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What ICU’s are filled? Tilting at windmills. We’re imposing restrictions for political and psychological reasons that have little bearing on public safety. There aren’t many at-risk people left to vaccinate. Kids are quite safe. End all restrictions. Let people take responsibility for their Covid safety.

You continue to embrace this 'all or nothing' approach, where either we need to be able to defeat China ourselves or simply not have a military. That is not what anyone here is calling for. We don't need to match China. We merely need to field a respectable military so that we will be taken seriously. Some of the new electric subs are even quieter than nuclear, and I'm willing to bet if we had a dozen of them - which Australia was ordering from France, we could deter any kind of Chinese adventurism anywhere near our coast. Nor do we need conscription. I believe we could recruit enough people easily, if the government took measure to instill pride in our military - which includes not making them get by with forty year old, obsolete junk. We fielded a military twice the size it is now when we had half our population. We could field it again. And what our self-serving politicians want is irrelevant to the discussion. We all know they place their own political interest ahead of what's best for Canada. The best we can do is vote for whomever seems friendliest to the idea of increasing the size and spending. Right now (as usual) that's the Conservatives. And at least their leader is a former CAF officer who presumably has more interest and respect for the military than a smarmy drama teacher like Trudeau.

It’s irrelevant. I don’t want ICUs filled, but that doesn’t override fundamental rights. Sorry. Pandemics suck.

Right now I would guess that Trudeau is still going to win even if the Conservatives have a slight lead. But no matter what the polls say I will always go out and cast my vote even knowing the Libs are a sure thing to win. I wouldn't rule out a majority for Trudeau but another minority is a huge slap in the face for this narcissist.

Canadians want to eat their cake as well, they want a viable military when it comes to ice storms or floods, forest fires or when 50,000 Lebanese Canadians wanted out of a war zone, only to have to rent ships to take them back to Canada....then everyone screams where is the army.

What does sovereignty mean in Canada, is it the lines drawn on a map ?, is it mean having the ability to use and live on everything in those lines and defend or protect it ? We has a nation have 3 undermanned and under equipped Army brigade groups, that for the most part look after inter national ops and a few domestic ops... The government has given the Reserves the responsibility for our north, and if you think our Regular forces are screwed up, wait to you see what makes up the reserves, check out their man power or equipment...I mean what the regular army did not already steel. Any ways my point is as a nation we really have not put much thought into our sovereignty... we could not even defend our fishing grounds in the turbot wars. Our military is bleeding talent faster than it can be replaced, there is only so much someone can get kicked then they loss interest in their jobs... Defending the Nation is not important in Canada..

It's not for nothing that people have invented words like government's "responsibility"; "accountability" and "independent oversight". Too bad we were too busy celebrating to have learned them.

The problem is that while in Australia all major parties agree on the importance of a strong military, the Liberals in Canada never have, and when in opposition use every opportunity to politicize any and all military purchase and actions. For example, they got us into Afghanistan, but once the Tories were in power they did everything they could to make Canadians want us out. They searched for 'scandal' in everything from how Americans treated prisoners we handed over to the cost of new equipment. The Liberals signed us onto the F35 purchasing program, but once in opposition they did everything in their power to make it seem like a complete waste of money. every action, every death in combat was another opportunity for them to score points against the Tories. And now in power they've pushed all capital projects to the rear burner because Trudeau only cares about spending money on improving his popularity. And he figures the Canadians who care most about the military probably don't vote Liberal anyway.

someone had to authorize it...that someone most likely had to be in Justins government, i mean a civil servant could not make this decision or Justin would have pinned it on them already... no media reports about any firings, so where do we look next. And if someone from Justins government did approve it, would it be reasonable that Justin was atleast told about it... or does his ministers hold back stuff like that.

