[kEiThZ]

Yeah, but the military is just an extremely inefficient government jobs program. You can create public works programs for all those things without having to pay for the guns part. Of course, if we become an enemy of the states, it changes the dynamic slightly.

Countless countries have tried that. And yet most of the countries with the best heavy industry all have mandatory military service and a large defence industrial complex. Japan, South Korea, Israel and most of the major powers in Europe until the 2000s.

I'm not going to say mandatory military service. But having served in California on exchange I've seen how well their military works as a pipeline for talent. Job skills can be taught. The self-discipline, leadership, tenacity, etc are all harder to develop. When you combine those with actual technical competence, it's a potent combination. Americans mostly do 5 years to get benefits of the GI Bill which includes paying for post-secondary and their healthcare for life. But that 5 years is enough time to train most of them in a trade and get one posting out of them. Now they have a lot of maturity before heading off to college or the workforce.

 

[lenaitch]

Yeah, but the military is just an extremely inefficient government jobs program. You can create public works programs for all those things without having to pay for the guns part. Of course, if we become an enemy of the states, it changes the dynamic slightly.

This isn't the 1930s. You can't simply take a bunch of people off the street to go build a highway somewhere. Even recognizing that so many jobs today require specialized training, it makes no sense for the government to spend money to train people to make widgets to nobody needs. If there is a natural market for widgets, industry will take care of it and there should be no need for a jobs program.

The military is the provider of an essential service, an-house trainer and a local employer, and a significant consumer in executing all of those.

Countless countries have tried that. And yet most of the countries with the best heavy industry all have mandatory military service and a large defence industrial complex. Japan, South Korea, Israel and most of the major powers in Europe until the 2000s.

I'm not going to say mandatory military service. But having served in California on exchange I've seen how well their military works as a pipeline for talent. Job skills can be taught. The self-discipline, leadership, tenacity, etc are all harder to develop. When you combine those with actual technical competence, it's a potent combination. Americans mostly do 5 years to get benefits of the GI Bill which includes paying for post-secondary and their healthcare for life. But that 5 years is enough time to train most of them in a trade and get one posting out of them. Now they have a lot of maturity before heading off to college or the workforce.

One complaint I have heard is our military trades training in areas that have civilian counterparts bear little to no connection with civilian certifications. A military trained mechanic, electrician or air traffic controller can't simply present a certificate that is accepted on its face by a province or feds as evidence of qualification. Heck, I have heard that is only relatively recently that some provinces will accept a military 'driver's licence' on the same level as another province's licence.

 

[kEiThZ]

One complaint I have heard is our military trades training in areas that have civilian counterparts bear little to no connection with civilian certifications. A military trained mechanic, electrician or air traffic controller can't simply present a certificate that is accepted on its face by a province or feds as evidence of qualification. Heck, I have heard that is only relatively recently that some provinces will accept a military 'driver's licence' on the same level as another province's licence.

There's two aspects to this:

1) The CAF itself will purposely design technician training to make it less easy to certify on civvie street without additional coursework. I have always thought this was BS compared to officers who go get Masters degrees, often from prestigious universities, on taxpayer dime.

2) High interprovincial barriers on trade licensing simply compound the problem. And that's not a military issue.

I have long argued that the CAF should be given the mandate and budget to turn its tech trades courses in Borden, Kingston and Halifax into 2 yr college diplomas. It's only a marginal cost over the training we do now anyway. And the additional time could be used to do things like add more fitness and second language training, improving readiness and national unity. We'd get better techs and so would industry in their second career. I've personally advocated for this. But in a resource scarce environment there's skepticism.

 

[Admiral Beez]

I find these media pieces so annoying.

Canada’s cuts to international student permits lead to fear of a brain drain

With fewer paths toward permanent residency, some foreign students are reluctant to come to Canada, or stay after they’ve completed their studies.

www.thestar.com

First of all, the international study visa should have never been offered or perceived as a pathway to permanent residence or citizenship. If I were to pursue a degree at the University of Madras, it’s not so I can become an Indian citizen, but instead so I can obtain an international education and have some adventure, after which I would return to Canada.

Second of all, no one cares about your multiple masters degrees from the developing world. I can’t imagine coming to Canada and bemoaning that I have a masters degrees and cannot find work, since I would have checked that my accreditation was valued before I came. We need nurses, doctors, welders and skilled tradespeople, plus information technology workers, and we always sales, entrepreneurs and hustlers. I’d that’s you, come to Canada, but not through a student visa back door.

 

[kEiThZ]

First of all, the international study visa should have never been offered or perceived as a pathway to permanent residence or citizenship. If I were to pursue a degree at the University of Madras, it’s not so I can become an Indian citizen, but instead so I can obtain an international education and have some adventure, after which I would return to Canada.

Disagree. Bad implementation doesn't discredit the idea. Someone who studies in Canada is the ideal immigrant. Done properly, you don't have to worry about language issues, or foreign qualifications. Done properly, we would address the skills gaps we have by giving working permits and PR to those getting an education in areas of demand.

It's unfortunate that the Ontario government decided that foreign students could be a cash cow to cover their underfunding of postsecondary (lowest per capita provincial funding in Canada). And it's unfortunate that the federal government abused the idea to get a lot of cheap labour. None of that means the idea itself is bad.

 

[Admiral Beez]

Disagree. Bad implementation doesn't discredit the idea. Someone who studies in Canada is the ideal immigrant.

