Think Twice

I’m really getting fed up by all the militaristic macho patriotic junk that I’ve getting from the papers and an alarming number of parliamentarians. They all seem to regard our strong and proud military as the proof of our country’s greatness and as an essential part of our Canadian identity.

I know that this debate has been going on for ever since confederation, so there’s no use in expanding on this topic any more. Instead, I’m simply going to treat you to a few numbers and pictures and let you draw your own conclusions.

This is a Boeing C-17 Globemaster 3 airlifter, which is sold at the friendly price of $202.3 million USD apiece. National Defence has just acquired four of those, which amounted to a little less that a billion USD once maintenance and repair were included. They use to simply rent a fleet whenever our SWAT team needed a lift, but that was simply considered inadequate for a military as great and powerful as ours.

This is one of the four infamous Victoria-class submarines that we bought used from the UK at a friendly price of £244m, which is around $600m CAD. Unfortunately, they are all in so bad shape that the cost of the repairs which will have to be undertaken to make them battle ready is estimated to be comparable to their initial price. So if we add another $600m CAD to make the subs water-tight and battle ready, we’re up to 1.2g CAD.

And just in case you weren't impressed yet, here’s an image of one of the two “Future Carriers” that are being developed for the Royal Navy at an estimated cost of £3.6 - £3.9 billion, or $8 - 9 billion CAD.

Now, for a change of scenery, here’s the tallest skyscraper in the world, Taipei 101, which is known to the world and provides the rapidly expanding city with an additional 412,500 m² of floor area. The total cost of the project came to around $1.6 billion USD, which is a little more than the total cost of our four Victoria-Class submarines and about half of the price of a single “Future Carrier”.

Here’s an MRI scanner. They cost around 3-4 million CAD. We are at a shortage of those, which is really a problem when one considers how significant and life-saving they can be.

Here’s a small child in Ethiopia getting his first vaccinations. They cost less than a dollar per child. In other words, a billion CAD less than four used British submarines.

It makes you think twice, doesn’t it.