468. Canada Can’t Defend Itself | J.O. Michel Maisonneuve, Barbara Maisonneuve, and Mark Norman
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Going back to school is a big step, but having support at every step of your academic journey can make a big difference. Imagine your future differently at capella.edu. Hey, everybody. So today we're doing a bit of a dive into...

the state of the Canadian military. And it's not just that, because it's also a deep dive into the state of the Canadian political situation. And then more broadly, I would say, somewhat of an analysis of a very important

fragment of the culture war, which is, let's say, the relationship between postmodernism and critical race theory and DEI equity nonsense and the most patriarchal of all institutions, the military. And so it's an issue of broad international significance with a Canadian focus. There's a bit of a crisis in the Canadian military.

especially with regards to personnel retention and recruitment. And that's emblematic of a much deeper problem. And so we're going to dive into that problem. It's taken me a while, but I found some people from the Canadian military who are willing and able to speak. Mark Norman from the Navy, Michelle Maiseneuve from the Army, and Barbara Krasich-Maiseneuve from the Air Force. And so we're all going to talk today about

The crisis that's facing the Canadian military and perhaps the military elsewhere, and why the military in Canada is necessary, and what role it's going to play in the future, and what problems it's suffering from that can't be, let's say, easily gathered under the rubric of DEI emergency, because perhaps that's the last of the serious problems that's truly facing the Canadian military. Let's start, sir.

Will you introduce yourself and I'll go through all three of you and away we'll go. Thanks, Dr. Peterson, for having me and the rest of us here. My name is Mark Norman. I'm a retired naval officer, third generation Canadian military officer. I served 39 years in the Royal Canadian Navy, starting as a reservist mechanic and

and rising through the ranks, having a whole bunch of great opportunities to do a bunch of really fun and some not so fun things over that career. I retired in 2019 after having commanded the Navy itself, the actual institution of the Royal Canadian Navy as part of the Canadian Forces.

and a brief tour as the Vice Chief of Defense Staff, the second in command of the Canadian Forces. And since then, I've been doing a variety of different things in the private sector and trying to...

push the narrative and open discussion and dialogue about defense and security issues in Canada. So I really appreciate being invited here today. Thanks. Sure. So I'm Michel Maisonneuve. I served 35 years in the army, Canadian army, and I was an armored corps officer, so tanker.

Went through military college in Kingston. And then I finished my last job in uniform was as the chief of staff of the NATO headquarters in Norfolk, Virginia, which we stood up after it changed from being a naval headquarters to a transformation headquarters.

Once I removed the uniform, I moved to the Civilian Service, the Civilian National Defense, and I was appointed the academic director, the principal of the military college in Saint-Jean, which was reopened in 2007. I did that for 10 and a half years, and we actually, by the time I left, we got it back up to university level.

And so retired completely from both those jobs in 2018. And since then, I've been speaking out as well about the state of our, not just the armed forces, but our country. And ended up, anyway, so that's been kind of the amount of work that I've been doing in the last few years. My name is Barbara Krasy-Mazenov, and I served for 21 years in the Royal Canadian Air Force.

And I started in the early 80s. I did not join as an officer. I joined as a private with the military police, a trade that women had only been allowed in for a few years. And then I was fortunate enough to go to the Royal Military College and Royal Roads. And then I became an officer in the logistics branch. And I served in incredibly amazing places. And I feel very blessed. I retired, as I said, after 21 years. Then I spent two years in the procurement world.

And since then, I feel that I would still like to give back. So I do various nonprofit. I work with the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum. And pretty much since the whole...

sexual harassment thing broke in the military, I have wanted to tell my side of the story, and I think I speak for the majority, but there's very few people that are willing to listen. So I really appreciate being here, Dr. Peterson, to be able to have a chance to do that. Thanks for having us. Oh, yeah. Well, I'm thrilled that you're here. It's a real privilege to be able to discuss these things and to come to, I hope, some deeper understanding. Well, let's start with the 20,000

I think I definitely want to delve into the issues of sexual harassment and hypothetical sexual misconduct in the military. And also, I'd like to talk about the role of women in the military in a very frank way. And so, because that's a very complicated problem. But let's start with the state of the military in Canada in 2024. And Mark, maybe we'll start with you if you don't mind. So what issues do you think are paramount and that...

that paramount also in a manner that bringing to public attention would be useful? - Yeah, I think it would not be an overstatement to describe the Canadian Air Forces as being in a crisis. And that crisis has many dimensions to it.

And it is a very complicated equation to use a mathematical analogy. There is no one single thing that either stands out as being problematic and by definition wicked problems. As soon as you start to mess with one element of that equation, you throw the other elements out of balance. So that's the context for my answer.

which would be that we have at least three or four significant strategic challenges starting outside and looking in. First of all, we live in a country that traditionally has not really understood, although it accepts the need for an armed forces, it doesn't understand why an armed forces is necessary. And those are two different conversations.

The global security situation we find ourselves in is eroding rapidly. And this is another aspect of what I would describe as it's not a naivete on the part of Canadians writ large, but it is a sense of impoverishment.

It's not really affecting us on the part of machinery of government. We have an organization that has been chronically underfunded and undersupported for decades. And this is both episodic but critical.

constant over my entire time in uniform, and I'm sure my friends here would agree. We have a human resources problem, both in terms of quantity and quality, where

there are more people, there have been until recently, more people leaving the armed forces than joining it. The institution is shrinking and there are issues around the quality of individual that are being brought into the organization. So we have a quantitative and qualitative problem as it relates to the strength of the armed forces. And then as you mentioned in your introduction, we have

broader issues with respect to equipment purchase,

procurement, maintenance. And these are all combining to create what I believe is a genuine crisis. And then add to that external concerns around the credibility, not of the individual soldier, sailor, or aviator inside the armed forces, but of the institution.

Can it actually do what it's required to do? Is it credible? Is it reliable on an international level? And this goes right to at the grand strategic level, is Canada really supporting its military the way it should? The 2% argument, all these things, right down to is Canada really there to help the alliance and other key allies? And can it be relied upon? And I think that this is...

kind of a messy melange of really significant concerns going forward. Okay, so let me take some of that apart, and then we'll go to Michelle and then Barbara. Let's strike at the heart of the matter. So let's say that I'm being a realist and a cynic, and I might say, well, why can't Canada merely ride on the coattails of the U.S.?

10 times our population, much stronger economy, outstanding military. They're going to defend Canada when push comes to shove. We're adding a relatively small contribution, even if we pulled our fair share, pulled our weight, we'd be adding a relatively small contribution. And given the

proximity of the Americans and the fact that we're under their defense rubric, why not just attend to other things and let the military shuffle along? Now, that goes to your point about being underfunded and under supported. And we've been able to, let's say, we've been able to get away with that, so to speak. But you could make a case if you felt like it, that that was a very pragmatic thing to do, given that we have the Americans on our doorstep. So what

A counter-argument to that, one, might be, well, you can't play games with your primary military ally without paying a price for that. So Canada should pull its weight, not least so that our opinion is given some weight. And then I guess you'd make the same case internationally if we're not pulling our weight on the military side. And with regard to our international agreements, why should anyone take us with any degree of seriousness, including ourselves? And I think we've seen that already, massive erosion in policy.

the perception of Canada's reliability on the international front. I don't think Canadians have any idea how badly this government has devastated Canada's international reputation, partly on the military side, but that's not the only reason. Okay, so what else would... Yes. Before you go on, if I may, I agree with everything that Mark said. I see it as a perfect storm.

The international security environment has completely changed. We never thought we'd ever have a state-on-state war again. There's a situation in Gaza, of course. There are rogue nations out there that are trying economically and in a lot of other ways, eventually perhaps militarily, are going to try to have the upper hand. So the international situation is forcing people

people across the world to look at their security situation. So that's a huge thing. At the same time, as Mark said, there are all these issues within Canada, within the Canadian forces,

that are making it currently we are undefended if I can just say in my view we are undefended the NORAD agreement took too long to get upgraded so now okay they've made the decision to do that and that is now having an impact as you say on in our standing in the world and I think one of the things that Canadians don't understand in terms of the importance of

armed forces is that they are a means for us to demonstrate our involvement. A ship, for example, when a ship goes off and docks somewhere in any country,

They're the greatest diplomatic tool that we can have because they're there to demonstrate Canada's there. Our sailors are fantastic diplomats. They get out there and they talk about what they do. They talk about their country. They spend money in the economy of that country that they're visiting. So that's just a small role, but it's an important one. And as you say right now,

Because we have not been supporting our armed forces, they're unsupported, they're underappreciated. What do you think that does to the... Well, they feel underappreciated, which is... Yeah, exactly. And they're smart, motivated people.