And what we have failed to remember is most soldiers in WWI had very little basic training and what regular guys they did have would have been over whelmed with the sheer number of recruits, WWII 39, 40 many soldiers do not recieve any basic training they would get that over in England, later in the war basic training was done inn Canada for 6 weeks then off to the front. to give you an example todays Basic and Infantry training is almost 6 months long...then it is off to the unit... My point is many young Canadian men died because of the lack of proper equipment and training, but hey it's only a thousands of Canadians we can afford that...right i mean billions spent on equipment and training is certainly not worth thousands of lives right... And once again we forget it is our sons and daughters that will be fired on those front lines and forced to use that equipment made from the cheapest bidder, or friends with the Politician's. We don't need a military that could act as a non dependent force, our allies are asking more like begging us to have a force that is armed with modern equipment capable of fighting in a high intensity conflict with a near peer adversary. Lets take a look at first gulf war, we did not provide any fighting equipment because the Iraqi army had better and more modern equipment than we did..to put that into a perspective a 3 rd world nation had better equipment than a G-7 nation.. of course that was not hard as a lot of the African nations also had more modern equipment. To prepare a fighting force to go into combat takes weeks, Units designated as first response units can move within 72 hours but it takes weeks to get to that state...and those forces are only unit level... Conscription was not a major problem with exception of Quebec, and even then they provided the manpower required of them. I think the average Canadian would sign up, after 9-11 Canadians looking to sign up went up 1000 %. Canadians won't realize their mistake about our military size until it bites them in the ass, even domestic ops like the Winnipeg floods took 2 complete brigade groups and hundreds of Airforce and navy pers...or 3/4 of our entire army. Now they looked at something like a major earth quake in BC, thousand of lives may perish because of the lack of assistance available from the government that info was made public, but Canadians seemed to brush it away with ahh that won't happen...but when it does i hope we have the balls to point the finger at ourselves for this mistake...

Well I don't have cable but just the basics - so I'm doomed to leftist channels! CPAC isn't as bad as CTV and CBC. But it has a lot of French (and I'm not bilingual)!

You have the right to not be INTENTIONALLY infected by others. There is legislation for that. But no one has the right to be NOT infected with anything. That's "act of God" stuff. People go around infecting others with the flu and the common cold all year long, both of which are also deadlier and harder on the elderly and those with comorbidities. What are you going to do, start suing the person (you think) gave you the flu and cost you a week at work? Grama gets a flu, which turns into pneumonia, which leads to cardiac arrest - are you going to sue? And who do you sue? All this for an illness with over 99% survival rate. It's like shooting a bazooka into a crowd to kill a mosquito.

China respects nothing but force. If you cringe or silently accept their abuse, expect more of it. We should start by passing laws to protect Canadian immigrants from abuse by their former government. China has all kinds of agents in Canada pushing its agenda, controlling Chinese language media here, pressuring Chinese-Canadian businessmen and threatening students. Throw them all out. Close down the Confucius institutes, and any other agencies of Chinese influence in Canada. Start giving ships from China preferential treatment for extended searches which strategically slow down their goods. This would be done to search for drugs, especially fentanyl which the Chinese government allows to be shipped to other countries by criminals there. Do this in concert with trying to persuade Canadian importers to shift to other suppliers outside China. Start placing tariffs on Chinese goods, or even banning some for various reasons, made up or not. Including price dumping which they're almost all guilty of. Cut back on the number of Chinese students allowed into Canada. That should confuse them since that's usually one of the threats they make - to cut back the number of students. Buy the F35 immediately. Speed up construction of the new frigates. See if the French want to sell us some of those submarines they were building for the Australians cheap.

According to the latest numbers, Ontario has vaccinated over 11 million with at least one dose, with the population over 12 of about 12.3 million. Adding two groups, those who are medically exempt from vaccination (1-3%), and those who recovered earlier (up to 1/2 million), the total of population with some or strong protection against current variants should come to just under 12 million. And it means several things, for today and tomorrow: 1. The remaining eligible still not vaccinated fraction is tiny, at most a few percent. Can it cause the upheaval that is happening in the system according to media reports? If it's happening is it due to vaccination issues or the chronic state of the system itself? Everybody's guess as we have no reliable and trusted information to confirm that. But we know that some jurisdictions in the world are doing much better, and the virus is the same. 2. If it cannot be confirmed with confidence, what is the grounds and justification for vaccination-based restrictions? Are they based on reason and science (see above), or another guesswork of anonymous experts? And for the future. All hinges now on the next, fifth wave in the January - April timeframe. Either we dodge it somehow and then a sigh of relief, though a downside would the expectation that the that rumbling and bumbling policy and crumbling system somehow worked and could be used as-is in such events in the future. Or we don't. And in that cases (see above) it should be absolutely clear that: 3. The wave would be that of the vaccinated and the policies would not have been successful. Blaming non vaccinated would look very unlikely (given the numbers, above) to plain scapegoat hunting for failing policy. 4. We haven't learned much how to handle these events without escalating drama and a big panacea shotgun (lockdowns, masks, uniform vaccination). And so, likely right back to square one. And then, 5. What path would it leave us with? Mandatory vaccinations in some and growing number of areas are already a fact, just by a policy, no checks and very little if any justification. Ability to work dependent on (continuing?) vaccination. Mandatory universal vaccination? Yes but what is mandatory without enforcement? And can the society be kept safe without isolation of non compliants? There. This is not a given and maybe we'd still dodge it. But a scary thought is how close we've come to that. And it didn't even take much. And nothing is finished yet.

