This military official wants Carney to be more like Trump
Laments Canada's “generous social welfare systems”
A National Defence official is lambasting politicians for criticizing Donald Trump and his MAGA administration.
Raquel Garbers, who held the fourth-highest position in Canada’s Department of National Defence and is the chief architect of Canada’s new defence policy, has accused Western leaders of helping Russia and China with their “absurd anti-United States narratives.”
Without naming the Prime Minister directly, she rejects comments he’s made critical of the mercurial American President and his mistreatment of Canada.
“To suggest that the U.S. can’t be trusted as an ally because it is ‘mistreating its friends’ is to indulge in the fantastical view that states privilege sentimentality over national interest,” she writes in the influential The Hill Times – directing her pro-MAGA views squarely at Ottawa’s power-brokers.
Admires Trump despite attacks on Canada
Nearly 100,000 jobs have been lost, and exports have dropped by almost 30 percent inflicting terrible damage to our economy, but this military official still admires Trump.
“In April, the U.S. unleashed a tariff storm targeting its allies and adversaries alike. It was the first strike in its strategic reset, a deliberate effort to rebuild American industrial and trade power by upending the broken global economic order,” she says, urging Canada and the West to get on board Trump’s MAGA agenda.
Garbers signed The Hill Times op-ed as, “former director general of strategic policy at the Department of National Defence.” But Ottawa Citizen journalist David Pugliese pressed the Department of National Defence and found she is still on the public payroll.
“DND spokesperson Kened Sadiku noted that Garbers was on a secondment with the Centre for International Governance Innovation. ‘As such, the pieces she writes are in that capacity, and not in her former role as DG in ADM(Pol),’ he stated in an email. ADM Pol refers to the DND’s policy branch,” reports Pugliese.
Official objects to “generous social welfare systems”
The article prompted the reporter to investigate the DND official further to understand her viewpoints.
He found Garbers also recently appeared on Boom and Bust, a TV show hosted by Tony Clement, a former cabinet minister in Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper’s government.
On the program, Garbers echoed Trump’s argument that the U.S. had been paying to defend its allies while such countries had ignored their responsibilities to properly fund defence budgets, said Pugliese.
“The situation is actually worse than that,” Garbers explained to Clement. “It’s not simply that the allies collectively shirked their responsibilities, but, while the United States was paying for the defence, at the same time the allies were investing their money in ever more generous social welfare systems” (my emphasis added).
Foreshadowing big budget cuts?
Many Canadians are waiting anxiously as the Carney government prepares to release its first budget next month. The Prime Minister has already promised a huge military spending boost and other measures to blunt the U.S. tariffs’ impact. There will be cuts coming, too, but only the Prime Minister and his top ministers know how deep the cuts will be to pay for it all.
Is the National Defence official forecasting major cuts to “generous welfare systems,” as she puts it, including public health care?
We will all know when Budget Day arrives on November 4.
Leave a comment explaining your vote.
Most say Carney should opt for diplomacy if Trump “invades” Arctic
Last week’s article looked at the possibility of Trump sending a warship to challenge Canada’s sovereignty claim of the Arctic. I asked, “How should Canada respond to an unauthorized US warship in Canada’s Arctic?”
Two-out-of-three readers recommended Canada, “Raise diplomatic complaints loudly” (66%), while one-quarter answered, “Send in the Canadian Navy” (23%).
“I am very uncomfortable with Canada’s plan to spend $billions to militarize the Arctic while ignoring the real needs of the Inuit people who have always lived there.” - M. Lumley
Military programs line the pockets of Carney's peers. Social programs don't. He is governing for quarterly results, with no foresight or compassion at all.
This is a professional bureaucrat. The resistance to innovation and in the spirit of Canadian governance the passive resistance to unfavourable policy. Like the Chief of the RCMP, they are an important focus of Canadian electorates critical focus of governance where ADMs have enjoyed too much shelter. This executive has committed party and Canadian political policy suicide through these remarks and I doubt she will be present longer. Now, I could proceed to explain how her comments lack grounding in diplomacy, strategy, military leadership but that would just be an indictment in topic dumbness.