The Red Review
The Red Review
The Red Review — The Case for Demilitarization FT. Tamara Lorincz
All the people who work on The Red Review live and work on stolen Indigenous lands across Turtle Island. There can be no reconciliation without restitution, which includes Land Back and seizing the assets of the major resource corporations and returning them to the commons.
In this bonus episode of The Red Review, brought to you by Socialist Action, we feature an interview with Canadian Foreign Policy Institute Fellow, anti-war activist, and No New Fighter Jets organizer Tamara Lorincz.
The same day this podcast is released, No New Fighter Jets will launch a week of action to oppose Canada’s planned procurement of new fighter jets. The Red Review endorses the call — No New Fighter Jets! Demilitarize to decarbonize and decolonize! Check out the website to see a list of webinars and actions for this week and beyond.
In this episode, Tamara guides us on a conversation about Canada’s bloated military budget and its involvement in NATO, the true aggressor on the international stage. First highlighting the crimes of the Canadian military, this interview shifts to what that Canada’s military budget — over $30 billion annually — can be put to instead, which includes fighting the climate crisis, pandemics, and poverty.
Links:
Website: Canadian Foreign Policy Institute
Website: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)
Website: Canadian Voice of Women for Peace
Website: Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom
Website: The Canadian Pugwash Group
Website: No to NATO Network
Some Previously Shared Links:
Website: Encampment Support Network
Website: Palestine Youth Movement
Twitter: Palestine House
Website: No Pride in Policing Coalition
Website: Red Braid Alliance
Linktree: The Rainforest Flying Squad
FundRazr: Last Stand for Forests
GoFundMe: Support For Indigenous Land Defenders — Fairy Creek
Daniel Tarade 0:15
Hello everybody, and welcome to another bonus episode of The Red Review, brought to you by Socialist Action. My name is Daniel, I use he/him pronouns. And I'm coming to you from the traditional lands of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, and the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat people. I am from Toronto. All the people that work on The Red Review podcast live and work on stolen Indigenous lands from across Turtle Island. We recognize that there can be no reconciliation without restitution, and that includes Land Back and seizing the assets of the major resource corporations. In this bonus episode, we interview Tamara Lorincz, an incredibly knowledgeable peace advocate in this country, a member of half-a-dozen peace organizations. Today, we'll be talking about militarism in this country, the crimes of our military, and what that money could be better spent on. And in talking about this, at The Red Review, we are really happy to amplify an ongoing campaign that Tamara is involved with called the No New Fighter Jets campaign. This is protesting and demanding that the Liberal government not proceed with a procurement of new fighter jets. This week there are two webcasts; one on Thursday entitled "The Trauma of Fighter Jets" and one this upcoming Sunday, which will be a book launch by Yves Engler, another Canadian Foreign Policy Institute expert, who has previously been on our show, and he is doing a book launch of his newest book, "Standing on Guard for Whom? A People's History of the Canadian Military." Later in November, The No New Fighter Jets campaign will be rallying outside of MPs offices and doing a big banner drop on Parliament Hill when MPs return on November 22. So keep a lookout for that as well. With that, let's go to the interview. Our next guest in our interview series is Tamara Lorincz. Tamara is a PhD candidate in global governance at the Balsillie school for International Affairs at Wilfrid Laurier University. She has a Master's in International Politics and Security Studies from the University of Bradford and a Law Degree and MBA specializing in environmental law and management from Dalhousie University. She is a member of the Canadian Voice of Women for Peace, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, the Canadian Pugwash Group, and the No to NATO network. She is also on the International Advisory Council of World Beyond War and the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space. Welcome to The Red Review, Tamara!
Tamara Lorincz 2:57
Thank you very much for having me, Daniel. It's really nice to be here and having this important conversation on militarism in Canada and what we can do about it.
Daniel Tarade 3:05
Absolutely. So the last episode that Emily and I recorded, one thing that we bemoaned was the lack of foreign policy discussion during the last federal election. It really seemed like all the parties were focusing more on so called domestic affairs, but of course, Canada's military spending cannot be ignored. It's one of the key issues of the day, and you've done so much good work. So we're very happy to have you on here and to hopefully impart on our listeners why this is an important area of struggle for all people and ought to be. Just for everybody, so we're all on the same page at the beginning of this interview, let's just establish; how much does Canada invest into our military? How much of our GDP is invested into the military? And how does this compare to other countries around the world? How militarized is Canada?