patriotic people for the most part who really love what they do and they're doing it because they genuinely believe in it. And when they see that there is not the level of support, both politically, nationally, and even internationally,

inside the institution itself, then that becomes... Demoralized. It is demoralized. Yeah, yeah. Well, if you're going to put your life on the line, you want to make sure that people are behind you. Right. So Mike's intervention was really good for two reasons. One, he made a couple of really good points and gave me a chance to think about how to respond to your question. I think you laid out some of the elements of the answer in your own question in that...

back to the essence of why not? Why not just let the

The Americans look after us. We have done that brilliantly for decades. And I don't think that's an overstatement at all. In fact, I could be somewhat provocative and say that all of these governments, up to and including the current government, that have played this game have done so brilliantly. The problem is they've done so in a very short-term micro view without understanding the implications of what they're doing, both economically

in terms of the state of the institution, which some are more concerned about than others, and we can come back to that, but more so to do with Canada's reputation. And what's happening now is not just the global security situation, but the expectations have changed. We're now in a world where it is not just, security is not just a finite,

discrete activity, it permeates a whole bunch of different dimensions of how nations and individuals and whether they're rogue states or whether they're organizations that are pan-national, how they're interacting. And it's not just the traditional physical notion of a military. Security has...

broader implications, which means that you need to be looking at it more seriously, more strategically, and looking at all the elements of it. So the military is a key component of that because it is, in essence...

the insurance policy. It is an overly simplistic characterization, but it's true. Now, a lot of people don't have the luxury of insurance for a variety of reasons, but ultimately... Yeah, but we could afford that. We're not a poor country. We are not a poor country. And we have basically traded one degree of opportunity for another, and I'll be more specific.

We have underfunded defense and security and other things, infrastructure, a whole variety of other things nationally because we have believed that two things that are now fundamentally flawed. The first one is that there isn't really, it's a threat versus consequence conversation. The probability of something happening is really, really low. And therefore, there are other higher levels

probability problems that need to be addressed. And the second one is the very premise of your question, which was that the United States will always look after us. Well, the United States is basically saying, look,

Yeah, we're partners here, but you are not living up to your obligations with respect to the expectations of the partnership. The U.S. have noticed now. Oh, yeah. You know, they knew it. Well, Trump definitely noticed. Well, and now we've got members of the Senate publicly calling out the government of Canada in an open letter. That doesn't happen by accident.

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And Mike, you said something very interesting in relationship to Mark's comments too. You talked about us being undefended. So...

Let me expand that a little bit. So it isn't obvious to me anymore exactly where the prime military threat is. And so what that would mean from a staffing perspective is that you'd want to have the smartest and most alert possible people in your defense team continually reevaluating the shifting landscape to figure out where the threats are.

No? So... And obviously, cybersecurity is a walloping element of that, and that's a whole... That is really a whole new kind of warfare. And I would say as well that the emergence of these cheap drones has also... God only knows how radically that's changed the situation. So... Because they're unbelievably inexpensive, and so that's a real problem when you send hordes of them against unbelievably expensive military equipment. So...

What would you say? We've already agreed to some degree that the terminology for the situation that faces the Canadian military is something approximating a crisis. You laid out four or five reasons why. Crisis, a perfect storm. It's everything together. And so when you're talking about the threats, of course...

And there are great people in the military and in our civilian institutions that are looking at what the threats are out there with cybersecurity and there's AI now that's going down to the fore as well, quantum computing and everything. And, you know, there's a need for digitization of our military, which is happening now under the guise of the NATO, I mean, the NORAB upgrade, but...

Which then, okay, you say, so what? So the so what is that you need a range of capability. And the range of capability that's going to be able to react to all these different threats. Now, can we have, you know, the same kind of range of capability that the U.S. does? No, we can't. But we can be a small, capable military that, you know, that is, first of all, job one is protecting Canadians. You know, and that goes from, you know, all the threats, you know,

the North, for example, you know, we have a border with Russia, frankly, you know, there we are. I mean, it's right there. And so we need a range of capability to protect our country. And then after that, then, do we want to participate and be good international citizens and participate in our alliances, NATO, NORAD, of course, the UN, eventually? I mean, you have to look at that. That's another piece. So,

a military that's able to do everything, it can happen, but it has, you know, it's obviously not going to be on the same... But that was our strength, though. It was. I mean, I think the Americans' push comes to shove. Well, obviously, we'll never be on par with them as far as our military capabilities, but...

you drop an American soldier into anywhere in the world, and there's a lot of opinions that come up about the American soldier. They're seen as partisan. I mean, Americans are, and I love them. I'm very pro-American. But a lot of times, there's a reason why they don't want to talk to an American. But you put a Canadian in there, whether we had a blue beret on or not, you put, oh, Canadians, you know, they get along with everybody. So come and sit at the table. And so we were able to, I think, get into open doors and get in that... Bridge, yeah. Yeah, a bridge that Americans...

we're not as able to as we were. Canadians can use a softer touch. That's right. And I think that diplomatically even, we are less offensive. And I think everybody would agree with that, that Canadians seem to be less offensive. So everybody's willing to talk to us. And how wonderful is that if there's only one seat left at the table and they'll let

they'll choose a Canadian because we don't have any natural enemies, so to speak. We don't, you know, we've always proven to be, I think, good people in general. And, you know, and freedom and liberty and all of those things. We don't have a colonial history. So, you know, yeah. Exactly. Yeah, and I mean, I

I mean, this is just like anecdotal, but when I was in the Middle East, we were always trying to be very, very nonpartisan. So if we did something on the Israeli side, we had to be sure to do it on the Syrian side. And this got to be like, it was very hard to keep track of. And I remember saying at one point, wouldn't it be nice if someday we could actually do this and have

you know, the Canadians and the Syrians and the Israelis and the Austrians, whoever else were with us. And without, in the blink of an eye, this very seasoned, you know, IDF soldier turned to me and said, that could only ever happen in Canadian mess. So there, you know, and it was kind of that feeling. That was our reputation. That was our reputation. Past tense. Yeah. What's changed in, I think, a fundamental way is not the...

Not necessarily the caliber of the individual Canadian soldier, military leader, however we want to describe it. What has changed is the more global perception of what Canada represents or doesn't represent. And there was always this sense that not only was the individual or group of individuals, not only were they incredibly competent and capable, but they

That the nation that we, they represented actually, you know, stood for something, was on the right path, whatever that was at the time, and that they were going to get something done. There was going to be some useful contribution to whatever the issue was of the day that was trying to be resolved.

And that is, I would say, no longer the case. Or if it is, it is so rare and isolated. Why? What's changed? I think we've lost our way in terms of who we are, what we stand for, what we see as our role internationally. We have biased our political rhetoric towards

so far towards the notion of social values and those ideas that we have lost sight of what is in our national interest. And we're trying- Yes, well, we're not even sure that having a national interest is something that's worth pursuing anymore, right? I mean, our prime minister defined us as not having a national interest. He's obviously very internationally oriented.

So it isn't even obvious that our leadership at the top level considers the nation state an institution that's worth preserving. Well, if we're a post-national state, you don't need to have citizenship. You don't need to really have a passport that recognize you as Canadian. You don't need national flags. You don't need national institutions and you don't necessarily participate in

And you know, I mean, you look at our country, what potential we have, the potential we have. First of all, let's talk about even just our two languages, okay? The fact that we have a Canadian, French and English kind of, you know, those two official languages.

When our officers or soldiers go off and sailors and airmen and women go off to missions, a lot of them are able to speak, you know, both of them. And so they're able to diplomatically just think of what that does. I mean, most nations that you participate with, you know, our American friends, you know, can't do that. We can sidle up to the French, to the Belgians, to France.

you know, in the NATO nations even there. In Africa. In Africa, for example. French Polynesia. French Polynesia, there you go. Bingo. You know? And so, look at the strength of that. So you're making, you're all making a case that Canada has a particular positive role to play independently, like in the world. And of course, Canada does have a history of that and a very effective history of that independent of the specific defense requirements of Canada. And that's part of

what would you say, maintaining and promoting global peace, but also part of putting Canada out there as a credible nation state that should be taken seriously. As a place that has an opinion and that's able to actually participate. Not only participate, but intervene when required. And it's very difficult. And let's go back to an earlier question that you posed to us in the context, and I'm paraphrasing. Why is this important to Canadians and

from a what's-the-threat perspective. And I'm not going to sit here and list a whole bunch of boogeymen perceived or otherwise. Well, we can list the Chinese Communist Party, for example. So, yes, that's a real threat. There's one. Yeah, definitely. But I think it's important for your viewers to understand that this is not a monolithic binary conversation. This is a continuum of concerns.

And I'm on the public record of saying, do I believe that somebody is going to attack Canada or invade Canada in a traditional military sense? I think the probability of that is extremely low. However, do I believe that other powers...

are going to use military capability to influence something halfway around the world or even in our own backyard that is in our national interest? 100%. Absolutely. All the time. All the time. This is the naivete that

that concerns me because we see, we have traditionally seen the conversation about military capability in Canada through the lens of, you know, we live in a fireproof house with no flammable materials immediately around us, right? Or whatever the saying is. But the reality is, no, it's not about our house. It's about our lifestyle.