No, the ideal immigrant is trained overseas and arrives with the necessary (Canadian approved) credentials ready to work. If we need Filipino nurses, Canada should work with nursing schools in the Philippines to set up a Canadian equivalency program, for example. My friend sent his two daughters to a medical school in Italy, where the students choose the country they want, and then they write the exam for Canada, UK, or wherever. His daughters choose the UK, and upon arrival were ready to begin their residencies and both are now GPs.

 

[kEiThZ]

No, the ideal immigrant is trained overseas and arrives with the necessary (Canadian approved) credentials ready to work.

BS. We have decades of evidence that this is not ideal with the old chestnut of asking for "Canadian experience".

I know you're fixated on the experience of your family from the UK. But this is not the immigration pool that is available today. And unless the UK dramatically increases its own birth rate, they aren't sending us immigrants, they are competing with us for them.

Also, Canada is actually uniquely bad at accepting qualifications. We make it hard to transfer between provinces. We literally send our own kids abroad to make them study restricted fields like Medicine and then make it difficult for them to come home and work. If we do that to our own, imagine how much harder an immigrant trained overseas has it. So if we're not going to change that, locally trained is always going to be preferable to foreign trained. I don't think you'll find an employer who actually disagrees with this.

 

[Admiral Beez]

It's unfortunate that the Ontario government decided that foreign students could be a cash cow to cover their underfunding of postsecondary. And it's unfortunate that the federal government abused the idea to get a lot of cheap labour. None of that means the idea itself is bad.

Fair points all round. The worst part about the cheap labour is that it drives down capital investment in innovation, where the big money and national economic strength is made. If I'm making widgets, why would I buy an expensive new widget press and hire a well-paid, skilled and educated engineering team to operate it, when I can hire a score of newly arrived, desperate and vulnerable south asians to make my widgets by hand for almost nothing. It will be interesting to see if there's new innovation is US agriculture and food processing once/if the pool of undocumented/illegals are deported. Denmark is one of the largest pork producers in the world, and yet there is far less labour needed to get from farm to fork than similar pork facilities in North America where production and profits are driven through desperate immigrant labour.

I hope that by 2030 we have immigration better figured out.

 

[6ixGod]

Impractical. But thought provoking:

Why Canada should join the EU

Europe needs space and resources, Canada needs people. Let’s deal

www.economist.com

Canada can certainly form a new economic relationship with the EU, but we don’t need to join them!

When push comes to shove, the EU (and NATO for that matter) will NOT defend Canada if the United States goes rogue (even more than they are now) and decide to invade. I will bet my entire life on that.

This is a dangerous idea that is spreading all over social media that Europe or the Commonwealth will “save us”….no they won’t. History has shown us this plenty of times (Ie. Poland, Czechoslovakia etc.) that this isn’t the case. They’ll all stand in Brussels shoulder to shoulder holding candles and issuing condemnations, but they ain’t gonna do hungry jack against the Yanks, and deep down you all know that too.

Interestingly, the only way I see Europe coming to the aid of Canada is if China and Russia get militarily involved (more on that below).

The other thing is that even if Europe wanted to come to the aid of Canada, they’d be blocked. The US already has an invasion plan ready for Canada (forgot the name but it’s pre Cold War I think) and it would start with a naval blockade of Canada’s major ports (Halifax, Quebec City and Vancouver) which would pretty much block Canada from the rest of the world. This would be followed by several land assaults, eventually culminating in the capture of taking Toronto and Ottawa.

That leaves only one option open for Canada….the Arctic Ocean. Back then it was dominated by ice, nowadays not so much. Directly across that ocean is your new friend Russia. I don’t care what anybody says, with friends like the US, who needs enemies like Russia?

If I’m Canada right now, I’d be encouraging the High Commission in Moscow to enter into some sort of negotiations or understanding with the Kremlin. Russia will definitely try and use this to their advantage to take Arctic territory from Canada, so it would be in our best interests to at least have this all hammered out and possibility even be on more friendly terms from now on with them (as with China).

The only way Canada could maintain a link to the outside world would be for the Russians to deploy their Asian Pacific fleet in Vladivostok to cut off the Bering Strait and prevent the Yanks from sending in their subs/ships. If this were to happen, NATO could potentially form a blockade between Greenland and Nunavut in the east.

PS: This is why the United States has been so adamant in calling the Northwest Passages “international waters” rather than “Canadian Internal Waters”.

I’ve never been comfortable with Canada’s over reliance on the US and it’s finally bit us in the rear. I saw this happening over a decade ago, the US was going to sink and Canada was going to get dragged down with them.

Hope for the best.

 

[afransen]

Canada can't repell as US invasion. We can make occupation difficult (Switzerland and Finland offer inspiration there). We should probably also think about our own nuclear deterrence program. Sad to say.

 

[kEiThZ]

We should probably also think about our own nuclear deterrence program.

Zero chance the US would allow this.

 

[Richard White]

Zero chance the US would allow this.

Who gave them a veto?

 

[kEiThZ]

Who gave them a veto?

Their large military and our economic dependence.

 

[Northern Light]

The Globe has an article out suggesting that a joint program for developing new diesle electric subs by Germany and Norway would like Canada to join and in exchange get early access to the product:

Germany and Norway offer Canada early access to new submarines in pitch to join project

German ambassador to Canada says if Ottawa agrees to buy the 212 CD, a submarine under development by TKMS, it will not have to wait for 12 vessels to first be delivered to Germany and Norway

www.theglobeandmail.com

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

Zero chance the US would allow this.

The more badly someone wanted to deny access, the more important it is for us to have it. And if they are going to remove the economic lever given their stance thus far, the only avenue left to them is military.

AoD