Tamara Lorincz 3:50
Well, Canada is highly militarized. We have a highly militarized economy and military spending in this country has been going up for the past 25 years. And there's been very little parliamentary or public opposition. And it's a really serious matter because this public spending, these are our tax dollars, are being spent on soldiers weapons and war making, and they're not being spent as they should be on our most pressing security challenges, which are the climate crisis, the pandemic, and poverty. Canadians can look at the Public Accounts of Canada to find out how much we spend on all different federal departments. And if you look at the Public Accounts, you will see that last year, Canada spent approximately $30 billion on the Department of National Defense, and this is about 15 times more than the federal government spends on the Department of Environment and Climate Change, which is only $1.9 billion. But of course, this is the lead agency on tackling the climate emergency, so we spend disproportionately more on militarized security than we do on climate security. Every year the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) produces a report called "Trends in World Military Spending." And they released this report in the spring. This past spring, the report showed that Canada is ranked 13th highest in the world for military spending, and they show it in US dollars. So $23 billion US dollars is equivalent to $30 billion Canadian dollars. So that's how much we spent in 2020 on the military. And in June of this year, NATO released its quarterly defense expenditures report, and in that report, Canada indicated that it was planning on spending this year $33 billion on the military. Among all NATO members, Canada is ranked sixth for this level of military spending. $33 billion, right. And as a percentage of GDP, $33 billion is equivalent to about 1.4% of GDP. In 2014, seven years ago, the NATO Summit in Wales, the 30 NATO members made a commitment to spend 2% of GDP on the military by 2024. So this is why over the past seven years, military spending in this country and among all of the Western NATO members has gone up dramatically. So in 2014, Canadian military spending was $20 billion. As I just explained, it's up to $33 billion this year. So we've spent an increase of $7 billion dollars over the past seven years on the military. And in order to meet that 2% target that's demanded by NATO, Canada is going to have to continue to increase military spending. We saw this commitment by our Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Liberal government in 2017, when they released their new defense policy called strong, secure and engaged and in that defense policy, Trudeau said that Canada was going to spend $553 billion on the military over the next 20 years, wow, to meet our requirements to NATO and to NORAD and our partnership with the United States. So Canadians need to be very concerned about this issue. And they need to push their elected officials because there are no Members of Parliament right now that are critiquing this, that are questioning this and calling for Canada to reduce military spending and reallocate it to our other urgent priorities.
Daniel Tarade 7:51
That's a great primer. So we're spending a lot of money, the amount of money is going to be increasing. And it just gets support from all the parties. And we'll delve into that more as we go along. Well, when we talk about military spending, I imagine there are some people that are still listening who think that Canada then is playing a peacekeeping role. Maybe we spend a lot of money on military, but it's going to good in the world. So how would you respond to that? How would you respond to the idea of Canada as a peacekeeping nation? And if you have the numbers, how many Canadian soldiers are actually deployed on UN peacekeeping missions?
Tamara Lorincz 8:21
Yeah, Daniel. So there is a misperception that Canada spends very little on the military. As I've just explained, we spend a tremendous amount on the military. And how that money is being used is not for peacekeeping. So there is also a misperception among Canadians that we are a peacekeeping country and that we are doing good in the world. And the numbers show very much otherwise. About every month, the UN peacekeeping office releases their statistics on country contributions to UN peace support operations, and I have been looking at these reports for the past 20 years, and Canada is right now ranked 68 among all UN member states contributing to peacekeeping. So Canada with a military of 60,000 soldiers, we have only 58 that are on UN peace support operations. By contrast, Canada has just on one NATO operation, and this is our operation reassurance. This is our mission in Latvia. Canada has over 500 soldiers leading a NATO battle group in Latvia. So we have Canadian soldiers leading a battle group right on Russia's borders, we've got our guns and our tanks pointed in the direction of Russia in LAtvia, and it's a very dangerous and provocative mission. It is fomenting a conflict and tension. You know it's a violent posture towards Russia. You know, we have a NATO operation called Operation Reassurance that includes Latvia, but also Canadian soldiers in Poland, the Ukraine worships, in the Mediterranean, and in the Black Sea. We have 2000 soldiers in that one mission. So our priorities really are war making and war with NATO. It is not prioritizing peace and peacekeeping through the UN. And this is another area that Canadians should be extremely concerned about. Because again, we don't have anyone in Parliament really pressing on this issue and raising questions about why Canada is engaging in these dangerous and destabilizing NATO operations on Russia's border, and why we're doing so little for peacekeeping and peacemaking and conflict prevention through the UN system. So Canadians need to be asking their, again, their elected officials about why peace isn't a priority, and why we have such a belligerent posture to the rest of the world through NATO.
