Over the past three decades or more, Canada has suffered from a deep identity crisis whenever it has been confronted with the messy, brutal foreign wars raging in far-flung parts of this troubled globe.
The overwhelming brutality of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has forced the Liberal government in recent weeks to confront some thorny questions. What does a peacekeeping nation do when there’s no peace to keep?
And what do you do when faced with a nuclear-armed adversary whose default reflex is to wage war?
What questions do you have about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? Send an email to ask@cbc.ca
For decades, Canada has clung to a perception of itself as a peacekeeping nation. Experts say the war of aggression launched by President Vladimir Putin marks a return to the kind of conflicts not seen since the end of the Second World War.
That uncomfortable conundrum will come into even sharper focus later this week.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau travels to Brussels to meet with other NATO leaders on Thursday. There they’ll be asked to consider some decidedly non-peacekeeping scenarios in support of keeping Ukraine in the war — with an eye to confronting Russia over the long-term.
Their aim will be to keep the West out of the war in Ukraine and avoid a direct confrontation with Russia. It’s as much an exercise in organizing deterrence as it is about putting some steel into the spine of NATO allies.
It may be generous to say the Liberal government has been reluctant to embrace anything that looks like a hard-edged military solution. Canada was among the last countries to agree to ship arms to Ukraine, despite months of consideration.
A man removes a shredded curtain inside a school damaged by Russian bombs in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Friday. (Rodrigo Abd/The Associated Press)
The Trudeau government has steadfastly refused to indicate clearly whether it will raise defence spending in response to the threat, preferring mushy platitudes to clear targets.
It has not committed firmly to purchasing equipment and covering critical gaps in the Canadian military inventory in the near term. It also has presented economic sanctions as the ultimate weapon for defeating Russia.
During Trudeau’s recent tour of European capitals, he gave a speech in Berlin that neatly captured his government’s reluctance.
“I think for a lot of citizens, they said, well, Russia just invaded militarily Ukraine, surely if you want to stand for Ukrainians, the response has to be military,” Trudeau said.
“Well, actually, we have more and better tools than that now. The power we have that we have built up over the past 75 years of unprecedented peace and stability around the world means that we have the tools to damage the Putin regime far more effectively than we ever could with tanks and missiles.”
There are strains of old arguments in Trudeau’s remarks.
From ‘strategic bombing’ to sanctions
During the Second World War, there were those who argued Germany and Japan could be brought to their knees through strategic bombing — by flattening factories to undermine the enemy’s ability to fight, much in the way sanctions are meant to rob Putin of the means to pay for his war.
Those people claimed victory could be achieved without the wholesale sacrifice of armies. It didn’t turn out that way, of course. The Axis powers had to be driven out on the ground in much the same way that Ukraine has — for the moment — checked Russia’s bloody advance.
One hundred and nine empty strollers are placed outside the Lviv city council to highlight the number of children killed in the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, in Lviv, Ukraine, on Friday. (Alexey Furman/Getty Images)
Matthew Schmidt, a national security expert at the University of New Haven, Connecticut, said sometimes we just don’t want to see the obvious nature of war.
Had the Ukrainians not been so effective in their defence — and had the Russians not been so “shockingly incompetent” — the war would have been over by now, he said.
There are lessons the Ukrainians have learned over the years about dealing with Russia that may be just sinking in for western leaders like Trudeau, Schmidt said.
“I think they understand Putin in a different way than we do. They understand that Western-style deterrence isn’t going to work with him,” he said.
Wishful thinking
That reluctance to shed the peacekeeping aura was echoed this week when Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly told a CTV interviewer that Canada is “not a military power” — that the country “is good at convening and making sure that diplomacy is happening.”
Schmidt said both Trudeau and Joly reflect the best ideals of the West — but they may be out of step with the moment.
“I think it is naive about Putin and how he makes decisions,” he said. “I think it is aspirational of what we in the West want the world to be, and what it absolutely can be, but not in all instances, and maybe not yet.”
Dominique Arel, chair of Ukrainian studies at the University of Ottawa, said he believes the horrors faced by civilians in eastern Europe right now — coupled with events such as Friday’s pro-war rally in a packed stadium in Moscow — bring with them echoes of the 1930s.
“Nuremberg,” he said, referring to the torch-lit rallies held in Nazi Germany.
A resident walks with a child past a Russian tank in the besieged southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine, on Friday. (Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters)
Back then, Arel said, many people in the West didn’t want to acknowledge what was going on in Europe. He predicts that as Canadians are overwhelmed by images of bombed theatres and murdered children, there will be a shift “in the Canadian identity” which has for decades viewed peacekeeping as the country’s primary reason for going abroad.
The world has changed, Arel said.
“It’s a very hard and cold realization that in the era of war of aggression … you have to basically provide the means for states, including the Canadian state … to withstand aggression,” he said.
That doesn’t mean Canadians have to entirely give up who they are as a people, he added.
“It’s not that Canada has to advocate for a military solution to conflicts as such. Of course not,” he said. “Ultimately, it’s always about the political solution, but in order to get to a political solution, the military component now, unfortunately, has to be much more serious than it was before.”
CALGARY – MEG Energy says it earned $167 million in its third quarter, down from $249 million during the same quarter last year.
The company says revenues for the quarter were $1.27 billion, down from $1.44 billion during the third quarter of 2023.
Diluted earnings per share were 62 cents, down from 86 cents a year earlier.
MEG Energy says it successfully completed its debt reduction strategy, reducing its net debt to US$478 million by the end of September, down from US$634 million during the prior quarter.
