01) WARSHIPS: MASSIVE WASTE, WRONG PRIORITY
Commentary from the Communist Party of Canada
Disguised as a "jobs and defence program", the Harper Tory strategy to militarize Canada has gone into overdrive with detailed plans to spend $35 billion on new warships and coast guard vessels. The program is a major piece of Harper's so‑called "Canada First Defense Strategy", a massive scheme to pour nearly $500 billion into the military, even as Ottawa's contribution towards spending on social programs, health and education declines. The Communist Party of Canada condemns the massive waste of taxpayer dollars on weapons of war. Instead, we demand that these funds be used to tackle the urgent crises affecting working people across this country.
The National Shipbuilding Procurement Strategy is the largest federal shipbuilding program since World War II. Halifax‑based Irving Shipbuilding was awarded contracts to construct warships costing $25 billion over the next two decades. The 15 vessels will include six to eight Arctic offshore patrol boats and a fleet of combat ships to replace the Navy's destroyers and frigates. The company is owned by the Irving family, which has long been a dominant force in the east coast economy. Seaspan, which has yards in Victoria and Vancouver, was picked to build icebreakers and Coast Guard patrol ships, plus several naval supply ships, for an estimated cost of $8 billion over the next two decades. Seaspan is part of a group of companies owned by U.S. billionaire Dennis Washington.
Another $2 billion will be spent on building smaller vessels at other Canadian shipyards, such as Davie in Quebec. More spending will be needed to repair, refit and maintain all these ships over the next several decades. Even more significant, there has been little attention on the expensive price tag for deadly weaponry on these warships - missiles, artillery, machine guns, ammunition, and other armament.
Not surprisingly, the Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries, which represents 860 companies, supports the decision to expand the naval fleet "in a way that mitigates the boom‑and‑bust cycles normally associated with ship fleet construction."
The opposition parties in Parliament, which had raised some criticisms of the process for purchasing 65 heavily‑armed F35 fighter‑bombers, have been cheerleaders for the warship program. The late NDP leader Jack Layton campaigned hard for the Irving bid, together with Nova Scotia's NDP Premier Darrell Dexter, who calls the ship program "the greatest opportunity for Nova Scotia since Confederation."
The NDP leadership backs the warship program as a way to create jobs, but also because it supports the "responsibility to protect" doctrine which allows the major imperialist powers to intervene militarily across the planet on short notice. Canada's aggressive participation in the NATO attack on Libya was endorsed by the NDP caucus, for example.
The Communist Party of Canada rejects the false arguments which claim that the warship program is necessary to "defend Canada", to create jobs, or to support crisis‑free regional development.
Canada's 2010‑11 military budget is $23 billion, a full 61 per cent higher than the $8.4 billion level of fiscal 1998, when military spending reached its post‑Cold War minimum. Annual military costs are projected to climb rapidly as spending on the F35 fighter‑bombers (now estimated at about $30 billion including maintenance, parts and munitions) kicks in.
The $65 billion total price tag for the warships and fighter-bombers could help tackle many pressing problems faced by working people. These funds could be used to build hundreds of thousands of low‑income, social, and cooperative housing units. Invested in the child care program cancelled by the Harper Tories, these funds could allow working class parents to improve their education and training and to find employment. Thousands of new buses could be purchased for urban transit systems, immediately reducing Canada's carbon emissions. Free tuition could be provided to tens of thousands of post‑secondary students, removing the heavy burden of loan debts as they graduate. The crisis of unsafe drinking water on First Nations reserves and Aboriginal communities could be resolved, along with the terrible shortage of good housing faced by Aboriginal peoples. Federal support for health care, social programs, and education could all be increased substantially. All these measures would create far greater net employment than spending on warships and fighter‑bombers.
Nor is it true that Canada is "threatened" by other countries. In reality, the costly "Canada First Defence Strategy" is an attempt to turn Canada into one of the most heavily armed members of the imperialist NATO alliance. Increasingly in recent years, Canada has backed the U.S. in making war against countries such as Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Libya, and in the police and military occupation of Haiti. With virtually no public debate, the Harper Tories plan to establish seven military bases in foreign countries, from Asia to Africa and Latin America. Far from "defending" our borders, this strategy is a plan to expand Canada's role as a willing ally of the U.S.‑led group of imperialist countries which use brute military force to impose the interests of transnational capital on the planet.
From this perspective, the National Shipbuilding Procurement Strategy is a crucial part of the drive to further militarize Canada's coastal waters, including in the Arctic. Global warming is melting the polar ice cap, opening up new shipping lanes and a mad scramble for oil and gas exploitation by the transnational energy monopolies. Canada's new icebreakers, patrol boats and naval vessels are intended to help the Canadian ruling class and its U.S. allies seize the lion's share of this new resource bonanza. The expanded fleet will also no doubt play a role in assisting the expansion of oil and natural gas exploration and exports along the west coast.
Even the argument by some that the west coast component of the shipbuilding program deserves support because of its alleged "non‑combat" character is untrue. The icebreaker and the coast guard and supplies vessels to be built in Vancouver are integral parts of a wider strategy to create a much larger Canadian military.
Given these facts, we are deeply concerned by the uncritical, even celebratory tone adopted by much of the trade union leadership regarding the warships. It is true that this military expansion would provide employment to several thousand workers. But the labour movement has a responsibility to demand that governments address the real needs of working people, rather than building expensive weapons systems which will be used to bomb, occupy and kill our sisters and brothers in other countries.
As Frederick Engels pointed out over a century ago, in real terms, military spending is similar to producing commodities which are then simply dumped into the sea. Former U.S. President Eisenhower put it another way: "Every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its labourers, the genius of its scientists, and the hopes of its children."
Rather than spending $500 billion on militarism over the next two decades, as projected in the Canada First Defense Strategy, the Communist Party of Canada needs a People's Alternative based on rebuilding our country's economic infrastructure and manufacturing sector, and on tackling the urgent social priorities of working people.
(The above article is from the December 1-31, 2011, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)