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Perhaps a better question would be How many Canadians died from exposure to agent orange, CFB Gagetown, NB is where this chemical was developed, Did you also know there is still a few Canadian military vets and their families suing the Federal government for compensation. No party has agree to see everyone who had a part in this chemical cluster fu** compensated, yours or mine... The idea was a great idea, from a military stand point( jungle warfare), no place to hide easy target...and it was not the locals that were the problem, it was the VC and NVA that was the problem. Burn pits have been ongoing for as long as militaries have been on the move, including Canada's, and in a war zone how much time and effort do you think a soldier puts into something that can have long terms effects ..." like burn pits" In KAF they were just over 50,000 soldiers on that base, the raw sewage plant was a massive open air lagoon, with summer temps averaging 55 degrees plus, you could smell that on every corner of the camp. it's not until you get back home that family doctors warn about exposure... everyday my main focus was getting home to see my family, my kids, not how much bad air i was breathing....but rather what could kill me short term, when everyday we had to worry about getting blown up, by Vehicle mounted IED's, people mounted suicide vests, or just plain IED's not to mention getting shot at by every dick with a gun this happened every day, 3 or 4 times each day...... it was not if we were going to get hit, it was when we were going to get hit and by what....there were other things like depleted uranium, toxic wpn fumes, white phosphorus wpns , or here is a good one, how about carbon monoxide poisonings because there was so much armor placed around your truck or vehicle it actually funneled it to the inside of the vehicle, within hours you would have massive headaches, and puking, the cure was to stick your head out of the vehicle, which kind of defeats the purpose of armor right...........not to mention all the snakes and spiders, rabid dogs, goats, donkeys ,attack roosters not to mention the other millions ways to die... But hey here is the final kicker.... many people from the the left side like to use all these excuses to show how dangerous a modern battle field can be.... and yet when it comes time to stand up for our vets where are they, there concern seems to drop when you mention our soldiers....it is after all, them who know first hand how bad combat can really be, it is them who carry those scars for a long time... but when it comes down to it i was never about my country, or it's citizens... it was about the guy on the right and left of me, for those guys i would die for in a second...and for the haters , i would not cross the road to piss on them if you were on fire... Yes it was tragic that civilians died at the hands of coalition troops mistakes, but where is your disgust at how many were killed by the terrorist , did you know that 80 to 90 % of all Afghans killed where killed by these terrorist, most of these terrorist are not even from Afghanistan. try to goggle on just what methods they used to kill women and children, what they used to do to families that dared to send their girls to school, or how they skinned a man alive and left him staked out in the sun for us to find, because we had asked a question on how to get to the next town....or how a terrorist strapped 20 lbs of explosive to a 5 year old and sent him peddling his bike toward our Vehicle check point , all that was left of him was shin bones and feet still strapped to sandals....we caught the guy in a market, handed him over to the ANP (police) they wrapped him in barbed wire and drug him down the street behind their truck screaming the entire way... just another day in Afghanistan...., You can call the Americans what ever you want to, it is after all a Canadian right of passage... I was proud to serve along side every American soldier that we came across. Atleast we could count on them to have our backs, when our own nation had forgotten us...

Not my concern...your domestic politics and squabbles are your own, plus you seem to make time for worrying about American leaders and politics as well. Justin Trudeau is a failure in most any context, except for legalized cannabis and dopers.

This point highlights several disadvantages that China faces...the West has several allied nations with more advanced nuclear warhead designs and more accurate delivery systems that can leverage those designs. The west also is deploying credible ballistic missile defense systems (with or without Canada). China is playing catch-up for land, sea, and air capabilities while trying to maintain a very large conventional army to fight a 20th century ground war that dominates its historical experience....transitioning to modern American/Western force structure concepts has not been without problems and limitations. China has another nuclear weapons problem...India, which is hell bent on funding and deploying a robust nuclear triad right on China's doorstep. Playing superpower with the big boys is not going to be easy...or cheap. As China confronts such realities, one would expect more interest in arms limitations talks (Chinese pragmatism...not moral debate).

