Author: Cole Fraser Jones
-
Immigration, Nationhood, and the Discipline of National Planning
Bear with me dear reader, no fancy graphics for this one. Canada has reached a critical moment. Immigration, once treated as a simple administrative file or an economic booster, has become a defining test of national stability. Not because Canadians reject all newcomers, and not because any injection of cultural diversity is inherently destabilizing, but…
-
Gun Control in Canada
Gun Rights, Canadian Tradition, and the Case for Real Reform Firearms. The Canadian debate around firearms has long drifted into a fog of misstated and misinterpreted history, borrowed American rhetoric, and endless political theatre. But Canada’s firearms tradition is long, historic, necessary, and unique. It’s worth stating clearly before Ottawa drowns it out with soundbites.…
-
Infrastructure Corridors
Road and Rail open up economic development Canada itself was stitched together by a corridor. British Columbia only agreed to join Confederation in 1871 on the promise of a railway linking the Pacific to the rest of the Dominion. That iron road didn’t just move people and goods, it unlocked entire provinces. The Prairies, once…
-
Restoring Tradition: Repairing the Rank Structure of the Canadian Armed Forces
1968 Unification – The Erasure of the Army, Air Force, and Navy In 1968, under the leadership of Defence Minister Paul Hellyer, the Canadian government forcibly unified the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN), Canadian Army, and Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) into a single entity: the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF). The stated goal was to improve…
-
Securing Canada’s Arctic: A Permanent Military and Economic Strategy
Canada’s Arctic is vast, resource-rich, and increasingly contested. While Canada claims sovereignty over this expansive northern region, the reality is that foreign powers—Russia, China, and even the U.S.—are rapidly expanding their Arctic presence. Russia maintains dozens of Arctic bases and airfields, China has declared itself a “near-Arctic state” with ambitions for polar shipping routes and…
-
Citizen-Soldiers: Restructuring the Reserve Force and Capitalizing on Potential
The relationship between the Regular Force and the Reserve Force in Canada’s military structure is long overdue for reform. The Regular Force is overstretched, understrength, and forced into roles it was never meant to fill. We’ve all seen the Regular Force routinely fighting wildfires, filling sandbags, and most recently deploying medics to Long Term Care…
-
Military Procurement: Canada Needs a Separate Department of Materiel and Military Manufacturing
Canada’s military procurement apparatus has a primary mission: get kit to the warfighter. Instead, we’ve built a system that delivers excuses, delays, political insulation, and vote-pandering wrapped in a ribbon of ‘industrial regional benefits’ (IRBs). Procurement is split across a dozen offices, filtered through a Byzantine bureaucracy, and shackled by a procurement culture that values…