We enjoy, maybe not as much as we have in the last several decades, but we still enjoy an incredible level of privilege in our lifestyles. And that is dependent on

on a whole series of international systems. And those international systems are all under threat. They're under threat from a military perspective. They're under threat from a political perspective. They're under threat from an economic. They're under threat from a sociological perspective. And the more that we erode...

our ability to protect those systems, the more vulnerable we become, not to an invasion. Well, electronic invasion. It is. It's a virtual or ideological invasion as opposed to a physical attack against the nation. And this is why this is such an important conversation. And it is timely, as Mike said, because we really are seeing arguably

you know, a generational situation where, you know, we're extremely vulnerable. We're not paying attention. We're not keeping track of what's happening in the big bad world. And we're so inwardly focused and understandably focused on our own domestic problems and

that we're losing sight of what's happening. Well, we're also focused on weird domestic problems. Barbara, let's bring you in on this because this really started to come, this came to my attention last year, let's say, and it's been mounting. It came to my attention because I came across a couple of articles in the Canadian, primary Canadian military journal, and they were hypothetically academic articles, and I read them, and

Well, and so the problem, Mark, you listed a variety of problems with the Canadian military, and none of the problems you listed are the problems that the new chief of defense staff is planning to, what would you say, address. The fundamental problem that she seems to be wanting to address is sexual misconduct in the military. Okay, now, so here's the problem I have with that from a diagnostic perspective.

The first issue is, I'm sure there are instances of sexual misconduct in the Canadian military. But I'm not sure at all that there are more of those in the Canadian military than there are in the typical university, for example. And so, in fact, my suspicions are that there would be substantively less. And the reason I think that is because I know perfectly well that the Canadian military is...

tilts towards the recruitment of highly conscientious people and they're less likely to do those sorts of things. So I'm sure there's plenty of it because we're putting young men and young women together in very stressful circumstances and they're going to misbehave. And that'll also be true of some of the people who aren't mere recruits. But that's not the issue. The issue is, is it more prevalent in the Canadian military and is that the crisis? And then the next issue is, let's say there is a problem.

Then it isn't clear to me that there is. But let's say there is. Well, what's the solution? Well, the other thing I ran across in reviewing these papers is the solution is the same damn DEI solution that's being applied to everything. And so I don't see this as a diagnosis of what's wrong with the Canadian military. What I see it is as is an extension of the

fundamentally leftist, radical, postmodern, neo-Marxist presuppositions that are destabilizing all our institutions, being focused on, you know, removing the patriarchy from the military, which I can't imagine a more woolly-headed or ill-advised

more diagnosis and solution than that, especially given all these other practical problems that you've described. So let's delve into that a little bit. So I don't know where to start with that. So I could just start by saying, I think that with Jenny or General Carignan, that was the job she's coming from. That was created the chief culture and personal conduct that was being revamped. And that

was created to address, I think, the sexual misconduct things that were coming out of that. So it is my hope that she disbands that as her first job as the CDS, and I will happily go on record as saying that. You think there's any chance of that? That I don't know. That I don't know. Because, you know... Just to stop you for a minute, your initial premise was wrong, I think. Okay. When you said she's going in there to promote that as CDS. As Chief of Defense Staff, I'm sure...

she knows as well as all of us that her job is to be the chief of defense staff, to command the armed forces, to, you know, to make them operational. But that had been her job that she came from. You're absolutely correct. That was created. So, so...

But it's this radical progressive agenda. And like they're just it's been imposed right on every every facet of Canadian life. And, you know, academics, some embraced it as, you know, academic law did. And but to impose it on the Canadian forces, I shake my head if it's

the warrior culture, we have to stamp it out. Oh my God, if there's one place you want to have a warrior culture, wouldn't it be in your Canadian forces? Wouldn't it be in your military? Like seriously, anyway, so dealing with the sexual misconduct. So I, you know, when it first came on in, and I'm going to say without hesitation, there are predators in every organization and predators, they should be rooted out, prosecuted and given the boot. Absolutely. Our

is every man that wore a uniform or even the majority. I never encountered it. So as I said, I joined in the early 80s. Women were allowed in the military police for just a couple of years. I was often the only woman in the tent, on the truck, whatever, and it didn't happen to me. Were there jerks? Absolutely. And there were women jerks that I worked with later too. But it just didn't happen. And so what bothers me the most is when I hear this is not that it happened, but

First of all, they say that it happened and that nobody did anything about it and they had nowhere to turn. That I have a real hard time with because I can tell you that if...

A bunch of times when an inappropriate remark was made to me, I don't know about my how I looked at my uniform or whatever. As I I took that remark in and I thought about it before I had a chance to respond. The guy next to me said, hey, buddy, that's not cool. Right. You know, and that happened all the time. And that didn't happen just with Canadians. That happened with our allies. And I was very lucky to work with a lot of our allies. And it just wasn't if you have no experience with the military and you read.

you know, the legacy media and you see it, like, you know, you wouldn't want your child anywhere near that organization because it's this, you know, misogynist talks. Yeah. Well, you see that now. We all have friends who, you know, either their kids or as we get older, maybe grandkids are considering the military. And you get this question. It's in our circle is you and the Catholic Church. Well, would you really? You know, is it safe?

Yeah. It's gut-wrenching, A, to hear the question. You can intellectualize the question, and then you have to, as Barb is saying... Oh, that's also got to be radically demoralizing, especially to the good people who aren't involved in it. That's, you know, and it...

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So we look at what's happened. So, oh, we're going to root them out. And what have we got so far? We've got three senior officers that are thinking off the top of my head, gentlemen, who were they found guilty? No, they weren't. But the careers of Art McDonald, Danny Fulton, Steve Whelan are over.

And their family's circumstances. And what happened? Some historic weird event when everybody was drunk on a boat and nobody, and there's no witnesses. But these men, they're done. And I think that's, I think... Well, drunk on a boat is also relevant, you know. So I studied antisocial behavior in relationship to alcoholism for like 15 years.

And so one fact that you can lay on the table instantly is that if there was no drunk people, there would be virtually no sexual assault. Agreed. So if you were actually serious about sexual assault on university campuses or in the military, the first thing you would focus in isn't culture and it isn't personality. It probably isn't even the predators. It's probably alcohol. The alcohol.

So we addressed this like a long time ago. Like, you know, I've been out for a long time, but I remember we had, it was called SHARP, sexual harassment and racism prevention. And these courses were in the early 80s. And so it's not like this was, oh, look, we haven't done anything about it. We've been working, we've been going with the times since then and changing our culture. And alcohol was a big part of,

the military culture in those days. And that's changed. That started changing even, even with the younger, you know, when fitness became a thing kind of in the end, it stopped being like, but I can remember going to the mess and you had to drink and whatever. And, and that changed. So we have moved with the times, but I, you know, it doesn't mean, it doesn't mean these problems don't exist. Yeah. But as you said in your, in, and you know, to Barb's point, it,

How much of an emphasis and amplification do we want to put on the existence of those problems? Well, we might want to first of all demonstrate that they're real. Like, the way you do that is by comparative analysis, and I don't see any evidence of that. So, the problem of sexual misconduct is real. The problem of alcohol-fueled sexual misconduct is real.

Is that particularly typical of the armed forces in Canada? I doubt it. You'd need overwhelming proof before you made that your primary concern. Now, on the alcohol side, too, I have a question about that. You know, I was thinking about that a lot this week because...

What alcohol does is it narrows your focus to the present and it makes you opaque to threats, essentially. So it's quite fun in that regard because it allows you to be enthusiastic without any concern for the future. Now, the problem with that is you tend to act like a jackass now. But there's an advantage, too. It's like because I wonder about this when you have alcohol.

men and women who are on the front lines and they're putting their life at risk. And they've been there for like a week and a half. I used to think this about the oil rigors in Alberta too. They go off and they have a couple of days off and they want to blow off some steam. And so they have a riotous party. And riotous parties are where stupid things happen. But having said that,

I don't exactly understand how much steam you do have to blow off in order to be able to tolerate the life that you're leading, that high stress, anything is possible at a moment's notice life. And so I don't know how much off-duty discipline, let's say, it's reasonable and realistic to insist upon. Now, you know,

I've already said I know what alcohol contributes to these sorts of situations. But by the same token, you know, it's like, how much do people need to let off steam? And so I'm kind of curious about what you think about that. You've been around men in those situations for a very long time. And I'll say again, I mean, you're right. And it's whether it's in the officer's mess or the private's mess or the office Christmas party, that kind of stuff. But so...

