Citizenship and the Canadian Military

Ideas coming out of Canada these days are distinctly un-Canadian, sometimes literally. It is fitting that the latest brain wave of the new war-mongering attitude of Canadian politicians comes with suitable graphically violent metaphor: "We've thrown, if you will, a transformational grenade in the middle of our recruiting process," Canadian chief of defence staff General Rick Hillier said.

The shards and fragments of this blast are that the Canadian government is considering a change of policy to allow non-Canadian citizens (eg. landed immigrants) to enlist in the Canadian Armed Forces. One can imagine a backroom conversation from the Armed Forces Council:

"We need to recruit tens of thousands of new soldiers."
"Ya. But no-one wants to sign up for peacekeeping missions that have nothing to do with peace and put themselves in harm's way for dubious geo-political motivations."
"Well can we rent some soldiers?"

If we think back to when Paul Martin "bravely" told the US that Canada would not be sending troops to Iraq there was a lot of discussion of backroom nudge-nudge wink-wink deals between officials that Canada would take care of Afghanistan in return for a muted US response to Canada's lack of involvement in Iraq.

The problem with the potential new recruiting strategy is not that non-citizens will die instead of citizens - all persons are of equal value in our shared humanity. It is that this will become a political and social force.

Again we can imagine a questionnaire for Canadian immigration in 2007:

Canada Immigration Questionnaire

Question 1: Name: ___________
Question 2: Would you be willing to take a job and serve the Canadian Armed Forces? YES NO
(if you answer yes to Question 2 proceed to Question 75, if no please answer questions 3-74 in Ojibwa, native language to a portion of indigenous Canadians)
Question 3: Are you a terrorist?
...
...
Question 32: What ideas and interests do you believe in?
...
...
Question 62: Do you have any skills and abilities to contribute to the Canadian social life and economy?
...
...
Question 75: Signature ______________

For reference to the possibilities of this scenario see the US where military includes naturalized citizens and non-citizens. In 2002, the traditional five-year waiting period to apply for U.S. citizenship was waived for foreign-born members of the military.

Labels: canada, politics

Chris Brauer Media Project [BLOG]

Saturday, August 26, 2006