Forces to regain regal titles
By macleans.ca - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 - 8 Comments
Government to restore historical names for army, navy and air force
Canada’s military is royal once more. In a symbolic move, the Canadian government is renaming the three branches of the armed forces, restoring the “royal” moniker to the air force and navy and tacking ‘Canadian’ onto the army. Defence Minister Peter MacKay told CTV the changes correct a “historical mistake.” The forces lost their regal titles when the once-separate branches were combined in 1968. Under the changes, the air force, now known as Air Command, will become the Royal Canadian Air Force. The army, currently Land Force Command, will become the Canadian Army, and Maritime Command will be once again known as the Royal Canadian Navy.
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Showdown in the House
By Andrew Coyne - Wednesday, April 28, 2010 at 1:40 AM - 75 Comments
Andrew Coyne on the historic ruling affirming Parliament’s right to view the Afghan detainee documents
Louie Palu/CP
Before Tuesday’s historic ruling by the Speaker of the Commons in the matter of the Afghan detainee documents, there was much speculation he would come up with some sort of classic fudge of the kind so beloved of this country’s political class, one that would allow all sides to claim victory and do little else. You know: Parliament is right in principle, but the government is right in practice. Parliament has the right to demand the documents, and the government has the obligation to . . . treat their concerns seriously. Can’t we all just get along?
There were some attempts afterward to cast it in this light, but let there be no mistake: this was not a compromise. It was balanced, it was judicious, it was fair to all sides, but it was unequivocal: Parliament’s right “to send for persons, papers and records,” Speaker Peter Milliken ruled, is absolute and unconditional. There are no limits on it, and the government has no constitutional option other than to comply with Parliament’s will in such a matter, as expressed in the resolution passed by the Commons on Dec. 10. To accept the contrary notion, that the government may decide by and for itself which documents Parliament may see, and which it may not, “would completely undermine the role of parliamentarians in holding the government to account.”
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How to beat an insurgency by killing fewer people
By Michael Petrou - Monday, March 2, 2009 at 1:36 PM - 1 Comment
Progress in Afghanistan shouldn’t be measured by the number of dead Taliban
The insurgency Canada and allied nations face in Afghanistan is a political problem and a battle in which the military should play a supporting role, according to General Walter Natynczyk, Canada’s Chief of the Defence Staff.
Speaking in Ottawa at the annual general meeting of the Conference of Defence Associations Institute (CDAI) on Friday, Natynczyk described a counter-insurgency doctrine that reflects the thinking outlined in a manual that the Department of National Defence distributed earlier last week. It stresses that simply killing insurgents in Afghanistan will not result in their defeat.
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Prepping for battle
By Patricia Treble - Thursday, February 19, 2009 at 5:55 PM - 0 Comments
‘Combat School’ follows a platoon of Canadian soldiers as they train for war in Afghanistan
As a group of Canadian soldiers walked through a village in Afghanistan, local kids threw stones at them. Some stood on rooftops, pointing out the patrol’s location to others ahead. At any moment, the soldiers could find themselves under attack. “You could feel the tension,” recalled cameraman Frank Vilaca, who accompanied the troops.
The patrol was the culmination of months of intense training for the 40 soldiers of 1 Platoon, Mike Company, 3rd Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment. Every step of it was captured by Vilaca for Combat School, a six-part series starting March 10 at 10 p.m. on Discovery Channel. (Vilaca is himself a former soldier, having served as a field cameraman in Rwanda and Bosnia.) The show is a raw look at the challenges soldiers face in preparation for the violent uncertainty of warfare.
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Canada wins the war on frozen fingers
By Emily Burke - Tuesday, January 20, 2009 at 3:37 PM - 23 Comments
The military’s finger-warming vest could be a hit with anglers
An amazing new invention by the Canadian military could mean you’ll never suffer from frozen fingers again.
Researchers at the Department of National Defence have developed the Torso Heating for Dexterity in the Cold system, a close fitting battery-powered vest with a built-in thermostat. Rather than covering the hands with a heated glove, the vest increases the wearer’s core temperature to the point where the body can keep fingers warm on its own. It’s the first of its kind in the world, says Darren Menabney, business development officer at Defense Research and Development Canada. “There’s nothing out there that really does the same thing.”
The vest uses a built-in control system to monitor the wearer’s finger temperature, and turns up the heat when they’re chilly. This fools the core into thinking that the body is overheating, triggering an automatic response to send warm blood to the extremities.
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Megapundit: Tell another one, Uncle Gerry!
By selley - Monday, September 22, 2008 at 3:20 PM - 14 Comments
WEEKEND ROUNDUP
Must-reads: …Christie Blatchford on Gerry Ritz; Doug Saunders on the Eurabia hypothesis;WEEKEND ROUNDUP
Must-reads: Christie Blatchford on Gerry Ritz; Doug Saunders on the Eurabia hypothesis; David Olive on uniting the left; John Ivison in northern Ontario; Rosie DiManno and Peter Worthington on Afghanistan; Scott Taylor on Canada and the Caucasus; Konrad Yakabuski on Justin Trudeau; L. Ian MacDonald on what Jean Charest’s up to.
On the issues
Behold: all the things we’re not talking about!The Toronto Sun‘s Peter Worthington is not impressed by the “tomb of silence” in which the Harperites have sealed all matters military: notably, committing to withdraw from Afghanistan in July 2011 and replacing the outspoken Rick Hillier with Walter Natynczyk, who seems more shy about vocally “standing up for soldiers and reviving our combat character”—both of which, in Worthington’s view, seem to make the Prime Minister “nervous.” The army needs at least “an additional brigade,” he argues, and ideally to double in size, but recent events lead him to fear that “lethargy is again taking over before the military rebuilding job is done.”
“The yearning for peace in Afghanistan hasn’t dwindled,” the Toronto Star‘s Rosie DiManno assures us, but “there is growing disenchantment with NATO, which clearly can’t contend with a resurgent Taliban.” American troops redeployed from Iraq might be able to do the job, she argues, but “the whole point of NATO taking over responsibility of Afghanistan—besides justifying its existence post Cold War—was to put a multinational face, earnest and humanitarian, on the mission.” Due to many factors including the component nations’ inability or unwillingness to commit enough troops to combat duty, DiManno seems more or less ready to call that mission a failure.