Lots of guys on this forum with more expertise on nukes than i , Bush used to sail on US subs, dog on the porch , or argus have studied the topic more than i, what i do know is what they taught every grunt, nukes are very bad. during the cold war any use of WMD would result in MAD, that included the use of chemical wpns, atleast those you could take precautions and maybe live if you were lucky, but it is a terrible way to die.... Nukes be it inter continental or tactical meant death to everyone in range, either by blast, or fire, or by radiation poisonings or by all three . There are many types of nukes, and ways to deploy them, like air burst, meant to contain damage to target area, but also fry "all" electronics through eltromagnetic pulse, ground burst typical nuke wpn, and then delayed burst meaning more radioactive material thrown up into the air... also nuetron as you mentioned, it still had a blast wave, and massive light , or burn damage, but much reduced... either way, any one caught in the death zones would die.. these zones could be out to the 300 KM ring in some of the bigger blasts or city killers. tactical nukes the death rings could be measured in few KMs either way you would know when a nuke is used....first the blast , massive amounts of light that sets everything on fire, then the blast wave ...you would be better off at the impact area, than die a slow death from rad poisoning and burns. My opinion... Mother Russia had lots of soldiers all of them are expendable , so driving or operating in high rad zone was normal practice, and when the unit started dying off they were replaced with another... NATO would atleast make an attempt to avoid, but sometimes that was not possible. Today we have very limited means of operating in or near a rad or chemical wpns zone, due to cuts.

