove you were a victim.
00:23:18.420And I don't just mean in the military, but it seems to be the way it is.
00:23:21.880And again, I blame the radical progressives for this, that they have, you know, it's, it's not an inner strength and what is, and, and it's the responsible, taking responsibility for yourself and your actions and pride and all of those things.
00:23:36.340I think we veered off that path and we need to get back on it.