By Michael Nickerson
There’s something liberating about unemployment. Sure the bank account might get a little thin, and it’s probably not the thing you want to lead with when you’re out on a date. But there’s something truly cathartic when you can speak candidly about your old job, how taken for granted you were and how crappy your job really was without worrying about whether you’re going to make employee of the month. Tell it like it is; stick it to the man; blow that whistle and come what may!
Well one has to wonder whether Wayne Eyre has felt that liberating feeling given the rather candid farewell tour he’s been on while winding down his duties as Chief of the Defence Staff. To be fair, the good general has never been known for his sunny ways. But his commentary these last few months has been rather curt and to the point. The armed forces are short people, money and equipment, and far from prepared to meet an ever growing list of threats brewing at home and abroad. In essence, we’re currently screwed and better get our act together!
And something else Eyre has apparently made very clear to his bosses and counterparts in federal government: Fill you own sandbags! For that matter, make your own fire breaks, evacuate your own towns, and generally get with this thing called climate change, because the military is both way overstretched and rather sick of bailing out underprepared provincial governments with their ever-more-frequent natural disasters, to say nothing of caring for our neglected elderly in long-term care or taking over a ham-fisted pandemic response.
In a “leaked” video provided to The Ottawa Citizen Eyre stated in a virtual town hall with military leaders that he “made it quite clear to other departments that our capacity to do what we did last year is not the same, especially with reduced readiness (and), increased deployments to Latvia,” and that he viewed the employment of armed forces members in firefighting to be a “wickedly wasteful” use of their time, training and resources.
Apparently the message has at least in part been received if Emergency Preparedness Minister Harjit Sajjan is to be believed. Now given his track record as defence minister one might find it more amusing than a relief to hear that the government has a plan to fill the emergency response gap. In what is described as a “pilot” expansion of the Humanitarian Work Program the government will leverage the help of St. John’s Ambulance, The Red Cross, veteran-led Team Rubicon, and the Search and Rescue Volunteer Association of Canada (SARVAC) to coordinate and support the wild-fire emergency response in British Columbia and the Northwest Territories this summer. If it’s anything like his implementation of the “Strong, Secure, Engaged” defence policy, things should go swimmingly.
But at least it’s a start, and an acknowledgement of Eyre’s dire warnings. Unfortunately our current defence minister hasn’t got the memo. For while Bill Blair has certainly given lip service to the military’s current problems, he has also waxed eloquent about how there’s something “incredibly reassuring to Canadians when the Canadian Armed Forces show up and men and women in uniform are out in their communities and they’re sandbagging and helping people evacuate and get to safety.” Well given the training, discipline and organization that our military has and provides that sentiment is certainly understandable. I’m sure we’d all like the military’s medical core treating bed sores and changing diapers in long-term care, but it’s not really what they’re set up for.
That doesn’t mean the infrastructure is not there or the expertise lacking. We do have bases across Canada that could be called upon for staging emergency response when needed. And there is no end to the expertise in organization, coordination, and logistics among retired military personnel who I venture would take emergency response preparedness, planning and training over ‘trading a helmet for a hardhat’ any day.
However, that will take money, and it will take a collective decision to let go of our military security blanket and develop a dedicated organization to deal with our ever-warming planet. Just ask that retired guy, he’ll tell you.
