Taking stupid to new levels

This idea is a steamer - truly leading-edge stupidity:

Liberal defence critic Denis Coderre is calling on the federal government to build a Canadian Forces base for native soldiers.

"I think that we have to show sensitivity since Canada is also composed of first nations," Mr. Coderre said yesterday.

"The Canadian Forces have always reflected what Canada is," he said.

The base, which would be a first in Canada, would be built in the Restigouche area of northern New Brunswick.

Look, I'm all for recruiting more aboriginals into the CF. Historically speaking, they've made great warriors, although their treatment by the Canadian government was generally an embarrassing disgrace. In "Aboriginal Participation in Canadian Military Service: Historic and Contemporary Contexts", by John Moses, Native History Researcher, Canadian Ethnology Service at the Canadian Museum of Civilization, the author leads us through a brief history of aboriginal involvement with the Canadian military, in the process making this notable point:

Of those who did participate in 20th century war efforts, the service records of many First Nations individuals and Indian reserve communities are impressive.

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There is research to indicate that in both World Wars Aboriginal Canadians volunteered for military service in proportionally greater numbers than the rest of the Canadian population at large.

The Canadian Forces can always use another Tommy Prince. If you don't know who Tommy Prince is, follow the link and read up on this great Canadian soldier, pictured here.

So, by all means, recruit more First Nations soldiers. But don't segregate them.

To be fair, I'm not sure the original proponent of the idea - a former soldier named Serge Noel - has really thought of the proposal in those terms. His heart seems to be in the right place, if not his head:

"We're talking to [aboriginal] youth that want to join the Armed Forces, but are not comfortable with the situation," Noel said. "But when we make mention of a native-only [regiment], they are very excited and very upbeat about it."

Noel, who is francophone but not native, said the military can be a tough place for people who are not anglophone or white.

Noel said that, for a lot of his military training, he was sent to Calgary, where he had to work in English.

He pointed out that the francophone minority in the military at least has the option of joining the Van Doos, the Royal 22nd Regiment in Quebec, which was created in the First World War for French-Canadian troops.

Well, they also had racially-recruited Indian units in WWI (the 107th and 114th Battalions of the Canadian Expeditionary Force), and in WWII the Canadian government still pursued race-based recruiting that put most aboriginal volunteers into the Army, as opposed to the other two branches of the Forces. Ask aboriginal veterans how well that separate status worked out for them when they returned home from the war and found themselves removed from Status rolls and unable to collect a veteran's pension.

And dragging the Van Doos into the debate is unhelpful. The key here is that the 22ieme does not require a soldier to be francophone to join the regiment. Neither do you have to be Inuit to join the Rangers, although most of those troops are aboriginals, due to both demographics and the required skill sets.

Separate aboriginal military units posted to a separate aboriginal base would be a poison in the Canadian Forces. It is difficult enough to knit together volunteers from as geographically, racially, culturally, and linguistically diverse a population as Canada's into a cohesive fighting force. Introducing racial divisions would be completely counterproductive in this context.

That the Liberal defence critic should be advocating racial segregation for aboriginal soldiers in the year 2007 is astonishing, and extremely disappointing. And it shows just how unserious a player Denis Coderre is in Canada's ongoing defence dialogue.