Daniel Tarade 11:04
And I imagine that people would be shocked to hear that we don't get a lot of media coverage here. It seems like the entire state apparatus is very complicit in manufacturing this consent for the military under the guise that we're doing good with our large bloated military budget, which I'm sure also a lot of people don't realize how bloated it is. You mentioned Latvia, and you mentioned Canada's presence in Eastern Europe on the border with Russia. In the past few weeks, there was some media that came out from there that was very unfavorable to Canada. There were headlines that read quote, "Far Right Extremists in Ukraine Bragged that They have Received Training from the Canadian Forces" end quote. So that's the title. And this is referring to a study published by researchers at the George Washington University in Washington, DC, and they monitored the social media accounts of a far right group in Ukraine called Centuria, and its military members were documented as giving Nazi salutes, promoting white nationalism, praising members of Nazi SS units, while also then bragging that they are receiving support from Canadian troops and training from Canadian troops. So what's really the purpose here? How do we take this news and use it to build a campaign, maybe, against this NATO operation?
Tamara Lorincz 12:20
A little bit of context that I think is really important to answer this question, and that is, since the United States helped orchestrate the coup against the Yanukovych government in Ukraine, Canada has been involved in destabilizing operations trying to move Ukraine and other Eastern European Baltic countries away from Russia and towards the European Union and towards NATO. So Canada has a presence, like I said, in Latvia, but also in Ukraine and Poland over the past seven years, and Canada has been, through NATO, operating propaganda campaigns to turn the population in these countries away from Russia, and towards, like I said, the European Union and NATO. Canada has been training and supporting and arming, you know, these governments to bring them under the ambit of NATO. So NATO very much wants to bring the Ukraine into its orbit. But for Russia, this is a red line. And people need to remember that at the end of the Cold War, there was an agreement by NATO and the Soviet Union, that was falling apart at the time, that NATO would not move one inch closer to Russia's border if Russia was okay with allowing Germany to be a part of NATO. So this was the agreement. But NATO members have abrogated that agreement, they have been moving NATO forces closer and closer to Russia's border. And it's really, it just shows just total lack of respect and humiliation. You know, for what we're doing for NATO was trying to contain Russia, because Russia is a country, it's the largest country on the planet. It has incredible natural resource wealth. Russia supplies the natural gas to Europe, primarily through Ukraine. And you see NATO and Canada and the United States, they want to turn off the Russian pipelines through Ukraine. They want to control Russian gas. And this is also the reason why the United States was opposed to the Russian pipeline through the Baltic Sea, the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, so you see Canada pretends that we care about democracy in Ukraine, but this isn't true at all. Canada has been colluding with the United States to support anti-Russia governments in Ukraine, and that's because we have a sizable Ukrainian population in Canada, and many of them came to Canada at the end of the Second World War. They supported Nazi Germany, they supported Naziism, they supported fascism. They're in this country now , they have monuments that, you know, that glorify Ukraine support of Nazi Germany during the Second World War. They support, you know, Ukraine fascist or right-wing, extreme right-wing nationalism in the country, and this is a violent faction. This is a faction that is trying to divide the country. People need to recognize that Ukraine has a large pro-Russia population in the east of the country. They speak Russian, they align with Russia, they have family right across the border in Russia, they share a culture, you know, of course, they share a language and a shared history. So really what is going on in the Ukraine is not about trying to promote democracy in Ukraine. It is about trying to control Ukrainian politics as a way to stop and contain Russia. So we want to turn off the pipelines through Ukraine, as well as we want to try to kick Russia out of Crimea because Russia has, for the past 200 years, its most important naval base in South Crimea in Sevastopol. Now this is a gateway for the Black Sea and for the Sea of Azov, the Russian naval base in Crimea. NATO wants to bring the Ukraine and Crimea under its ambit because it wants to kick Russia out of its naval base there. is so Canadians need to think more critically about what we're really doing in that country. You know, why is it that we've got a propaganda campaign, that we've got a training campaign for Ukraine security forces there that are very violent, and that are destabilizing the country. Really, it's got to stop. Canadians should be calling for a withdrawal of all of our forces out of Eastern Europe, from Latvia to Ukraine to Romania, all of our soldiers should be out of that region and should be back home. And we should quite honestly talk seriously about withdrawing our country from NATO.
