"Who Will Stand On Guard For Canada In The Years To Come?"

Raphael Alexander on reality:

Every time around this year you get the usual obligatory media stories honouring our soldiers and our veterans. This can only be a good thing, except for the fact that it usually takes the 11th of November to remind everybody about the sacrifices that were made in the past, and the ones that continue to be made by our current military serving throughout the world. The National Post ran a good article yesterday by Graeme Hamilton that stands out from the rest, in that it reminds us of the challenges facing Canada’s standing army in the years to come. In this respect, it is an article that not only looks back upon our veterans, but forward to the next generation of veterans.

Mr.Hamilton reminds us again of the demographic shift in Canada that will eventually need to rely upon our ethnic minorities in order to sustain our military. The subject of our mainly “white” Army has been broached a few times in the media, delicately, describing minorities as “under-represented” in this article from 2008. But they aren’t just under-represented; they are fairly absent from duty.

In the more than 50 years since the Korean war, Canada has become a mainly urban country of large multicultural demography. But while the face of Canada has changed, the faces of its war dead, as Mr.Hamilton observes, largely have not...

As noted in the article, Canadians seem to think military intervention is important in some cases:

“Mr. Leuprecht notes that the aversion to military service is not confined to recent immigrants; he sees it among university students who are all for a military intervention in Darfur, as long as they’re not called upon to serve.”

It’s the Homer Simpson solution to containing the murderous regimes and toppling the dictators of the world: “Can’t someone else do it?”

Note that the Atlantic Provinces are well over-represented in the CF and the casualties. A long tradition of military service in many areas and, no doubt, contemporary economic reasons.