National poll finds majority of Canadians are opposed to military conscription if war breaks out.
National poll finds majority of Canadians are opposed to military conscription if war breaks out
Uh, yeah. I want to raise kids, not fodder.
'Twas ever thus. We've imposed conscription exactly twice since Confederation, during the two World Wars. During WWI, it caused riots because Francophones thought the way it was being imposed was inequitable. At neither time did any significant number of Canadian conscripts get shipped out to fight—instead, they took on domestic roles like guarding military posts to free up volunteers to be shipped out instead (I think a few did go overseas in the trailing months of WWII, but it was a pretty small percentage).
In other words, the draft has never been popular here, and likely never will be. And inequity in how it's imposed has been an issue for more than a century. (The nature of the inequity is different this time, but I don't think that matters so much.)
Times have also changed. The information available on our fingertips is showing that things are not as black and white as they seem. Back during the world wars, mass propaganda convinced us to go fight for imperialist reasons (remember, we did not go to war with Nazis over their treatment of the Jews).
It's a lot harder to convince a populace to go to war when it's not clear the opponent is entirely in the wrong.
My grandfathers on both sides of my family Indigenous family were conscripted into the First World War .... they were promised pay, money, land, animals, all they need to build a farm in northern Ontario when they returned. They were gone for over two years ... one never came back, the other was dropped at a train depot near Chapleau and told he could go home .... hundreds of kilometers away in the bush with nothing, no boat, no money and only the supplies he could get together. All the men in his group from our families were like that, some dropped off in the middle of winter, some in the summer, some in the spring run off, others in the fall as winter was approaching. And when they got home, all the money had been taken away from the Hudson Bay Company to pay for imaginary made up 'debts' and the remainder taken by the church for 'donations'. No land, no money, no animals, no supplies .... everyone was suspicious of the church during that whole period because they suddenly had a good supply of farm animals delivered up to them.
When the Second World War came along .... all the old veterans told their sons not to bother because it was senseless and they would get nothing out of it.
When rich people can't get along, they send poor people to fight their battles, while the wealthy also make profit from the event and leave the poor to die everywhere.
In unrelated news, rape is bad.
d u h
National poll finds majority of Canadians are opposed to military conscription if war breaks out
found that most Canadians (57 per cent) are either strongly (35 per cent) or moderately (22 per cent) opposed to military conscription in modern times if only men are to serve.
Similarly, if conscription did take place on a gender-neutral basis for both men and women, 50 per cent of Canadians would oppose it. With the exact reverse also holding true, a large percentage of Canadians may potentially support conscription if the right scenario arose.
Of course if the right situation were to arise, if it's either conscription or Russia somehow takes over Canada who would choose the latter?
Of course if the right situation were to arise, if it’s either conscription or Russia somehow takes over Canada who would choose the latter?
According to the headline, and what is attempted to be pushed as the narrative in the article (poorly), the "Majority of Canadians".
Couldn’t you all just vanish into the tundra if the Yanks stormed the border? They’d soon get bored and go home.
Hmmm, innocent people arent interested in dying, just because politicians are incapable of doing their jobs properly. How weird is that huh?
As per usual, it's not all that easy. Sometimes war breaks out no matter what you do, see Ukraine. Sometimes you need to go to war to stop genuine evil, see world war two. The Netherlands, as far as.I know, still sends a large batch of tulips to Canada as a thank you for their soldiers liberating the country. Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.
Of course everyone is against conscription, but once shit hits the fan,any will feel different and for those that don't, would you prefer living under the gentle hands of Putin, desperately trying to stay away from high windows? Downtown Vancouver would be screeeeewed!
No one wants conscription, but we live in an imperfect world
I generally understand and partially agree with you, but realistically "if war breaks out" means "if we have financial interests somewhere". If you could limit your conscription so that you would not end up being forced to fight in pointless proxy wars over oil and minerals and limit it to actually directly defending your own country, the picture would look very different i think.
We work differently here. Put the brush and the America paint away.
(As a former service member and someone whose name is forever on their conscription list, should it be needed, and whose oath to the Queen has been taken up by king and steed, I have a vested interest in the kinds of conflicts we send our troopies to. Sorry if it looks different as you rail in homeroom)