Daniel Tarade 17:08
That's one of our demands in Socialist Action, one of the very clear demands. I really liked how you phrase this, 'people ought to think a little bit more as to who is the aggressor in the situation.' We often label Russia or China as the aggressor. Every time China does some sort of training mission in the South Sea, everybody talks about how provocative it is, but in reality, and maybe you can shed a bit of light on this, military funding in NATO nations far exceeds that of Russia and China. And when you look at foreign military bases, it's really NATO that is aggressing in this situation. We are the ones that are provoking people and, like you mentioned, meddling in other country's affairs to promote internal dissent, internal separatist movements so that we can benefit geopolitically from this.
Tamara Lorincz 17:51
Just let's compare and contrast. NATO military spending, combined of all of its 30 members, is $1.1 trillion dollars. It 60% of global military spending. Global military spending is $1.9 trillion. You can look at the SIPRI report for that. And of that $1.9 trillion for military spending globally. 1.1, 1.2 is NATO military spending. So the United States spends the most among all NATO members on its military, of course. It spends about $750 billion on the military, whereas Russia spends only $61 billion on its military. It is ranked fifth in the world for military spending, it spends about 1/15th the amount that the United States spends on its militar., China spends about 230 billion, about 1/3rd of what the United States spends on its military. Both Russia and China are surrounded by US and NATO bases and installations. So the United States right now has about 800 military bases around the world. Russia has about a dozen, but those military bases are primarily in countries that were formerly part of the Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact, which no longer exists. The Warsaw Pact, which was kind of the counter to NATO, collapsed in 1991, and NATO should have collapsed at the same time, it should have been disbanded at the same time. China has a couple of military bases. You know, one in Djibouti. China has extensive development operations in Africa. It's not Russia and China that are the aggressors in the world. Russia and China haven't started illegal wars of aggression like the United States has. The United States and NATO, in 1999, illegally bombed Serbia, right. The United States led an illegal war in Afghanistan in 2001. The United States, of course, launched its illegal war against Iraq in 2003. Canada led the NATO bombing of Libya in 2011, which totally destabilize North Africa, leading to the humanitarian and refugee crisis across the Mediterranean. And NATO countries have been bombing Syria and Iraq. It's NATO, it's the United States, it's Canada that are the aggressors. It's also important to remember that during this pandemic, Canada has been flying fighter jets from Romania along Russia's border, Canada has had warships in the Black Sea, right on Russia's border, Canada has, you know, continued to employ high-ready NATO battle groups in Latvia during this pandemic, right on Russia's border. So it's Canada, the United States and NATO that are the aggressors.
