By Mary Groh
Resolution: Be it resolved that Canada would be more secure if funding were re-allocated from the military to development at home and abroad.
Speaker for the Resolution: Professor Constance Candida
Speaker against the Resolution: Retired General Warren Shuter
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Last week we saw with our eyes money being scooped up and removed from the highway (Brinks truck accident on its way from the Mint). That bizarre TV image helps us visualize what we are hearing this week–Canadian tax money being scooped up. But instead of being rescued and put into useful circulation, it is being shovelled straight into a black hole (Lockheed Martin and other arms producers).
People who have been elected to operate and build up a country of peace-loving people by the intelligent distribution of our wealth have chosen instead to divert our money from what Canadians need and to shovel it by the billions into jet fighter planes. If the F-35’s ever function at all it will not be for constructive purposes.
Are our ministers in fact still free moral agents, or are they caught in the military-industrial web? If so, they must start right now to try to extricate themselves, because get out of it we must, for the health of our country and the peace of the world.
Mary Groh, president
Conscience Canada
This letter was sent to the Victoria Times-Colonist. It was inspired by Dominique Boisvert & Bruna Nota; see the post below.
Dear Editor,
“This is the most distorted hijacking of a procurement process you could ever make.” So says Alan Williams, former DND assistant deputy minister for materiel about the path leading to the proposed replacement of CF-18s with F-35 fighter jets. Continue reading
MINISTRY OF DEFENSE OR OF WAR?
The scandal of the F-35 has lasted long enough!
Ministerial irresponsibility is not excused by the influence the military establishment or the military industrial complex exert. Nor is it acceptable for the government to lie repeatedly to Parliament and to Canadians. It was known to all (except maybe to the Government?) that the costs quoted were widely under estimated.
This is administrative improvisation. For a government that boasts its fiscal expertise, this is a resounding fiasco!
But beyond this political disaster, it is high time to ask ourselves: “Do we really need F-35?” And the response is a resounding NO. Continue reading