It is not that i don't value your opinion, but on this topic i have to disagree 100 %. When most people are asked what is our military for, most if not all will say to defend our nation from foreign invasion , meaning landing craft, tanks and planes coming on shore, and yet DND defends this nation along with 6 or 7 other depts on a daily basis , from cyber attacks, foreign nationals gathering intel on our infra structures, cyber networks, espionage of military and industrial targets, protecting our coast lines from over fishing, drug trafficking's, human smuggling, direct assistance of personal and equipment to RCMP, Fishieres, Coast Guard, Dept of wild life, CSIS, etc plus anti terror both here domestically and aboard as part of an inter national coalition, DND is also the lead agency in planning or providing manpower and equipment to any domestic natural disaster operation , along with ensuring our sovereignty is maintained on any and all lands or territory claimed to be Canada. "use it or loss it" ie, Hanns island, that includes protecting and keeping hostile aircraft out of our airspace, hostile ships out of our waterways, and hostile ground forces off our land...Russians have had forces on Canada's artic more than once, they even left behind Russian rations as if to say ya we were here, f*** ya. On top of all that they are also have to provide troops and equipment to UN, NATO, NORAD, and 5 eyes when required. and finally training 2/3 of the military is in some training cycle at all times just to maintain skills and qualifications such as airborne skills , flying low level supply drops, calling in fast air, firing a air to air missiles off a ship at a moving target... these are just some of what DND does on a 24 hours a day 365 days a year, every year no questions asked. So it is not all about keeping the Russian and Chinese off our door steps, but ensuring they never get a chance to find our doorstep, by engaging them close to their borders, like Ukraine, and other operations we are involved with right now. you don't need a massive force to do that... 2. Before 1914, At the time, Canada had a regular army of only 3,110 men and a fledgling navy. And before WWII: March 1939 the Permanent Active Militia (or Permanent Force (PF), Canada's full-time army) had only 4,169 officers and men while the Non-Permanent Active Militia (Canada's reserve force) numbered 51,418 at the end of 1938, mostly armed with weapons from 1918. In March 1939 the Royal Canadian Navy had 309 officers and 2967 naval ratings, and the Royal Canadian Air Force had 360 officers and 2797 airmen.[11]:2–5 So call lessoned learned from WWI were not exactly learned lessons were they ? And yet there is a cost of not learning these lessons, one was it cost many lives of our young men and women to gain the experience and skills to survive on the battle field, but like Canada today lives are cheap, dime a dozen.... that is until it is your son or daughter then it matters right... The equipment has always been made by the cheapest bidder, a quick look at the Sherman tank will tell you everything you need to know, when German tanks were knocking them out at a rate of 10 to 1 it really sucks for moral, but then again lives are cheap...In this regards we have not learned a thing have we. Having a military with all the bells and whistles like nuclear wpns, aircraft carriers, is not the answer for our cheap minded nation, but then again neither is having 3 newfies in a row boat armed with shotguns and calling them destroyers. Canada needs a conventional force capable of multi tasks at once, one that can be sustained for long periods of time, today we have 3 very undermanned brigades, which at the height of the Afghanistan conflict was not enough to keep soldiers on the ground with out suffering burn out... 6 months training prior to going on operations, 6 to 8 months on operations, and 6 months off to readjust back to normal life... there are a large number of troops that completed 8 to 9 tours in a 10 year period...Ya i know the math does not work out right.. Burn out comes with other problems , a high rate of PTSD, depression , and suicides, again lives are cheap.... top all of this off with cutting of benefits to save some 340 million , throwing vets out into the street when they could no long do everyday tasks , like take a shower, or go to the store for food,...., and the civilian population who for the most part don't give a shit...and you have what i call sensory overload, and the military we have today is the end product of that overload...we don't need a large military machine but we do need more than 65,000 troops in total, some where in the 110,000 mark would be more than enough, I'm no expert but the number is pretty close to what experts have published....in the early 90's we have 95,000 troops until Justins dad slashed it all to shit... Afghanistan, Canadians forces where punching way above our heads, in ground forces anyways, we were so effective on the battle field we had requests coming in from the UK and US army and Marines to help them in their operations, because we were very good at our jobs, closing with and destroying our enemies "killing Terrorists by the bucket loads" .... where we sucked as a nation was support from our government, and our citizens, providing our forces with our own air support, and support . Afghanistan was the perfect war for Canada, it was not about OIL, or minerals, or any other resources that so call experts claimed it was about... experts that had not even stepped foot in the country. This war went from being Canadian to being a Canadian soldiers war, left alone to make it all happen, set up for failure by our country only to stand up and meet every impossible standard the government set. 'WE" did not damage our military in Afghanistan, our Government and citizens did that ... I want to put some context to some of this the infantry "boots on the ground" there are 3 regiments of regular force Infantry in Canada spread from coast to coast , each regiment has 3 under sized battalions of about 6 to 700 soldiers in each....do the math thats less than 5400 to 6000 soldiers capable of fighting nation wide ... D day there were 14,000 Canadian soldiers landed that day, with more coming in days after, today we would not even get off the beach with all our nations infantry...

Canada is still a democracy but to a limited degree. It is run by a small borg of elite located in the Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto triangle and is to some degree an oligarchy. True democracy would reject a leader who has had repeated ethics violations. In Canada ethics doesn't seem to carry much weight. The morally deficient masses still vote them in. Charisma, name, and where they're from has more weight.

Wake up call to what ? The economy died and the government burned money. At the end of it, everyone may decide that big spending is a wonderful thing. Opening your eyes and being able to see isn't much of an advantage if you are still too dumb to walk straight. But I am not saying I know either way.

Yeah and double-oops:

Unlike in Canada, where being a blackfaced PM is perfectly fine.

As reported on CBC this morning, only 55 thousand of long-term care workers of approx. 100 in the province have been vaccinated since December (2 months). At this "speed" Ontario will be fully vaccinated around the time of net zero carbon emissions. Seriously: they can make a regular citizen do this and that, wear double mask here and fine in an open air skating rink there. But they can't make vaccination a condition of working in a critical care zone. Nope, just can't be done. Seriously. I have to admit, I don't understand how this works and for some time time now. Does it even work and if so, for how much longer?