Daniel Tarade 20:58
It's really telling that even during the pandemic, the priorities of the military are obviously geopolitical, its strategic. You can imagine long-term, it's really about corporate control over different natural resources. The whole idea of bombing a country for oil kind of rings true. So rather than helping out domestically, with all the crises of the pandemic, the military, that bloated budget is spent not helping Canadians or not helping people elsewhere and peacekeeping missions by entirely in an aggressive, provocative manner at the behest of the US and NATO. Canada's $32 billion military budget then, per capita, if you normalize, it is more than Russia. It's actually approaching that of the states. Maybe the US spends twice more per capita, but that's the biggest military in history. And Canada per capita is right there. And as much as we might not see that at home on our TVs, our politicians don't talk about it, how can we ignore it? That's the elephant in the room, then. You mentioned Afghanistan, let's do a bit of a post mortem. Then us finally admitted defeat. A lot of coverage has been focused on what's been happening as US forces have left focusing on the destabilization and maybe trying to convince people that we were better off staying there. Of course, why we were there was never to help the women and girls and children of Afghanistan, but what's your take? What are the lessons that Canadians need to take from our more than decade long war in Afghanistan?
Tamara Lorincz 22:19
There are a few things. One is it's important to remember that the US war against Afghanistan is a NATO war. It was the first time that NATO invoked article five, its collective defense clause, as part of the Atlantic Treaty. It's also important to remember that the US war against Afghanistan, the NATO war against Afghanistan, was totally unlawful. It totally violated the United Nations Charter. It did not adhere to Article 51 on self-defense. There was no justification for the United States to launch a revenge attack and occupation of Afghanistan. And I just want to remind listeners that Canadian legal expert Michael Mandel wrote extensively about how the US NATO war was illegal, and why Canada's participation in it was also illegal. As well, in the United States, Marjorie Cohen, who was international legal expert with the Thomas Jefferson law school as well as the president of the National Lawyers Guild, she also wrote extensively about how the war in Afghanistan was illegal. And so because of this, we have to remember the illegality, and this should require us to have a national inquiry into Canada's failed combat mission in Afghanistan. Canada's war in Afghanistan is our longest war. Canada joined the US right at the beginning in October 2001. Canada sent special forces under US direction into Afghanistan. Canada also sent warships right to the Arabian Sea to support the US operations in the country, and Canada was engaged in a very violent, brutal combat mission in Kandahar from 2005 to 2014. But we were in the country for effectively 14 years, but Canadians, we killed innocent civilians, children. Canadian soldiers have been implicated in torture for handing over detainees to US and Afghan custody, when we knew that they were at risk of being tortured. Canada is a party to the United Nations Convention on torture. Canada is also a party to the Rome Statute. We must follow the Rome Statute. We're party to the International Criminal Court, and Canada needs to be accountable for war crimes and crimes against humanity that we committed and that we are complicit in in Afghanistan. It's also important to remember for listeners that there have been over 1 million complaints filed by the Afghan people to the International Criminal Court for war crimes that they have experienced, And the people of Afghanistan have really suffered from the war in their country, from the trauma, and they have appealed to the ICC to investigate the war crimes that they have suffered. And so finally, in March of 2020, the ICC chief prosecutor has been approved to investigate war crimes in the country. And this is not just by the Afghan National Army, but also foreign forces, including the US and including Canada. In 2017, a law professor at Osgoode Law School, Craig Scott, he filed a brief to the ICC saying please investigate Canada for war crimes, especially to investigate the issue of Canada engaging in torture of detainees. So what Canadians should be calling for now and what our elected officials should be calling for now is a thorough inquiry into Canada's longest war that caused so much death and destruction in that country. Right now. Afghanistan is ranked 69th in the world, according to the UN Human Development Index. Afghanistan has actually been decreasing in the index. Things are getting worse. So despite the fact that Canada and other foreign forces were in the country for 20 years, supposedly to build a new Afghan Government, supposedly to invest in development in the country, we have made things much, much worse. The people are more insecure. The United Nations has just said that there is a risk of mass starvation and increasing food insecurity and poverty in the country. There's increasing heroin production, increasing addiction, the economy is in shambles. There isn't a solid state structure to be able to provide aid to the people. We really need to have some serious reflection about what we did in Afghanistan. The people of Afghanistan deserve a national inquiry in this country
Daniel Tarade 27:14
For listeners that want to maybe read a specific example of the torture that Canada was complicit in, read the story of Omar Khadr, who was in Guantanamo Bay for over 10 years, detained as a child and was a Canadian citizen, actually, and just recently received a modicum of justice in the last few years and is able to live freely now but just is one of the hundreds of thousands of civilians of Afghanistan who suffered and died due to this NATO led invasion, again, over mostly geopolitical access to opium production, access to oil and pipelines. That is the price that they paid for our corporations to basically raid the country. We've spoken a lot about the ills of the military, how much money we're spending to not achieve anything for people, but again, just private greed and the needs of a select few, while the rest of us suffer. You have once said, and I'm paraphrasing here, but militarism has made us ill prepared to deal with this pandemic, and it's militarism that makes us unable to deal with the climate and ecological breakdown. So let's transition a bit from the horrors of militarism to the possibilities with those vast sums of money that we're throwing away at fighter jets, throwing away on new battleships, throwing away on these NATO military operations. What could we be doing with that money instead?