I know. And there was a lot of, the drinking went on. But I honestly, I never felt threatened. And so you would be in a mess. I'm thinking up in the Golan Heights, for example, there's maybe 40 or 50. And there's two girls, three girls, three women up there. And I didn't see it. I saw them getting like, getting...

drinking too much, perhaps. And then out came the arguments over the Maple Leafs versus the Canadians and singing the regimental songs. And somebody got, you know, when the karaoke machines came out, it was bad news. And then it was, but you were still, if you're on a military base, there's still regulations, right? The mess closes, everybody would go to

and you're sleeping in your quarters. And so I honestly, I saw more sort of fist fights break out than I saw kind of a sexual, anything with a sexual overtone. And things have changed since then as well, by the way. I mean, you know, all our missions now are essentially, you don't drink. They're dry missions. Afghanistan was all dry, except when you got off the island, off the,

and went into Kuwait or wherever. Ships are all dry now, right? When they're at sea. When they're at sea. So when they pull up into shore, then you have parties and you have so on and so forth. Right, so that's been rectified. So things have changed a lot. When I was commanding officer from, you know, 89 to 91,

I already started some young officers saying, well, no, I don't want to go to happy hour. In my day, you know, when I was a young officer, it was, you know, on Friday night, you go to happy hour. Here's a beer. Here's a cigarette. You're going to smoke. You're going to drink. And that's the plan. You know, I'm exaggerating, obviously. But by the time, you know, so early 90s, then, you know, young men and women were becoming more fit.

I said, no, I'll have a glass of orange juice and that'll be just great. And they, you know, it's six o'clock, I'm going home. That's it. You know, in the old days, we'd party till 11 every Friday night. So the evolution of, I say generational evolution of these aspects of, let's call it,

the organizational culture, because I know you want to talk about culture to some degree, they've evolved. And they've evolved as much because of the participants in the culture as they have from organizational dictum. You know, there's been a sense of, okay, we need to modernize this. But a lot of people are finding other outlets for that

letting off steam as you characterized it. A lot of it is, there is a lot of fitness. It's different. It's different as it is in society. It's different, but that doesn't mean it still doesn't happen. It doesn't mean that people are still not going to get drunk and do stupid things. Yeah, well, that's inevitable. But there's a difference between getting drunk and doing stupid things and getting drunk and doing nasty, malicious things. Exactly.

And that's where – and this is – it is hard. In the premise of your – how do you make that distinction? Well, you have to say – you have to establish expected norms of behavior, and those evolve over time. What was acceptable 30, 20 years ago –

not necessarily acceptable, not because it's politically correct, but just because we've changed. So, you know, drinking at sea. I use that as an example. I was the one, in fact, that banned drinking at sea for a variety of reasons, including... And the way you characterized your previous research experience was...

It was like deja vu. It was the senior non-commissioned members of the Navy at a particular board meeting who said to me, Admiral,

We're telling you, 99% of our problems are alcohol-related. All this misconduct, you can bin it all into. If they weren't drunk at the time, the chances of them having done whatever it was was pretty slim to none. So there's the, you know, there go my people.

I am their leader, so I must follow them. This is what you're... You were getting this from the troops. They were telling you. The senior leadership, the senior non-commissioned are telling me, we have a problem and we need you...

wearing your big pants to do something about it. So we said, okay, let's look at this. Let's study it to the best we can in the context of our own little ecosystem. And let's come up with some progressive approaches that didn't ban it entirely because that would be punitive and just silly. And that doesn't just accept the status quo, but says, okay, you know what?

drinking at sea is dangerous, first of all, because you're operating extreme. It's like drink. It would be using your oil rig analogy. They don't allow them to drink on an oil rig for very good reasons. So they can keep their hands. Right. Or not kill somebody accidentally because they're drunk. So let's, how about that as a thought process? And yes,

So that evolved over time. But I think we also have to remember that the military, the armed forces are more generally conservative. So for change to happen...

They used to say, what was it? It's the only thing harder than getting a new idea in the military mind is taking out an old idea, you know? But it's true. It changes slowly. The Navy, hundreds of years tradition, not impeded by progress. That's right. It's jokes. They're jokes, but they come from somewhere. They come from somewhere. And in fact, so you have to, but you know, you look at this evolution of alcohol and all that, and it's...

And so is there a big culture change required? I'm with Barbara. I think, no, I think...

You know, you need to make sure that people understand that, you know, that you have to, you know, respect others and in all kind of ways and everything. And you root out those predators. And you're not alone. That was the big thing. That's the hardest thing for me when I see on TV when something happened, a victim says this happened to me and there was nowhere to turn to. And I...

I have a real hard time with that because the military, okay, it's huge. It's a family. You've met people throughout your whole career. Even if you've been in two or three years, you've got people you were on this course with or trained with. And so your chain of command is not welcoming to your complaint. It's a failure of leadership. Barb, to your point, when you see these things, they are fundamentally failures in leadership.

So you pointed out very early on that you hadn't experienced the sorts of things. Yes. But I'm wondering, too, like, there is a cultural element to that, a sociological element, let's say, but there's also a personal element. Like, I'll give you an example of this. Daughters of alcoholics are much more statistically likely to marry alcoholics. Now...

We don't know why that is. We don't know if they find men who are drinking, and because they're accustomed to that, they pick those men, or we don't know if they covertly reinforce their husbands for drinking to the point where they become alcoholic. But it's such a widespread phenomena that if you're doing genetic analysis of the transmission of alcoholism, you have to take into account this issue of assortative mating, it's called. Okay, so now...

The issue is, was there a manner in which you conducted yourself personally that made you less likely to be the target of such unwanted attention? That might have to do with alcohol consumption. And then also, is it reasonable to assume that your experience is emblematic of the experience of females in the military? Or were you, for whatever reason, protected personally or more fortunate? Um...

So first of all, women that joined the military, I think, tend to be, well, certainly in my time, they tended to be, like, not everybody's going to want to join the military. So I think that maybe they're a little bit more outspoken. I don't know. I would say that, like, it didn't happen to me, but I didn't see it happen.

around me. And I was close to a lot of women in the military and nobody- And you were there early. Yeah. But nobody came, like even at the end of my career when I was in NDHQ and like nobody were, I didn't hear about people saying this happened to me, you know, what are we going to do about it? I think that the majority of women, it didn't happen to. And I think that the ones that did, yes, absolutely. They should, they should, you know, seek justice. But I also think that

To say there was nowhere to go, I mean, you had your peers, you had the padres. We have padres that doors open all the time. You had a medical staff. You had somebody that you worked with on a course. There were so many avenues that you could go to. Physical training instructors. Yeah, and the physical training guys and girls. There were so many places that you could go for help. I find it astonishing when I hear, this happened to me and it happened to me over and I had nowhere to turn to. That I...

I really have a hard time with that. I really do. So now, when you entered the military, what response did you get from the men?

Well, okay, so we do, and we put out, okay, so nowadays you wouldn't have, like our lockers in the military police, like it wasn't a changing locker, but we kept our gun in there and like, you know, our ticket books and all that sort of stuff. So you were never there undressed, but so we were all together, men and women. And there wasn't one locker that didn't have Miss January or whatever, you know, in the thing. So nowadays that's just not cool. And so I responded to that by going, get a member of Burt Reynolds in Cosmopolitan, and I put him up in my locker.

And we never had a problem with that again. You know, like it just, you know, the guys, I'm not looking at thought every day. So, well, and then that was it. And then, and it took a while, but I think that I didn't, I don't think it was hostile. I think it was more, they didn't know how to act. I had a flat tire once in my police car in Edmonton. You know how cold it is there? A flat tire. Nope, I know how to change a tire. So I'm changing the tire. And I do see another military police car go by. Fine, change the tire. I come in, the usual ribbing, you know, just like the guys would get. But this one, um,

Military police corporal, he's waiting. He's waiting at the end. He says, Barbara, he said, listen, he said, I drove past you today. I said, yeah, I saw you. And he said, I didn't know what to do. Right, right. He said, if you'd have been Mike, I would have stopped to help him. Yeah, right. But I thought you were going to say, oh, you think I can't do this? Yeah, right. Then I didn't know what to do. And I said, next time, stop the effing car kind of thing. And we were cool after that, right? But that was the kind of things that I was, they didn't really know what to do. They didn't really know how to deal with it. And

And this idea that men and women are interchangeable, I have a hard time with that, too. Okay, so I want to delve into that. I really have a hard time with that. All right, so let's talk a little bit about that. So I might as well get myself in trouble right off the bat. So I spent a lot of time in academia, and I could see it tilting in the manner that it has tilted, the same manner that, in principle, the military is now predetermined to tilt on the cultural side. And I've been trying to sort out exactly why that is.

Now, I've seen a lot of infantilization of students, a lot, like way too much, and infantilization of faculty for that matter. And so, and then I wonder, like, if you introduce women en masse into an administrative institution, to what degree does that infantilize the situation? And

And like, I don't know the answer to that. Neither does anyone else, because we haven't introduced women en masse into administrative institutions before about the last 60 years. So we have no idea exactly what's going to happen. And so there's going to be female social pathologies, just like there are male social pathologies. And infantilization seems to me to be a very high probability outcome.

