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I was not aware of that information. Thanks. Maybe they should count the RCMP as military as well.

Killing civilians wasn't the main goal, but they were killed along the way intentionally. So still classifies as terrorism.

You should find better uses for your time. Prayer doesn't do anything.

How can the armed forces both defend our allies and defend our social values / fight terrorism as long as we are allied to countries like Saudi Arabia? They kill apostates, kill gay people, kill women that go shopping without a male escort, fund wahhabism, etc.

Coast guard isn't part of the military. Coast Guard is part of DFO, not the Department of Defence. In case you did not read it, I said that while abolishing the military is feasible for Canada, it's not a position that I advocate. Vietnam/France gave China the Spratly and Parcel Islands in 1887 after the Sino-French war. China never relinquished its claim. Vietnam's claims to those Islands are illegitimate.

The west's unnecessary polarization of the situation in Ukraine which lead to civil war? What a disaster. If there was one recent conflict where peace keeping made sense, it was in Ukraine to prevent civil war. Canada's current position on Ukraine is immoral, we should respect the right to self determination of all regions of Ukraine. So if the Crimean people overwhelmingly want to be part of Russia, we should respect that. Also, this unnecessary hostility with Russia makes it difficult to work with Russia to deal with our common enemy of Islamic Extremism. If the US doesn't like it, they can invade and annex us, in which case we win. We get freedom of speech, a monetary union, less trade barriers due to no border, greater labour mobility, increased capital investment, better netflix, etc.

He probably planned it out similar to the attack on our parliament. Maybe not planned very well, but one generally doesn't just drive by their country's parliament every day. Now the attacks on random police officers with a knife, those are more likely unplanned.

Usually, but not always. The intervention to protect South Korea during the Korean War, for example, had very good results for South Korea. Intervention to stop the NAZIs had good results as well. British intervention to end the slave trade had very good results, especially in Kenya. In Rwanda, intervention to prevent genocide would have arguably been quite good. Intervention (via sanctions) to end Apartheid in South Africa was effective. Canadian peace keeping intervention is Cyprus was arguably quite effective as well.

See the thing is I'm not even against interventionalist foreign policy. I'm just against stupid or immoral interventionist policy. If it were interventionist policy to end the genocide against gay people and apostates in Saudi Arabia (provided that sanctions were tried first and Canada had a decent coalition of countries on it's side), then I'd probably support it. Or alternatively interventionist policy to help South Korea if North Korea attacks it, I'd support that too. But spending 2% of our GDP to protect Erdogan as he jails dissidents and shoots down Russian planes when Russia tries to fight ISIS, well that's insane. But people like Army Guy are so completely against changing the status quo and the current cold-war paradigms that it turns even people that favour interventionism occasionally, such as myself, completely against supporting significant military expenditure because basically no net good comes out of such expenditure. Unfortunately, the LPC and CPC are both completely led by rigid status-quo people like Army Guy.

I think that the problem is you and the millions of other Canadians stuck in old cold-war paradigms. The cold war ended decades ago, and the military alliances that made sense during the cold war, no longer make sense today. It does not make sense to be allied to Saudi Arabia over Russia, when Saudi Arabia is the country the funds Salafism/Wahhabism, which leads to ISIS, Boko Haram, Al Queda, Al Shabab, etc. where as, due to shared interests and not being run by religious fanatics, the West and Russia should be natural allies in today's geopolitical environment. Also, being allied to Turkey is extremely questionable given the authoritarian nature of Erdogan and the fact that they have recently shot down a Russian jet when Russia was using jets to fight ISIS and stop the flow of oil from ISIS to Turkey (and thus cash from Turkey to ISIS). What we need is not so much increases in Military expenditure but better diplomacy and a re-orientation of foreign policy. And if you look at Canada on a map, you will notice that we have 0 natural enemies and are basically one of the few countries that could get away with abolishing the military if we wanted to. Abolition is not a position I advocate, but I'm just pointing out the reality. So going on about how we need the military to protect me, a Canadian, is nonsense. Maybe we need a military to protect Japan/S.Korea/Taiwan, or perform offensive actions in other countries, but not to defend Canada from an invasion.

The intent was to both attack a government military institution and kill civilians. They went out of their way to kill civilians by driving on a sidewalk.