Tamara Lorincz 28:34
Yeah, Daniel. So I was just thinking that last year, the NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg gloated over the fact that NATO members increased their military spending over the past seven years by $140 billion — Wow — And so I think about how that money could have gone into taking action on the climate crisis and also for pandemic readiness. Now, we've known since the SARS outbreak that happened in Ontario in 2003 and the SARS inquiry report that came out in 2006, that we needed to do more provincially and nationally on pandemic readiness. So we've known for 15 years before this COVID pandemic that we needed to be prepared, but we were not prepared. We did not have personal protective equipment. You know, we continue to have a housing crisis, a homelessness crisis, poverty crisis. First Nations communities still don't have access to clean, safe water. Housing and water and adequate health equipment and health care personnel are absolutely essential to pandemic readiness, and those were things that we didn't have. So instead of investing more on NATO for our soldiers and weapon systems, we could have invested over the past seven years on green, affordable housing in this country. We could have instead invested in greater health care and education and ensuring that there are no more boil water advisories on our First Nations communities. I mean, still today, there are 51 First Nations communities in this country that have boil water advisories. And at the start of the pandemic, let's remember that the Ontario First Nations made an appeal to the Finance Minister, to Chrystia Freeland, to bring Cuban doctors and nurses to their communities because so many First Nations reserves do not have adequate health care, they don't have health clinics, they don't have enough nurses and doctors. That's what we could have been doing instead of investing so much in militarism. Now, everybody knows that this next 10 years, until 2030, is so important for our planet, so important for us to reduce emissions so that we can keep global mean temperature rise to below 1.5 degrees to prevent catastrophic runaway climate change, right. We need to meet the Paris Agreement targets by 2030, so this next 10 years is absolutely critical that we massively upscale decarbonisation and climate action. So we cannot maintain carbon intensive militarism. We can't buy new fighter jets that are powered by fossil fuel and new tanks that are powered by fossil fuel and new warships that are powered on diesel, fossil fuels, and meet the Paris Agreement targets by 2030. We cannot buy these petroleum-powered weapon systems and meet the Paris Agreement targets. We also need all of the tax dollars that we have to invest in climate action to reduce carbon emissions, to decarbonize, to help our communities become resilient to extreme weather events, which are just going to get worse because of the climate emergency. So we've seen in this country over the past year with Lytton in British Columbia burning down, we have out-of-control forest fires across the country, we have flooding, we have extreme heat waves that are causing people to die. This is the most pressing security challenge is to help our country adapt to climate change, to reduce emissions so that we can deal with the climate emergency. So this is why we cannot spend so much money on the military and why we can't buy new weapons systems. We just can't. We have to stop the federal government from investing in new weapon systems that are just going to exacerbate the climate emergency.
Daniel Tarade 32:42
It's telling then that Canada is more likely to meet its NATO commitments for increased funding by 2024; at the same time, you have the headlines coming out that Canada is also very unlikely to meet its Paris Climate accord. When you consider what's a bigger threat to Canada, China or the climate catastrophe, the answer is clear to scientists, to people like yourself, who are advocating for demilitarisation. One of these is an existential threat that requires a massive organized opposition. I'm a scientist myself. During the beginning of the pandemic, there was no pandemic corps. There were a lot of scientists who wanted something organized so that the skills of the working class that couldn't work anymore because things were shutting down, we still want to contribute, And we didn't have that. And to know that there were instead Canadians in Latvia still leading NATO missions, whereas our skills at home for good were being squandered. In reality, that's what we need is a domestic corps of people, engineers, doctors, of scientists, of teachers, of nurses that could respond to the crises that have been impacting communities in Canada, well, for centuries, really, since the inception of Canada. Yet, instead, we have this very bloated defense budget. You've mentioned a few times already that there are no parliamentarians, no MPs that are critical of this excessive spending on the military. To be clear, there's no major political party that opposes Canada's presence in NATO, right? Or any of the other military alliances?
