[bootlegga]

Jabberwalker Jabberwalker:

bootlegga bootlegga:

Not at all, as long as you're willing to pay enough taxes for both, because both are hideously expensive.

However, most Canadians are NOT willing to pay more, so we wind up cutting one - and cuts to the military costs far less votes than cuts to healthcare.

... and so we hand our defences ... and ultimately a large part of our ability to make sovereign decisions, over to another power ... one who acts in it's own self-interest (as it should). We get by with the arrangement because very often, at this particular point in our histories, our national self interests happen to overlap a lot. This has not always been the case and probably will not continue to be so, to such an extent, into the future. We really have no voice ... no say at all unless we can bring some sort of military power to the table. Like it or not, this is an important part of how every nation maintains it's independence. Soft power eventually peters out without some sort of solid substance behind it.
This is one of the ugly truths about our species and all of the flowers and "kumbayas" in the World can't alter it.

We haven't handed over any sovereignty to anyone by not spending more money on defence. That is a fallacy.

The US would patrol the Arctic irrespective of whether or not we had the capability - it's in their interest to do so. Just like it was in their interest to interfere with our intended purchase of Trafalgar nuke subs from the UK (it took an order from Reagan to put an end to it).

The biggest thing that not having a powerful navy, air force and army does is it limits our ability to project power in remote places around the world. We can't for example, easily extract thousands of civilians from Lebanon on our own and we can't deploy thousands of ships, helos and people to disaster stricken areas like the US can. But I hardly think we've ceded any of our sovereignty by not spending a fortune on defence.

What most people fail to recognize is that the US benefits almost as much as we do from our undefended border and small military. If they had had to maintain a dozen divisions and a couple air wings on its northern borders during the Cold War (like the Soviets had to), it would have been far difficult to build the USN to such a powerful force, while at the same time maintaining forces in Europe, Asia and elsewhere to contain the USSR and Communism. Additionally, our lack of Arctic capabilities allows them free run of the Arctic, and as their interference showed during the 1980s, they DON'T really want us up there either.