President and CEO Darlene Gates said moving forward all the company’s free cash flow will be returned to shareholders through expanded share buybacks and a quarterly base dividend.
The company says its capital expenditures for the quarter increased to $141 million from $83 million a year earlier, mainly due to higher planned field development activity, as well as moderate capacity growth projects.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.
Premier David Eby is proposing an all-party committee investigate mistakes made during the British Columbia election vote tally, including an uncounted ballot box and unreported votes in three-quarters of the province’s 93 ridings.
The proposal comes after B.C.’s chief electoral officer blamed extreme weather, long working hours and a new voting system for human errors behind the mistakes in last month’s count, though none were large enough to change the initial results.
Anton Boegman says the agency is already investigating the mistakes to “identify key lessons learned” to improve training, change processes or make recommendations for legislative change.
He says the uncounted ballot box containing about 861 votes in Prince George-Mackenzie was never lost, and was always securely in the custody of election officials.
Boegman says a failure in five districts to properly report a small number of out-of-district votes, meanwhile, rippled through to the counts in 69 ridings.
Eby says the NDP will propose that a committee examine the systems used and steps taken by Elections BC, then recommend improvements in future elections.
“I look forward to working with all MLAs to uphold our shared commitment to free and fair elections, the foundation of our democracy,” he said in a statement Tuesday, after a news conference by Boegman.
Boegman said if an independent review does occur, “Elections BC will, of course, fully participate in that process.”
He said the mistakes came to light when a “discrepancy” of 14 votes was noticed in the riding of Surrey-Guildford, spurring a review that increased the number of unreported votes there to 28.
Surrey-Guildford was the closest race in the election and the NDP victory there gave Eby a one-seat majority. The discovery reduced the NDP’s victory margin from 27 to 21, pending the outcome of a judicial review that was previously triggered because the race was so close.
The mistakes in Surrey-Guildford resulted in a provincewide audit that found the other errors, Boegman said.
“These mistakes were a result of human error. Our elections rely on the work of over 17,000 election officials from communities across the province,” he said.
“Election officials were working 14 hours or more on voting days and on final voting day in particular faced extremely challenging weather conditions in many parts of the province.
“These conditions likely contributed to these mistakes,” he said.
B.C.’s “vote anywhere” model also played a role in the errors, said Boegman, who said he had issued an order to correct the results in the affected ridings.
Boegman said the uncounted Prince George-Mackenzie ballot box was used on the first day of advance voting. Election officials later discovered a vote hadn’t been tabulated, so they retabulated the ballots but mistakenly omitted the box of first-day votes, only including ballots from the second day.
Boegman said the issues discovered in the provincewide audit will be “fully documented” in his report to the legislature on the provincial election, the first held using electronic tabulators.
He said he was confident election officials found all “anomalies.”
B.C. Conservative Party Leader John Rustad had said on Monday that the errors were “an unprecedented failure by the very institution responsible for ensuring the fairness and accuracy of our elections.”
Rustad said he was not disputing the outcomes as judicial recounts continue, but said “it’s clear that mistakes like these severely undermine public trust in our electoral process.”
Rustad called for an “independent review” to make sure the errors never happen again.
Boegman, who said the election required fewer than half the number of workers under the old paper-based system, said results for the election would be returned in 90 of the province’s 93 ridings on Tuesday.
Full judicial recounts will be held in Surrey-Guildford and Kelowna-Centre, while a partial recount of the uncounted box will take place in Prince George-Mackenzie.
Boegman said out-of-district voting had been a part of B.C.’s elections for many decades, and explained how thousands of voters utilized the province’s vote-by-phone system, calling it a “very secure model” for people with disabilities.
“I think this is a unique and very important part of our elections, providing accessibility to British Columbians,” he said. “They have unparalleled access to the ballot box that is not found in other jurisdictions in Canada.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.
WINNIPEG – A public memorial honouring former judge, senator and chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission into residential schools, Murray Sinclair, is set to take place in Winnipeg on Sunday.
The event, which is being organized by the federal and Manitoba governments, will be at Canada Life Centre, home of the NHL’s Winnipeg Jets.
Sinclair died Monday in a Winnipeg hospital at the age of 73.
A teepee and a sacred fire were set up outside the Manitoba legislature for people to pay their respects hours after news of his death became public. The province has said it will remain open to the public until Sinclair’s funeral.
Sinclair’s family continues to invite people to visit the sacred fire and offer tobacco.
The family thanked the public for sharing words of love and support as tributes poured in this week.
“The significance of Mazina Giizhik’s (the One Who Speaks of Pictures in the Sky) impact and reach cannot be overstated,” the family said in a statement on Tuesday, noting Sinclair’s traditional Anishinaabe name.
“He touched many lives and impacted thousands of people.”
They encourage the public to celebrate his life and journey home.
A visitation for extended family, friends and community is also scheduled to take place Wednesday morning.
Leaders from across Canada shared their memories of Sinclair.
Premier Wab Kinew called Sinclair one of the key architects of the era of reconciliation.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Sinclair was a teacher, a guide and a friend who helped the country navigate tough realities.
Sinclair was the first Indigenous judge in Manitoba — the second in Canada.
He served as co-chair of the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry of Manitoba to examine whether the justice system was failing Indigenous people after the murder of Helen Betty Osborne and the police shooting death of First Nations leader J.J. Harper.
In leading the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, he participated in hundreds of hearings across Canada and heard testimony from thousands of residential school survivors.
The commissioners released their widely influential final report in 2015, which described what took place at the institutions as cultural genocide and included 94 calls to action.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.