China has been following a path that seeks to duplicate the American military development narrative with domestic efforts...using ex-Soviet/Russian designs and methods are not good enough anymore to achieve CPC long range plans. However, there is one thing that China cannot create or buy for these advanced systems...experience. And that translates into training, tactics, doctrine, effectiveness, etc. Of course, they have 1MT warheads because they lack the (CEP) accuracy more than any 2nd strike posturing. China today does not have a robust defense suppression capability against North America or Europe. They will get better at this game, but so will other nations that already have a big head start. The first American SSBN patrol was over 60 years ago...one of my old boats (USS George Washington SSBN-598). Hence my 20th century comment above. What China has long thought to be its biggest strength has become less relevant and more obsolete. China is learning that military superpower things are not so easy.

Incidentally, I inadvertently didn't post that part but I agree it should be mentioned too. Whichever government did it, I don't agree with it. My criticism was directed at government, period. I am against that decision. But I wonder why the Liberals allowed it to continue the past five years. Why didn't they stop it? Conservatives were no better than Liberals at protecting Canadians from China. Didn't the Liberals spend a vast amount of money on the Asia Infrastructure Bank too? Helping fund projects in China? But Liberals seem to have a special love for Communist China.

China doesn't need a war to treat Canada like a chew toy....all it needs is Justin Trudeau.

I am not doing well on this topic. Nuclear weapons are a deterrence, but they cannot be used. The US deterrent in the 1970s was weakened when the Soviets started to believe the US would never dare use them. President Reagan set about convincing the Soviets that he was very serious about using them. In the early 1970's, I was writing a paper exploring a Warsaw Pact invasion ove wesstern Europe. I attended a seminar with a Canadian Forces senior officer who had recently been the senior Canadian Officer in Norad. I asked him how well NATO would do in a War with the Warsaw Pact including the use of nuclear weapons. He said 90% of the world population would be dead at the end of the first month. The rest would survive another couple of weeks. I abandoned my paper. Nuclear weapons keep the peace, or so we pray. Wars between India and Pakistan ended when India acquired nuclear weapons. The same with Israel. Stalin, clearly the most evil crazy individual ever to lead a government, had nuclear weapons and even he did not use them. As far as Canadian Defence policy is concerned, the contributers above have articulated the situation better than me. Canada is not able to do anything to influence China on our own. It is frustrating but that is real politique.

Enhanced Radiation Device. It is a neutron "bomb." In 1975, Livermore Labs detonated a "hydrogen" bomb with the explosive force equivalent to one firecracker, according to media reports at the time. In the late '70s, there was a lot of talk about the "neutron bomb." They talked about a bomb that killed people and left buildings intact. The ERD is highly versitile in that the is no limit to how small the yield is. The Soviets were considering using the technology in tank shells. A single round could destroy one enemy tank and kill the crews in the tanks near by. Disclaimer: I do not have the expertise of Army Guy and the others who actually served our country and I defer to them.

I read something new about Cygnus X-1 just the other day: Famous Black Hole Gets a Massive Update

In that spirit.... Why are we doing business with a country that murders its own people?

That's because...thanks to JT...it isn't your country anymore. It's EVERYBODY'S.

Disturbing Liberal policies and decisions . . . . have no faith in this country anymore.

The president had nothing to do with the riot. It was planned well ahead of time, like the Democrat BLM riots during the summer.

Democrats are thieves that stole the election in the dead of night as they thought nobody would be watching. Biden is as legitimate as a counterfeit 100 dollar bill. The thieves will pay. If not today...soon.

There is a big difference between Turkey and China. China is far more powerful. One of the reasons for China's power is it's long range planning. Another is the willingness to support regimes that no country in the west would touch with a plastic pole. Xi doesn't back down easily. Pressure from a united front of the rest of the G20 nations refusing to do business might work but getting that unity is a difficult exercise. Look at how porous the sanctions against Rhodesia were. People do not want to pay five months salary to buy an Apple computer made in Canada.

You should write that on the 9/11 memorial if you really believe it.

Popular speech doesn't need protection. That's the whole point of freedom of speech. If Trudeau starts up a Ministry of Truth, we should revolt.