Save me from what? The polar bears? Also, I doubt spending mass amounts of money on battleships, fighter planes, or helping Erdogan will be effective at protecting me from the polar bear invasion. Not yet, due to lack of advancements in ai. But that will change in the future.

A lot of civilians were hit by a vehicle first.

I get your point, but out of the things in your list, getting rid of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt was one of the best things to occur in recent years in terms of reducing future terrorism. As bad as Syria / Iraq currently is, at least we don't have the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood in power in Egypt trying to spread radical Sunni Islam and working with Turkey to create a new Caliphate. Also, the Egyptian military got rid of the Muslim Brotherhood without US support. Obama was naively pro-Muslim Brotherhood and to an extent betrayed liberals in Egypt during the Arab Spring.

Maybe he was, maybe he wasn't. We don't know, it's all speculation. It's not like the Ander's Breivik or Dylan Roof killings where the motives were very clear. Now if the killer were to release a manifesto, confession or statement explaining the reasoning and motivation, we would probably be able to make more definitive conclusions.

He confessed. But we still don't really know the motive.

Too bad they failed and the people of North Korea suffer as a result.

I made no such claim. My claim was about the existence of military-only specialists. Afghanistan invasion was legal.

VVD is actually the party Wilder's used to belong too, and it's also the party of Ayaan Hirsi Ali (who is an islamophobe according the the Islamic Human Rights Commission). CDA is a christian conservative party. D66 seems relatively centrist. So it's inaccurate to say that the right lost the dutch election. On the other hand, DENK, the Armenian genocide denying party that wants to ban words like 'integration', 'immigrant' and 'foreigner', use public money to fund imams, and want's to set up a 'racism register', where anyone who doesn't agree with SJWs will be called racist and put on the register, where those on the register will be unable to get a job in the public service, well they got 3 seats. What a strange country.

No, like for example, I know someone in the military who recently had an injury during exercise. He's not allowed to see a normal specialist like other citizens because some idiot bureaucrats in the military decided to create a military-only specialists because they somehow thought it would lead to better health care. Doesn't make sense to blame the public for idiotic decisions made by bureaucrats.

That's certainly an issue that needs to be addressed. The current situation is mostly due to insane bureaucracy though.

So you are resorting to the argument that X hasn't occurred yet, therefore we should take no steps to prevent X from occurring? What a ridiculous argument. Let's try it! The monarch overriding the will of the PM has not occurred yet, therefore we should take no steps to prevent it from occurring. Significant climate change has not occurred yet, therefore we should take no steps to prevent it from occurring. Global nuclear war has not occurred yet, therefore we should take no steps to prevent it from occurring.

Thinking we should hire the best person for the job is apparently anger towards the military... What??? Nah, I'm asexual. I don't do the dating thing. Can't really say that if there is a hiring preference for veterans.

It violates egalitarianism (people are not equal, some people gain their positions through birth, not merit) and it violates secularism (since the monarch is inherently the head of the Anglican Church). If 1 violation of egalitarianism / secularism is allowed then other violations are easier to justify in society. So if having the head of the Anglican Church be inherently the head of state is acceptable, then why isn't having a Crucifix in the National Assembly, having God in the Charter or Anthem, or having laws preventing the depiction of the prophet Mohammed not acceptable as well? Or if giving a person a position (Monarchy) based on birth right is acceptable, then why isn't hiring someone for a position due to say being born female not also acceptable? So the main issue is that it normalizes violations of egalitarianism/secularism, although there are other issues. Another issue is with respect to the relationship between the state and first nations, or more particularly the Idle no more protests. If you recall the rhetoric from 2012, the position by many was that everything was an agreement between the British monarch and various unelected native monarchs and that the will and/or well-being of the Canadian people (both native and non-native alike) doesn't enter the equation. I think that as long as the monarchy exists, it will be difficult to solve first nation issues and turn society to an egalitarian society where everyone is equal under the law because all the racist agreements of the past such as the indian act are tangled up with the monarchy. A third issue is that it's a waste of time/money. All of these silly ceremonies cost money and could be eliminated if we got rid of the monarchy. For example, take the oath pledge to the monarchy that people that join the military have to take. All that oath taking time and ceremony is paid for by the tax payer. Finally, the existence of the monarchy helps the SJWs. If the SJWs claim that we live in a white supremacist patriarchy, they can point to the monarchy as evidence to support their claims.