Tamara Lorincz 34:13
That's right. For instance, when the liberals defense policy came out in 2017, it was the most consequential most expensive policy announcement of the Liberal government that year. The Conservatives, of course, said that the military spending announced under that new defense policy wasn't enough. The NDP also said that $553 billion on the military over the next 20 years isn't enough. The NDP Defense Critic Randall Garrison said that the Liberal government should have been spending even more on the military. You know, both the conservatives, the NDP, their position was totally reprehensible, but so too was the Greens. The Greens were quiet. The greens were silent. The greens didn't say anything about this terrible defense policy that came out that increased military spending, increases militarism. And so silence is acquiescence. And that just shows how the major political parties are falling in line with the Liberals in supporting high military budgets, and, you know, a very aggressive posture in the world. But you know, we've said, the peace movement, the environmental movement in this country, you know, we've said to the NDP and the greens, that you cannot be serious about climate change if you continue to support this level of militarism and military spending. They're just totally incompatible. And then the other thing is, we've said that there's no way to be serious about the climate crisis and maintain membership in NATO. So if you really care about climate change, there's no way that you can agree to so much public funds going to a nuclear-armed military alliance that's led by the United States, there is no way that you can support Canada buying carbon-intensive weapon systems in order to stay interoperable with NATO allies. So I think there needs to be some real soul searching on the part of the NDP and the Green Party about peace and about militarism and the climate crisis. Because the other thing that's important to stress is that it's the military that is the largest consumer of fossil fuels among all federal agencies and departments. And it's the military that's the largest emitter of greenhouse gases. And military emissions right now are excluded from the National greenhouse gas reduction plan. So there just is no way to meet the Paris Agreement if we don't demilitarize, and parties and other environmental groups and activists need to be honest about this. And they need to have the courage to speak out because if you were serious about the climate crisis, you have to say demilitarize to decarbonize. You have to be able to make that connection. You know, peace groups in this country, we are trying to put pressure on elected officials to call for Canada to withdraw from NATO, and for Canada to work through the UN system. Canada needs to work cooperatively with Russia and China to solve our most important common security challenges; the pandemic, poverty, and the climate catastrophe. We need to work cooperatively and collaboratively with all countries to solve these international problems. One of the first steps is for us to withdraw from NATO.
Daniel Tarade 37:34
The top-down approach obviously isn't going to work. It's going to take a massive grassroots struggle to win over those progressive parties to this campaign. The NDP, even in 2021, was still in favor of NATO. They are refusing to take any position on Canada out of NATO, out of the Lima Group, out of the Core Group, out of the Five Eyes. Any of these defense alliances, spying alliances, imperialist alliances, they're silent, whereas the membership of the NDP largely is anti-imperialist. And finally this year, we were able to get a resolution to the debate floor and passed with a super majority that Canada stopped supporting the illegal settlements in Palestine and stop dealing weapons with Israel, which is again another indictment on our military system that we are such friendly allies with Israel, with Saudi Arabia, these really brutal regimes that are killing so many people, which really makes their argument about their posturing against Russia and China all the more unbelievable to me. If you're going to be consistent, you shouldn't be dealing with Saudi Arabia and Israel. Go into a little bit more on some of these grassroots campaigns, organizations, coalition's that exists that the people listening to this podcast can plug into and can support.