So now, and that's definitely not something that you want in the military. It's bad enough in academic institutions. And you just also pointed out that you don't believe that men and women are interchangeable. Now, I have a gut reaction to women in frontline combat. Now, for a variety of reasons, I think the primary reason is the consequences for women if they get captured as prisoners of war. That just doesn't seem to me to be...

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That's not an acceptable situation as far as I can see. I could be convinced otherwise. But you've been in the military a very long time and you believe that there are intractable differences, let's say, between men and women. Absolutely. And I obviously like your gentleman's opinion on this too.

Women are half the workforce and they're half the intellectual power. And being able to capitalize on what women have to offer is a major deal. We know that more educated women have more educated children. That's not true for men, by the way. So it's female educational attainment that predicts children's educational attainment, not male. And we know that countries that educate women and that make their inclusion in the workforce a priority.

are much more likely to thrive economically. So we know all that. But we don't know exactly how to integrate men and women, for example, into the military because that's a tough nut to crack. So what has your experience taught you about that? What role can women play well or better even possibly? I think that...

So women, when I joined, I think we were coming up on 10%. And since then, this 25% women has been bandied about forever. And we maxed out at, I think, 15%, 16% where we are now, and we're not getting any more than that. Yeah, so it's like engineering in that regard. So what do I think? So I think that women, there's a role for women. But to say that you can interchange, you can take the guy out of,

the battalion off the ship and just replace them with a woman. That's not always true. And I believe that. And I, and I, I think it comes for me, it comes down to meritocracy in this specific, um,

Work trade. Element trade that you have. So military, police, here we go again. So we have living quarters on the base. So there's children, there's women, wives, whatever, and things happen. So we still had the airborne school. So when there was a bar fight, for example, and there was a lot of them, I am quite certain that if we are honest with each other, you are rather going to have one

of you as a partner going into a bar fight than me. And you know what? Me too. Right, right, right. I would rather not have another woman as a partner. However, we also had things like

a sexual assault or an abusive relationship or a child who was assaulted. And then in that instance, I'm pretty sure that you guys might rather have me come to make the first to talk to the woman who's been beaten up or the child who's been abused. And so there's room for both. And this, I

What about on the foreign relations and diplomatic front? Are there roles that women play in the military? And unfortunately, though, we go there assuming that everybody's as wonderful and free as we are. So, you know, I went to Syria. I was negotiating the million dollar contracts and they wouldn't talk to me because I had a UN uniform on. And I was but I was a woman. And it was, you know, so I had to go get my little driver.

my 18 year old Newfoundland driver and he had to come in and he's, ma'am, I don't know if I should be signing these, just sign them. And he, you know, because they refuse to deal with us. Right, right, right. And so you're still dealing with that. So that's a disadvantage. What about on the advantage side in, in, in foreign relations and on the battlefield? Uh,

I would say in foreign relations, I would say that we were a novelty still to a lot of different, like the Poles, the Polish battalion. We were a bit of a novelty even in the Austrians. And so they would, and men traditionally, and I'm going to say this, I'm going to make a blanket comment that the majority of men are still there, kind of the gentlemen, like they're going to want to open, pull out the chair if you would not sit down. And so, I mean, if you were smart, you use that to your advantage. I know I did.

And then I think that women, they calm things down a bit too. Like if there's an argument going on and there's, you know, the Austrians are fighting. We had the Austrians in the polls were always fighting. Then when the women came in to sit down, the men sort of toned it down because they were gentlemen inherently. And so that was an advantage for women. When you look at a problem or you have an issue,

and whether it's a strategic, operational, tactical issue or whatever, you will want to get as many opinions as possible. You want to consult if you have time. Let's say if you're trying to take a hill over, you sometimes don't have time. But if you're considering an issue, a problem, a challenge,

It's always going to be good to have different ways of viewing that issue and getting different opinions on how to solve that issue. Having women in the forces is a strength. I mean, there's no doubt about it. The issue that comes to what you're talking about, combat roles, you know, on a ship, in a submarine, fighter aircraft. I mean...

I think it's very difficult. But in my view, if a woman wants to do it, who the heck am I to say she can't? If she meets the standards, that's just great. But she has to meet the standard. Mm-hmm.

Now, what I do, the second order effect of that, though, is... So what do you do when people say, well, if the standards discriminate against women, then the standards are sexist? Because that would certainly be the case for upper body strength, for example, generally speaking. Yeah, but there are jobs where you need the upper body strength. Yeah, I know. So to be in the armored corps, to lift a 100-pound...

round, you know, you need the strength to be able to do it. I'm sure in the Navy, there's lots of those kinds of jobs. But what I was going to say is that the second order effect is on the leadership. Now, the young sergeant and the young lieutenant now has to command the

you know, his section of 10 people, some of which are women. And it's now he or she has to have, and sometimes it's a she that's going to command that, has to have a different kind of approach. You can't be the old sergeant of the old days or get down, get me one of your push-ups and that's it, you know, and dirt bag and all. It's a different story. So those are challenges that now I never had to, you know, I got out 15 years ago, so I never actually...

you know, was faced with that. But it's a different challenge today. You see, I see this, and at the risk of oversimplifying it, it's kind of like a Venn diagram in my head. So you've got what I would describe as the technical skills of whatever the trade, the occupation,

Then there are the physical requirements, which might be as much what we would call in our business environmental. So they're different. When you're in a tank or you're in a – it's different than being on a ship. But there are physical requirements that are there.

And then there's this, I would argue, ill-defined sense of the social part of it. I'm just going to put social in quotes because I'm not educated in that regard. But it's all this other stuff. And it's where all the other stuff gets weird because –

People either don't know how to deal with it and you can have all the training you want, but there are realities to these social dimensions. They're not just gender specific, but there are social aspects to how militaries function. And

Some people are very skilled at those, maybe not as physical, very technical skilled. Other people are very strong, very technically skilled, but have social issues. And I don't know. It's a very... I go back to none of these things are, in my view, none of these things are as black and white as some. They're very complex issues. Well, so for example...

You mentioned that the Canadian military is topped out at about 15% females and that that's quite intractable. Okay, so exactly the same thing is the case among engineers in the Scandinavian countries. They've gone farther than any other countries on the planet to equalize gender opportunities. But there are intractable differences on the engineering side and on the nursing side. Okay, so now you might ask why that is.

Now, men and women are pretty much the same in terms of raw cognitive ability. The male curve might be a little flatter, so there might be more extreme male geniuses and males who have cognitive problems. There's some debate about that. Men and women are about equal in conscientiousness, which is the next best predictor, say, for administrative, managerial, and military jobs. But

men and women differ radically in their interests. It's the biggest difference between men and women. And men are much more likely than women to be interested in things, and women much more than men to be interested in people. And that's a major determinant of occupational choice. And it really stands out in the difference between engineers, thing-oriented, and nurses, people-oriented. And so given the nature of the military,

the engineering-like nature of the military, the probability that without undue force, we're going to get to 50% women strikes me as zero. Now, and the idea that the ideologues have that that's a cultural issue is nonsense because the other thing that's been demonstrated in Scandinavia, this is so cool,

Imagine you rank ordered nations by how egalitarian their social policies are. Okay, now you look at them in terms of differences between male and female in occupational choice. Okay, the biggest differences are in the most egalitarian countries. So if you free women and men up

So that there aren't systemic barriers to their movement into an occupation. The occupational differences magnify. They don't decrease. Right. And that's I think that's an unshakable finding. Right. So there's no amount of cultural gerrymandering that's going to bring women up to 50 percent in the military. It's a foolish goal. And it's based on a misapprehension of how human beings function. The ideologues think we're all socially constructed.

And that's nonsense. If you flatten the playing field, men and women maximize in their differences. So, and that's what you'd expect for people who are pursuing their destiny freely and in accordance with their own interests. And it does seem to be interest.

We don't exactly know what interest is, you know, from a scientific perspective, why women would tilt towards people, you know, except for... Nurturing, the nurturing thing, right? Well, yeah, right. But we don't know how that manifests itself, say, in day-to-day choices, exactly. Which is, I find a bit ironic in some respects, because if you were, from an insider's perspective...

If you were to characterize the military... Don't care for people, Mike. Well, in theory, okay...

we would describe ourselves as a people-centric organization. Yeah. Which is fascinating. Yeah. Yeah, sure, there's a lot of stuff, a lot of things, a lot of kids. Well, it's fraternal. Right. And so, you know, I was quite struck by what you said. Yeah, well, I think there's a difference between... Tell us why we're doing something fundamentally wrong. Well, I think there's fraternal hierarchy, right?

