From 'Harper’s War' to 'Trudeau’s War'

OTTAWA - About a year ago, NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair was railing about “Harper’s War” — the term he used to dismiss the Canadian campaign against ISIS put together by the government of Stephen Harper.
TORONTO SUN
Mulcair was on the losing side of the parliamentary vote last spring to deploy six CF-18s fighter bombers, two surveillance planes, a re-fuelling aircraft, a small band of Canadian special forces trainers, and several hundred support personnel as part of the coalition to counter the spread of ISIS.

On Tuesday, Mulcair will be on the losing side again of the parliamentary vote to endorse what Mulcair could presumably call “Trudeau’s War.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau leads a majority government, of course, so Tuesday’s vote on Canada’s new and different contribution to the fight against ISIS will not be in doubt.

That vote will be a highlight in a week on Parliament Hill where defence and national security issues should dominate debate.

On Monday, the chief of defence staff, General Jonathan Vance, along with the head of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and senior officials from Public Safety Canada will get grilled by senators on the Senate’s national security and defence committee. That group is trying to identify security threats facing the country and assess whether or not Canada has the capability and resources to meet those threats.

On Tuesday, it will be Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan’s turn to appear before a group of Parliamentarians. MPs on the House of Commons defence committee want to learn more from him about where the Trudeau government is taking Canadian defence policy.

We still do not know enough details about Trudeau’s defence and security priorities.

For example, the campaign platform was explicit that the Lockheed-Martin F-35 would under no circumstances be considered as a replacement for our CF-18s. But Sajjan seemed less equivocal when asked about the F-35 last month saying only that there would be an ‘open’ competition.

The fighter plane replacement process is one of several military procurement headaches left behind by the Harper government. What do we know about how the Trudeau government will go about buying new ships and planes? Not enough.

We do know that the Canadian Forces contingent fighting “Trudeau’s War” against ISIS will not include the six CF-18s but will include more troops working closer to the front lines. Those soldiers will be training, advising and assisting local forces, Iraqis and Kurds, in northern Iraq.

Though there is at least as much risk, and possibly more, to those soldiers under Trudeau’s anti-ISIS mission as there was under Harper, the government made a decent case in Parliament in support of deploying more troops in that role.

And yet, when Liberal MPs stand Tuesday in the House of Commons and vote in favour of withdrawing the CF-18s from the anti-ISIS fight they will do so in the absence of any compelling or coherent argument from either Trudeau or Sajjan why our jets should not remain as part of the coalition force.

Tuesday’s vote will signal a close to that aspect of the debate about the anti-ISIS mission.

But opposition MPs and senators will have plenty of opportunity this week to open up new lines of debate and inquiry in an area where the Liberals should be pushed to provide details of how they plan to keep Canada safe and secure.
TORONTO SUN

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