rickc rickc:
xerxes xerxes:
Impressive how much aid Poland has given. And as its been mentioned before, shocking how little Germany has done.
You mention how shocking little Germany has done, yet when I looked at the graph, Germany was slightly ahead of Canada. So why are we NOT talking about what a pathetic response Canada has had to the situation?
You aren't wrong, and most of here have lamented Canada's low defence spending for years on CKA. Not because American politicians think we should, but because we know that Canada should step up and contribute to global stability and order like we did 50 years ago.
The problem is that most Canadian voters simply don't care about the armed forces, mostly because Canada doesn't have any major direct threat(s) to it, the armed forces don't personally affect them, or don't they know anyone in the service. Right wing voters here care more about small government and tax cuts, while left wing voters want more spending on social programs.
And because of that anemic funding for close to 40 years, we simply do not have the stocks of weapons necessary to send to the Ukraine, and everyone is getting in line to buy more, so we're waiting.
Canada originally bought just SIX M-777 howitzers (a few years into the Afghanistan deployment), then wound up buying another 31 after seeing how effective they were. Australia meanwhile, bought 57 of them - and when it came time to send some to Ukraine, we sent 4 and Australia sent 6 (the US sent 80 or 90). Four howitzers isn't even a full battery in the Canadian Army, so it's a bit of a joke what we sent. We also sent 100 old Carl Gustav AT launchers with 2000 rounds to serve them. Not bad, but had we had adequate stocks, we could have sent even more, or better yet, something more modern like the NLAW or Javelin. Canada couldn't even send handheld SAMs like the Stinger because Canada does own ANY! How the fuck does a supposedly modern army not have any air defence assets? Like WTF?!?
Canada has promised an additional $500 million in military aid for Ukraine (as well as about $120 million previously), but the problem with this is that we'll have to wait in line with everyone else to buy equipment to send to Ukraine because we don't have adequate stocks on hand ourselves.
I'd like to think the invasion was a wake-up call to the Liberal government, but it's paltry $8 billion in new defence spending over 5 years is fucking joke. As long as the Liberals have to rely on the anti-military NDP, it won't change.
The gist here is that most of us are even more frustrated than you by Canada's poor response to this crisis.
CKA Uber 
CKA Moderator 
Sorry, its hard to keep up when I go to bed and get up in the same day sometimes numerous times in the same day. I literally do not know what day I am in most of the time. Its getting harder to keep up these days. My apologies. I will try harder I promise.