And there's community of care. And I don't think those are the same thing. Okay. Yeah, yeah. So men, like men can organize themselves. But when men organize themselves, they organize themselves into hierarchies, right? And so that's not a community of care exactly. The best leaders, I think, obviously will have care for their people. Yeah. I mean, and that whole nurturing thing, I think, is not just a part of the women. But you're right, perhaps, you know.

what do you call it? Comes in with men, it comes in mentoring. Right. It comes in mentoring. And I think the best leaders who care for their people and, you know, want to, you know, see them do well. And I always described, you know, sometimes being in charge and being with your team, there's this, I could describe it as love actually, you know, and I loved my people that I, when I commanded them and that I had in my group and, and, you know, sometimes people are kind of, you know,

Love, yeah. Well, it's a kind of love. You want to hug them. You want to, you know, keep them. So I talked to Jocko Willink, who's a Navy SEAL. And we've talked three or four times. And Jocko, he's about like three feet thick. He's like a man's man. That's for sure. And Jocko wanted to be a soldier from the time he was like three. You know, he was blowing things up when he was three. And he told me, quite frankly, that, you know, he was a pretty rough adolescent. And he could have taken a criminal pathway.

But he went to the military, and one of the things that he found very rapidly was that opportunity to mentor was the best thing he'd ever found in his whole life. And that ethos of care among men does seem to make itself manifest in that mentoring. And I think that's, I hope my people do well.

is different than I want to protect my people. Right. Right. I mean, you do want to protect them, but it's not the same emphasis, right? There's an encouragement emphasis in that that's, I think, more characteristic also of the role men play in a family, right? Because men are, for example, men specialize in rough and tumble play with their kids. It's rougher and it's more encouraging. It's less sheltering and nurturing. Yeah. So the mission is important too, though, right? Like when, like looking after your people or doing like,

our number one priority has to be the mission. So whatever your mission is. And so sometimes, you know, you're going to have to send somebody home because they're not a great guy. You want to look after him or whatever, but the mission comes first. And those are decisions then that the nurturing goes out the window, whatever you, the hierarchy, it's the mission is the most important. Yeah. And that's a rough one. That is a tough one. And that goes back to something you said a while ago with respect to, um,

Again, I'm paraphrasing. There's a tension between the desire to do all of these progressive things and the fundamental purpose of the institution. The institution is mission-focused. If it's not mission-focused, then why do you have it? Right, right. Militaries exist to fight. Yeah. Okay? Yeah. There...

If you define it to do something else... Or to be intimidating enough to make fighting unnecessary. Well, yeah, exactly. They're a deterrent. And so this notion, and you said it earlier, Barb, it's like, well, you can't have both. The warrior culture is in and of itself. And we have this...

on record. And we have very prominent Canadians who have written reports saying that this is the heart of the problem. Hang on. Great. Time out. Yeah.

The mission is the heart of the problem. Right, that's a problem. It's how, it may be, there may be a whole bunch of issues around how things are being done. I'm open to that conversation. But the notion that this is at its primordial level

a fundamental problem, then you're not talking about a military. And this goes to some or a country. I think, yeah, no, but I really think you've, you've hit the, the nail right on the head here. You've talked, here's the problem is that we have now put more emphasis on all those DEI principles in the military. And I think they've been, by the way, they've been, uh, and, and, uh, you know, it was really her idea, but I'm using it that, that it's been, uh,

on the Canadian forces, the military, by the government. Yeah. This progressive ideology and radical progressive ideology that this government, and, you know, I'm not here to talk politically, but that's what I think has happened. And so the forces,

are having to react to that. And unfortunately, that has taken priority over military effectiveness, military operational capability. And even though a lot of our leaders are trying to stay focused on that, people like our commander of the Canadian Joint Operations Command,

He's focused on operational capability and he's forced to react to all this DEI business. And teamwork. I mean, the military, it's a team. And yet now all of a sudden, the emphasis is on... The individual. Individual. Yeah, right. And you don't even look like... And I think...

what is wrong with looking like the uniform should be uniform? Like, you don't, the guy for the Montreal Canadiens, I'm going to wear my away uniform tonight. I'm going to wear my home. You know, you're all going to wear the same uniform because we're on the same team. And so we've gone away from that. And now you're, and now we've taken, you know, meritocracy out so that we can fill these imaginary quotas of what is it? 0.03 or 3.2% of the population. We need to have a representative of this. Well, I don't know about you, but a $30 million jet. I want

the best person to fly it. I don't want, because he fits this quota or she or they, I guess, whatever it is, they fit this quota. And how then are you going to feel when you are the best pilot, but you don't get chosen because you don't fit- Properly demoralized. You don't fit the DEI. You don't fit a certain quota. You don't fit. And okay-

For as long as we've been around, 71% of the Canadian military are white males. They are our warrior cultures. They are the guys who, you know, roughneck, whatever you want to call it, the farmer's sons, the fisherman's sons, the guys, you know, and they join the military. And so how, and we'd spend not a penny recruiting to these guys. It's worse than that, by the way. It's worse than that.

We know that the best predictor on the personality side for military prowess is conscientiousness. Okay, conscientious people are meritocratic based, right? That's their hierarchy value. So if you're trying to get conscientious people into the military, which you need to do if you're going to have a military, then the best way to dissuade them is to

set up an anti-meritocratic operation. Because they can't stand that. They're the guys that are going to want to go into the military and incrementally improve so they can advance forward through the ranks in a dutiful, patriotic, orderly, and industrious manner. That's conscientiousness. And that uniformity, it's the same with business suits. Like the idea was, because a business suit is a modified military uniform, the idea was to signal

that you're putting aside your own individual idiosyncrasies for your fellow platoon members, let's say, and the mission, right? And so it's not like you're trivial, because you're not. But your concerns are not the concerns of the platoon or the mission. And you wear the uniform to signify that. And if you can't make that sacrifice, if you're unwilling to, then, well, go do your own thing. It's not like we have a draft.

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Well, and you know, you can demonstrate your individuality when you're in the military, but do it outside those times when you're wearing the uniform. You know, if you want to wear an earring when you're on leave, well, go, you know, enjoy yourself and all that. You know, that's got nothing to do with sexual orientation or any of this business. I'm talking uniforms specifically. Yeah.

And so all those things, forcing the DEI, the emphasis on individuality over team, that is having a huge impact on morale in the military. Yeah, well, how do you know that? Well, because... Recruitment would be one issue. We've seen, actually, the Canadian chaplain general has actually gone out and spoken. You know, all his padres have gone out, and he's come back, and he's, you know, I think it's about a year ago that he said morale is shot. I'm getting...

I'm getting information from... That in and of itself is a significant data point. Well, right. I'm getting information... But you believe this is reliable? Chaplain General. It's a huge thing. Okay. It's really huge. This has been typically a very private organization that is focused on spiritual well-being, morality...

morale, all of these extremely important but subjective aspects of the institution to go public and say- When he writes a report to the chief of defense staff, this is a big frigging deal. On top of that, I'm getting, and you probably do as well, from former or serving officers and soldiers who write to me and say, hey, listen, morale is horrible. There are organizations now

run by veterans, young veterans, who kind of tell them, you know, tell all those serving who can't speak out publicly, but they want to gather the information. And the information I am getting right now is that morale is shot. One of the reasons is because they see our senior leaders serving senior leaders, not fighting back against this situation

process that the government is forcing on the military. So it takes out their faith in the leadership. So it takes out their faith in the leadership. They're saying, holy crap, you know, and okay, you're going to have the odd one who likes to have his hair long, fine. But, you know, when I joined, I had my hair down to my shoulders. I had my, you know, a haircut. I got a buzz cut and everything. Plus, they're not seeing public support. They're not seeing overt

signals from the political leadership that what they do actually matters. Right, right. Because the political leadership is focused on those other metrics. Yeah. The importance of service, okay? So when the Prime Minister and Minister Blair brought out the Defence Policy Update,

You read what the prime minister said. Did he at any time in that speech talk about the importance of service, the honor of serving your country, that it's a great place to actually do something for yourself, but also for others? The fundamental purpose, why the armed forces. Again, those are all conscientiousness-related virtues. Well, so here's something interesting on the political side. So,

What tilts you towards a progressive radicalism is high openness, creativity, and low conscientiousness. What tilts you towards a conservative orientation... So there's no rules, basically, do whatever you want. Well, the idea there would be is that your best... Think about it as an ecological niche. So for those people, the ecological niche is all that territory that hasn't been ordered, or the space where rules could be changed or bent.

what the space of novelty and like that's a great space to occupy if you happen to be creative but you're not a rule follower you don't you tend not to be particularly patriotic you're not dutiful you're not conscientious you're not orderly there's no loyalty there's no well that's not not with openness specifically no that comes with conscientiousness and you know the fact that you didn't see any testimony let's say to those virtues in that speech is an indication of the temperament of the person and the political party that

offered those because that isn't what they see as value. And that's hard on conscientious. And this is not, you know, the Liberal Party. This is the government of Canada. Okay, so I mean, agnostically, you know, this is our boss. This is the guy who runs the country. And if he doesn't think service is important, if he doesn't think that service is

honorable service in the military is important. Well, you know, it permeates from there. Oh, yeah, definitely. Because the rank and file are struggling with all of these issues that we've been discussing, plus the realities that they're being asked to be away from their families. Their equipment is rusting. Crap. And...