All polls indicate a very tight race. And, Bloc and PPC, and the bust of the Green Party can play a surprising upset. The Blocs are surging in Quebec (which could be a spoiler for Trudeau). Singh might be able to hold on to his supporters. And it's a three-way race in BC! PPC supporters could swing to O'Toole at the last minute....or, they can really spoil it for the Conservatives. They also say that voters who are anti-Trudeau could just go for the PPC or Green as a protest vote! Pollsters are all watching to see what will happen. They're not counting anything out. They say it's all about the turn-out of voters who will actually vote! Go out and vote!

China is incapable of invading Canada only America can do that and doing it wouldn't be worth it for them Canada has no good reason to go to war with China or vice versa

I am not convinced that vaccinating 100% of Canadians, the remaining 20% against their will, will solve your problem. You had a problem with a shortage of beds and doctors even before Covid hit. Let me ask you this, when you called a government agency in pre-covid days, did they not always respond with "we are experiencing higher than normal call volumes, your patience is appreciated" ?? There you go. They were incapable liars then, they are the same liars now.

Scientific evidence generated by doctors associated with the vaccines who may be paid to make such statements. The vaccine manufacturers are raking in billions of dollars for an unproven product. "more than 50%" can be acceptably effective for you, but not for me. You see, since I do not trust our government for anything, I cannot trust them on the vaccines either. They've told me one too many lies already.

There is no threat from the U.S. That is Marxist nonsense. You have been conned by the leftists. Time to do some reading of what China is doing in the west. The west must have military might and sufficient modern military technology to act as a deterrent. Having that deterrent is what protects us, not talk.

Australia has no choice but to build up its capability because they have no big brother next door to look after them. They don't have to be able to defeat China, just prickly enough to not be worth China's trouble. You can beat us but it will really cost you. That's the kind of military Canada should be aspiring too.

Never heard of the Cold War it would seem. The US and Soviet Union fought many proxy wars without resorting to nuclear weapons.

Agreed and I think that Trudeau’s naïveté and Canadians’ complaisance is making us too susceptible to threats to the quality of life we enjoy, including living standards and freedom. We struggle to maintain liberal-democracy without a strong conservative pushback against the new managed economy global reset mindset that is the consensus of the dominant Canadian parties. We can’t expect a seat at the big boy table for geopolitical influence with a diminished military and leaders who are seen as all talk. How do you make Canadians wake up to the fact that in order have policies that serve national interests in the long term, you can’t be totally beholden to foreign powers for defence and business? I get the progressive argument that money is better spent on lifting people out of poverty than buying military hardware, but military heft protects the business interests and trade policies that boost tax revenues. Also, by farming out manufacturing to China for the short-term affordability of goods we are losing our capacity to build a wide range of products. Without that capacity it’s much harder to close the drawbridge in times of crisis. If those jobs are going automated we should be producing the machines and collecting the profits. The progressives forget this, just as they don’t understand that shutting down resource development and oil production just shifts the supply to countries like Saudi Arabia and Russia. Biden has shown his hypocrisy on shutting down pipelines and fighting greenhouse gas emissions. He is committing the US to trucking in oil supply shipped in from less democratic countries, and Trudeau assents with a smile.

I get the feeling PM Ardern of N.Z. and Trudeau of Canada think their countries can act like some kind of neutral brokers in the world in the face of a gigantic struggle going on between the superpowers. On the western democracies, led by the America and the other side led by the totalitarian Communist of Russia, China, N. Korea. Trudeau and Ardern live in some kind of la la land, not the real world. These Communist super powers don't give a hoot about little countries like N.Z. and Canada. They will be swallowed up by the growing international influence of global authoritarianism and Marxism.

It's intersting that the sub contract the Australians have cancelled with France was or 12 new submarines. TWELVE. Canada, with a third higher population, currently has 4 very old used subs which rarely work. And no plans to replace them. Whatever happened to replacing our 40 year old F18s? We've seen zero progress in that since Trudeau got elected - for a reason. He's obviously told them to freeze it in place as the almost certain winner would be the one he dismissed as overpriced and not working when he was in opposition. His not being shown wrong is clearly MUCH more important than Canada's security. And our new frigates to replace our 40 year old warships? No date on them. But it will be AT LEAST another decade. Because it's not like we're in a rush there, either.