Tamara Lorincz 38:50
Yeah, another thing that I just want to add to your list about the NDP, that the NDP support is for Canada to buy a new fleet of fighter jets. This is a really critical issue for us in the peace movement, in the anti-war movement. We are trying to push all of the parties to stop Canada's plan procurement of a new fleet of fighter jets because of the climate crisis. So the Trudeau government, right now, is evaluating three bids to replace the current fleet of CF-18s. It is expected that the Trudeau government will make a decision early in 2022, as to which fighter jet Canada will pick. So we're considering the Lockheed Martin F35, the Boeing Super Hornet and the Saab Gripen. And what we're saying in the anti-war peace movement is that, you know, we cannot buy new fighter jets because it will lock us into carbon-intensive militarism over the next three decades, prevent us from decarbonizing and meeting the Paris Agreement targets, and it will divert precious resources that we need to deal with poverty and to to deal with the pandemic and the climate emergency. So we are appealing to people to join us in this campaign. About a year and a half ago we formed a coalition called The No Fighter Jets Coalition. It's made up of about 30 peace and anti-war groups across the country. We've had a number of days of action, where we've stood outside of our Members of Parliament's office with our signs No New Fighter Jets, delivered them louder. We've had webinars we had this past spring a fast against fighter jets. And next week, we are having a week of action. As the new parliament starts in session, wext week, we are going to be on Parliament Hill on Monday with a huge banner "Defund Warplanes." We have a webinar on the trauma of fighter jets. We also have a webinar about the Canadian military with Yves Engler. We are also going to have a national day of action from October 22 to October 24, where we're asking people to join us on the street in front of their Member of Parliament office with a sign "no new fighter jets." To register their action, take a picture and send it to us so that we can share it on social media. We want to press the new members of parliament right at the beginning of their new term to let them know that we are absolutely opposed to this procurement of fighter jets. It is the second most expensive procurement in Canadian history. And if Canada buys new fighter jets, it will be the death knell for our climate plan. And it will prevent us from taking action on all of these other domestic priorities, on health care, education, First Nations communities. So please get involved in our campaign, please support us. You can find out more information from nofighterjets.ca. We're on Twitter, and we're on Facebook as well. And we really need to stop this purchase. And we know that if we work together that we can stop it. We cannot allow Canada to buy a new fleet of fighter jets.
Daniel Tarade 41:57
Absolutely. So as always, all of the links to different groups, to those events, and I'll make sure I check in with Tamara to make sure I don't miss anything, all of it will be included below. Get active, get out there and meet those people. It may seem like an existential threat. You see the bloated numbers, you see the US imperialist beast, and you think what can I do as an individual person? And the answer is not much, but in our groups, in our coalitions, which continued to grow and the international solidarity. because there's activity in every single NATO country, I am sure, against this militarization, it's an existential threat for all of us. So the best remedy for that existential dread is to meet those comrades out there in the streets, join the struggle, learn from the other people, and lean on them for support. These are the people that have been through it for decades. And they're more than happy to welcome you into their wings and to grow that movement because we all depend on it. Tamara, thank you so much for an enlightening conversation. We'll be sure to invite you back on again, you are a fount of knowledge on the military spending in this country and the crimes of our military and by extension, the state that funds them. Any last words?
Tamara Lorincz 43:13
Well, the struggle for demilitarization is a struggle for decarbonisation and decolonization. People should know that most of the Canadian pipelines go south to power the US war machine, and so many military bases are on stolen Indigenous land. So we need to make the connections between militarism and the impoverishment of our First Nations community and the climate crisis. And this is why we need to say demilitarisation, decarbonisation, decolonization. Please get involved in a local peace group. There's World Beyond War, there's the Canadian Voice of Women for Peace. There are other peace groups. Please get involved. We need your support and solidarity. Thank you so much for having me.
Daniel Tarade 43:57
A big thanks again to Tamara for coming onto The Red Review. Again, please get involved, get organized, and join us in the peace movement because militarism threatens all of us, it threatens our entire planet, all of our societies. And we need to say no, we need to say no to militarism, we need to say no to the new fighter jets. Our next episode of The Red Review will be released the first Monday in November, where we will be focusing on the province of New Brunswick. We will be focusing on the burgeoning general strike, the socialists who are running the NDP, and the struggle for Indigenous self-determination. So until next time, stay safe and stay active.