They can always buy new equipment themselves. Right. They don't feel that the institutional leadership, organizational leadership is focused on the right things. And that, I mean, that exists in every organization when you're at the bottom and you're looking up, you know, the tree full of monkeys. What are you looking at? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exhausts, right? But the notion being that

All of these things are contributing to a malaise. Okay, so I want to think. Just before you go. So now coming back to General Carignan being appointed, she has to leave this stuff behind now. If she wants to start making an impact immediately on the troops and that, she's going to have to now focus on

on, you know, maybe what we have not been focused on. You know, the institutional, she's now the head of the institutional leadership in the armed forces. Behind the culture changes. Yeah, exactly. So she has a huge challenge in front of her, you know, and it's going to be interesting to see. The challenge is, will she be given the mandate, the authority, and the resources that are necessary to

use a nautical term, to right the ship. Right. Because if not, then we will have squandered an incredible opportunity, which is to take a great leader who is a warrior, who has demonstrated her professional competence, and happens both positively and negatively to be wearing the bridle of first female to do the job, and we potentially squander it because the institution has

for other reasons, will be no better off at the end of her watch than it was at the beginning. Well, so it sounds like the three of you have some faith in her fundamental abilities. Well, we know her to some degree. She's a classmate of Barbara's. Yeah, from military college up. And so one of the things that I liked about, that I admired about Jenny in the early days is back in the day, for some reason it seemed if you were a woman in the military and you wanted to succeed,

in this man's world. Well, you better start looking like one and talking like one. And there was these women and they left behind whatever feminine traits or qualities they had. It was like the minute you...

don't hide that. You're not going to go anywhere. And then Jenny came along and she wanted to be a combat engineer or a flamenco dancer. That was her two things, right? And so even when she was a full colonel- She's done both. Yes. Even as a full colonel, we had the American Idol or CMR Idol takeoff for the kids in the mess, and she did her dancing. She's a mother of four, and she doesn't

want to look like. Yeah, she doesn't hide her femininity. So I like that about her. She's the full package. There's no question. So she is. So how do you account for the fact that she got tangled up in this DEI? This, you know... Was that inevitable? Yeah, they created a command. So they decided, the government forced this, and I will say that it was forced upon us, and that, you know, oh, it's horrible, the military. It's misogynistic. It's patriarchal, blah, blah, blah. So we have to change this. So they created a command, and I think

wasn't the budget $500 million over five? Like, you know, we could have done with that money. And so she was the chief of that, of that command. And they had to dress. So I, so I look at what, what happened. Okay. So they, we tried DEI. How's that working out for us?

Not great. We're way down. We're still way down, 16,000 in personnel. 16,000 out of how many? We're short. So we should have— Probably about 100,000 if you take the regular— Yeah, and the reserves together. So you're 15% below where you should be. And 15%, by the way, in wartime, 15%, your unit is no longer combat capable, have to be pulled back from the thing. So you could actually say that the armed forces are non-combat capables.

Because of the math. And there's a lot of math behind that as well because that's on paper. And then you add on the layer on top of this. And a lot of organizations have similar issues with respect to, even though you might be at 85%, of that remaining 85%, a bunch of them are unavailable for a variety of reasons from medical to administrative. How many? Well, you're probably looking at a number of several thousand. I've seen numbers as high as 8,000.

Not only that. Out of the remaining, so another 10% of what's left. So it's 20, I see. You're looking at a 20% shortfall at the moment. Not just that, but the people who are missing are the center core. So you've got your warrant, your sergeant, your lieutenant, your captain. It took 20 years to get there. So even if you recruit 16,000 people tomorrow, they're not going to reach it.

it's going to take them time to get there for, you know, so, and, you know, technicians, fighter pilots, fighter pilots have been down for years and years. We're missing, you know, We can't even train them in Canada anymore. Exactly. We don't have the training. But so, so like going back to the culture change, so it was the culture change. It's strange that you can't find enough fighter pilots. I mean, God, you think that that's unbelievable. Well, because, but I,

I'm going to say to you that that's a function of DEI. So the culture change, get rid of the way we think, the way we behave, that whole warrior mentality. So that's where the attrition went, I think. Yeah, well, that's going to get rid of the fighter pilots. 20 years, he says, I'm done. I'm not doing this. She says she's out. So now we're implementing the DEI. So we're targeting this 2.3, whatever quota, the whatever you, non-binary, whatever you want to fill in, indigenous people,

female, whatever it is. So we're targeting this person. So there's my four fighter pilots who are lined up that want to join. And they don't even get a medical appointment because I got quotas to fill. You know, the fundamental problem with that, especially as you start stacking up the intersectional requirements, is that you actually end up with no candidate pool, right? Because first of all, your candidate pool for fighter pilots is going to be very restricted to begin with.

Right. So then the next question would be, well, are there any of those DEI candidates even hypothetically available? And the answer to that is likely no. And even if there were, the probability that they'll be qualified or interested is vanishingly small. Yeah. You know, so I mean, even in the academic realm, when we were as long as I was an academic, as long as I'd been an academic, if

If you were a minority, you had more than a fighting chance with the hiring community, like seriously more of a fighting chance. It was pretty much your position to lose. But all that meant still was that there was no way we could come to the kind of parity that was required by the people who think that every category has to be filled. It just wasn't. The people just weren't there. They just didn't exist. And you couldn't make them out of whole cloth. Exactly. And so a 20% decrement. Okay, so we started this out.

And we have to draw this to a close fairly soon. We started this out with something we didn't probably emphasize enough, which was the nature of the crisis. Now, we alluded to the fact that Canada, let's say, is woefully unprepared now

on the classic military front, also with regard to all the new forms of warfare that are multiplying faster than people can even imagine, that we have a widespread problem of demoralization and that recruitment is not working. Okay, so, but I didn't get the sense that we did a sufficiently good job of telling Canadians that, you know, there's smoke and fire. It's like that this is a real problem. And so, like, what do you feel are the consequences of

even the short-term consequences, let's say, of Canada continuing to be unprepared in this manner. So this goes to Mike's intervention early in the conversation about this notion of a perfect storm. So at the very moment in time, this period in time, when we have the dimensions of the crisis that you've just summarized,

We are incapable, therefore, of participating, contributing, and doing our fair share, for lack of a better characterization, in

in a global system that needs us. Right. So we look incompetent just at minimum. So at a minimum, we look incompetent or disinterested. Pick one. Neither of them is a particularly good look for a G7 country. Yeah, right. Right? Then we have the actual practical...

challenges around the security issues. We look at our ability to contribute or not to the alliance. Are we doing enough? We never are doing enough. We're doing what we can, but that is insufficient. And so the implication from a Canadian perspective is that Canada, that depends at

as much if not more than many other countries in the world on these global systems for our way of life, is unable to make any meaningful contribution to the preservation, reinforcement, and ultimately protection of all of these systems. Right, right, right. And so, but that's a hard sell, and I get why it's a hard sell.

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plea. I do not believe, notwithstanding the need for Canadians to understand this, that this should be an issue of public interest or public opinion. And I have told political leaders who will listen to me that if you are following public opinion on these issues, you are not leading. And this is an issue of leadership. Well, my suspicion too is that if the public was

informed, as we're attempting to do now, that the discovery would be that far more Canadians, especially of the conservative and classic liberal bent, would be behind intelligent policy related to the military. I can only, you know, 100% support what Mark's saying.

If a government wants to govern for Canada, for all Canadians, and this is the right thing to do, to have armed forces that can protect Canadians, but also intervene internationally wherever we want.

You need to be able to spend the money. Some social programs are going to have to be lessened, you know, in terms of how much we spend on them. But it's always, you know, guns, butter. You can have both. And right now we don't have enough guns, frankly. That's where we are today. Or people holding guns. Or butter. Or butter. Or butter, yeah. But the point is, and I agree with you 100% as well, that if a government decided that, then it's a matter of going out and

telling Canadians. It has to start at the top, though. Again, I say the prime minister of our country, doesn't matter what persuasion he is,

You know, doesn't even talk about it. When he talks about the defense policy update, it's going to be good. He's going to get closer to 2%. No one cares about that. For the moment, we need somebody who cares about service to our country, who is going to make service an honorable thing for people to do, who's going to fund the military, who's going to improve morale and so on. And I think if you explain it to Canadians, they will understand. And we need the leaders themselves. The ones in uniform are going to have to...

