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Ya because the Army is so useless considering its the only one that operates on the ground. Ya you're right, completely useless.

   

Translation; Army guys poke holes in my misguided views of the world so if I was in charge I would send them all to the unemployment line.

   

We have room to cut defence?

Since when

What a terrible idea

   

Ok... well what do you think they should be used for and bearing that in mind how big should they be in order to preform said tasks? When you say what use, then what threats do you see that a ground army could counter? (if any) Last, what country would you say best resembles your idea of a ground force?

   

Welcome to Reality. It's nice having a Military prepared for any situation, but at the same time Fiscal Constraints and even actual Need takes precedence. Reminds me of the "after WW2 we the the X biggest Navy, oh shame" argument that comes up time after time. Sure, it would be nice to have, but the fact is that we no longer Needed such a Navy and maintaining it would have been an Expense not worth paying.

   

Because sailors and airmen don't make good mechanized infantry soldiers perhaps?

   

Well for starters, snow. Who's gonna shovel our walks in the next snow storm? (I'm just joking).

You can't be serious, even people who believe that our forces should strictly be used for peace keeping can see the over whelming value of ground troops. How useful were those ships in Kosovo? Do you think planes flying over head will be any kind of deterrent against warring factions fighting on the ground during peace keeping missions? What are they going to do, take pictures and send memo's to the factions which are breaking the rules after the fact?

Even if you argue for a strictly defensive stance in which our troop never foot on foreign soil what happens in the case of a natural disaster or martial law?

   

we just gotta find out what streaker does for a job and get the government to cut the hell out of that. Better yet, lets put him out of a job for good by getting rid of all fast food joints in Canada!

   

fact is if you have any intelligence at all, and any knowledge of history, you would know the importance of a military to a country, and equally the importance of an army to a military force.

   

The only vital use I can see for the army would be in the event of a Quebec-Ottawa showdown following a separatist UDI. Then the army could be of some use. The occasional peacekeeping gig is fine as well, although it seems army guys resent doing that stuff.

I think the emphasis should be on sovereignty. The Navy and Air Force are much more useful than the army for those tasks.

   

A civilian agency would be more suitable for handling natural disasters. Tanks are useless for those.

A small, lightly-armed force should be enough for any martial-law situations we might ever encounter in Canada (ie. Quebec UDI).

   

This thread is hilarious. Instead of concentrating on the issue (Harper possibly cutting defence spending), everyone here is focussed on Streaker's comment about the army.

If some people here could simply see past their hatred for him, you'd know (as he's posted this on several occasions), that he thinks the air force and navy contribute far more to actually defending our country than the Army does. Why? Simply because a ship or plane can patrol a helluva lot more territory than a guy in jeep or on skis. The only problem with his assessment is that such a CF would actually cost more, not less, as the air force and navy generally need more expensive equipment and use far more fuel to do the job.

Frankly, I agree with him. We don't need a huge army. I think another brigade or two would be plenty, as long as Harper kept his promise to add more to the Reserves. I would also make more of it air mobile (especially given that we have the C-17s), so that it could respond quickly for any event, be it an attack or fighting a forest fire in BC.

My ideal CF would have more ships and planes, capable of patrolling our coasts, as well as participating in international missions, with NATO and the UN. The Army would mainly be used to do some peacekeeping missions (when necessary, not all the time) and deploy on NATO missions to places like Afghanistan, after an ally has been attacked. All missions would have to be sustainable, meaning we would have to have enough personnel to maintain such missions indefinitely. This deployment in Afghanistan is an excellent example. The Liberals signed us up for too much, and Harper didn't have the nerve to scale it back to something we could support indefinitely.

   

Sorry, but Streakers past record of slander towards members of the military deserves to be addressed



Air force and navy can patrol further but they can't really secure an area. For that you need an army. The cost of building a navy and airforce that could effectively patrol our borders would bankrupt the country.(But I do think they should be larger, how much larger rests with the public and how much they would like to spend.)



I also don't think we need a million man army, but 2 more brigades (fully manned) would be nice.



Funny enough I agree with your outlook about manpower but disagree with "peacekeeping" missions. Do you mean Cyprus-type peacekeeping or the more volatile "peace-enforcement" type missions?

   

I would suggest subs augmented with long range aircraft like the Nimrod would be the most flexible and least expensive. Short range coastal ships like minesweepers and frigates to make a local presence and some fast air to make an air presence when needed. We don't need capitol ships like an aircraft carrier or even a helicarrier. Our land forces are a bit thin but 2 battalions would be harsh on the books especially now, perhaps 1 battalion or just make our current brigades to overstrength (+150%).

Drones, satellites and listening posts are what is really required and an army is there to make patrols to make sure they are working correctly.

   

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