Buck up a little bit. Can I say that? I was going to say something else, but I'll say, grow up here, but I'm not going to say that. Fair enough. Okay, so why is... All right. Now, we talked at the beginning a little bit about the fact that, look, I know that the military personnel, the leadership in particular, are fundamentally supposed to shut the hell up about political matters. And they are in a very strict chain of command. And by and large, they should stay there. But

You three, who should know, have indicated that we have something on our hands in the order of a crisis. And I don't imagine you're like chicken little sky is falling sort of people. And so at some point it becomes incumbent on people who are attempting to serve the country to bring such things to the attention of Canadians. And so why...

Why is that not happening as much as it might in your- Well, I think that again, I'm not political, but I think that our military, I watch on television in the last few years where there's an announcement about the military and Wayne Ayers is not even there. Our chief of defense staff is not, it's Anita Nan that's making the announcement. The minister's making the announcement beside the prime minister.

hell? Like, you know, you look in the Americans and there's the Joint Chiefs, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He's there beside him. So what do you think that indicates? So I think that, I think that, I don't know, maybe the generals are going to need to say, okay, like, you know, no, this is still my ship, my armed forces, and I need to have more of a say. And I don't know

I think the next government, that's going to be more likely because this government just seemed to find the idea of a uniform somehow unsavory and hid it away. I mean, when was the last time that we had... Tens of a uniform, I might say. But when was the last time you saw a Rick Hillier, for example, up there calling them scumbags and whatever else and him saying, yeah, well, you know, you can talk to the... And people listening, Canadians were enamored of that.

And you need a hero. Everybody loves a hero. And we're not producing enough. We have heroes, but we're not showing them enough. Well, then on that front, too, like you talked about three gentlemen whose careers were demolished. The three senior officers. Art McDonald, Danny Fortan, and Steve Whelan. Right. And the name of culture change. And so my suspicions are that that sort of action is also quite likely to dissuade people from having something to say.

I'm not sure about that. We have an example, and I'll talk about, you know, the Vice Admiral Octorloni and Vice Admiral Topshy, two senior, you know, three-star admirals. Topshy commands the Navy currently.

And he made a video, I want to say about a year ago, maybe nine months ago, where he talked about the challenges of the Navy. Now, as a leader, that's what you want to do. You want to inform your troops. You want to make sure you communicate with them that, okay, things are tough, boys and girls, but there's stuff coming down the pipe. And he did what a good leader would do. I'm sure the government was very unhappy with him releasing that video. If you haven't seen it, you need to see it. The other guy is Octorloni. What's the video?

The video is the Royal Canadian Navy Commander makes a video about the state of the Navy today. How long is that video? Oh, I think about six minutes, maybe. Six minutes. But it's excellent. Okay. Will you send me the link to that? I can. Maybe we'll put it on this show. Sure. If that would be useful. Sure, I can do it. Okay. The other guy is Bob Oxtrelony. So he commands the Canadian Joint Operations Command.

He commands all the military operations outside and inside the country. He's kind of the Mr. Operator. He does that on behalf of the chief of defense staff. So he was in an interview, I don't know with whom, but he talked about, you know, the

the world today. And he talked about, because he's the guy that gets all the intelligence, and he talked about the dangers, the threats to our country, and so on and so forth. And he was very open, and he said, you know, Canadians don't realize how dangerous the world is today. And that was another video? That is a video. It's an interview. That was a mainstream media interview in one of the papers, I believe. But the notion being that

there are little pockets of people who are speaking out. And I was always told, I don't know if you, same with you, but when you, when the media would come around and they would say, can we talk to your soldiers? The soldiers knew they could talk about what they were doing. Exactly what they, you couldn't talk about, oh, I hate the policy of the government. And frankly,

When I look at what Topsy did and I look at what Octorloni did, they talked about their job. They talked, you know, my job is the operator and my job is to know what's going on in the world. And I don't think people understand that this is going on. The other guy, Topsy, he said, well, what's going on in my command? Oh, I'm telling you troops. And I'm sure he did it for his sailors. He did. And it was a really good. So your point is, is that there is a way for military leaders to speak out. There is. To inform the population and their own men and women about what's going on. Yep.

Without stepping outside of the chain of command. Without becoming politically disloyal. Exactly. Loyalty is the key. However, the government sometimes says, no, you're not allowed. Well, the government can also be pushed back when they're out of their bailiwick. But your sense is that there is a place there where...

that public pronouncements are appropriate and possible and that you've seen some of them. Yeah, I have. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, so let's close with this. I'll just give each of you a chance for a closing statement to speak directly to the Canadian public and also the international community because there'll be lots of people who aren't Canadian watching this as well. So just anything at all. What would you like to emphasize? Let's say, Barbara, maybe you could start. What would you like to emphasize? Let's say to young women, possibly. So I would say, yeah.

So young women today, they're a lot stronger, we think, from the interactions I've had with our young officer cadets. And I would say, ladies, you know, there's nothing to be afraid of. You've got this. Join the military. You are going to have, you know, the experience of a lifetime. You can learn to be and do whatever you want to do. And don't listen to too many negative comments because you can handle this. We handled it back then. You can handle it today. That would be my comment to them. Okay.

Well, I would say for me, I think service to your country and service in the military is a fantastic career. And I think any young man or woman who doesn't actually consider it

at least consider it, not necessarily do it, but consider it. Have a look at what's available out there and look at it compared to civilian employment. I think you're missing out. Okay, so let me zero in on that a little bit. So let's take a kid who's just about to graduate from high school. So he's starting to figure out, maybe from a small town or a city for that matter, trying to figure out what to do next. Okay, so why exactly do you think the military might be on his or her list of

of consideration and who for what kind of student should be thinking well if first of all if you've got good marks and you're in fairly decent physical shape

Then being an officer, and if you're in high school, you're going to look at going to university. If you're going to go to university, let's say, and if you don't want to go to university, first of all, you could join as a soldier, sailor, aviator, or whatever. Great career. You can have great. My son is in the Navy. My daughter is in the Army, in the Reserves. They've had great careers. They love it.

However, if you're looking at going to university, have a look at what the military college provides you. Yeah, right. Okay, it's a four-pillar program. You'll get a degree. You're going to get military leadership experience because they're going to teach you and so on. You're going to be bilingual. They're going to teach you how to speak your other language. Right, right. And you're also going to be in great shape because it's a four-pillar program physically. And you'll get paid for it.

Right, right. Which is a thing for kids. So you're paid for doing it. And then what you have to do is serve the number of years that you go to military college. After that, you can get out and do whatever you'd like. However, if you decide to get out, let's say, what a great CV you have. What a great curriculum vitae. You've got experience. You've got a degree. You've got some leadership. You're in great shape, et cetera, et cetera. Right, so that's just available for people if they want it. Or if that's not your path, then...

Join and get a trade.

Right. That's it. There's literally over a hundred different occupations available in the military from... How would people go about finding this out? Online. Online. It's all online now. And every one of those occupations, they have a little video, a three-minute video. You see, what would you be doing if you were this? Right. And some of them have literally... Fantastic.

And then you combine it with work. And if you're not interested in that, then there's lots of opportunity for what I would characterize as simple adventure and opportunity to just do really fun and cool things potentially on the other side of the world and get some good experience and build some great relationships that will last you for the rest of your life. Absolutely, yeah. Mm-hmm.

So was that the end of your? That's it, my friend. That was your 40 minutes? Well, that was good. That was good. Well, that's a good positive. So my message would be what I was trying to say earlier. Canadians need to understand that notwithstanding all of the real challenges that they're faced with on a day-to-day basis in this country, we still enjoy an incredible level of privilege and wealth.

And that is fragile. We can never take that for granted. And part of not taking that for granted is that we are part of a very complicated global system that depends on a whole bunch of things that depend on security as the foundational thing.

of economics, of social fairness and equality, the rule of law. All these things that are important to us as Canadians, both domestically or internationally, are premised on a secure global system. That system is under threat. It is real threat.

And that is where the vulnerability and threat is to Canada. It's not a physical threat in the form of an invasion, which many new Canadians may have lived in their own experience. It's not that. It's deeper. It's broader. It's a little more esoteric. It's another kind of invasion. But it is real.

And it is coming. And we either want to be part of the answer with respect to how we protect it or we're

We're going to wake up one morning and wonder where what we thought Canada was all about went. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Well, so I think what we'll do on the Daily Wire side for everybody watching and listening, I think we'll delve a little bit more deeply into the ideology and the DEI mess and how that came about and what might be done about it. And maybe also talk a little bit more about the...

The problems of security in the digital world. And so if you want to join us on the Daily Wire side, please feel free to do that. And thank you very much for your time and attention. Thank you very much for coming today. Our pleasure. Yeah, well, one of many conversations, I hope. And to everybody watching and listening, thank you very much for your time and attention as well.

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