Canada integrating universities into its militarist foreign policy
By
Laurent Lafrance
10 October 2017
An important aim of the new national defence policy Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government announced last June is to integrate the country’s universities more fully into the ruling class’ aggressive and increasingly militarist foreign policy.
The 113-page defence policy document outlines policy changes to draw universities, individual academics, and “promising” graduate students into playing a more important role in developing high-tech armaments and formulating strategy and propaganda for the aggressive assertion of Canadian imperialism’s interests and ambitions around the world.
The defence policy calls for a major rearmament program as well as the “modernization” of NORAD (the North American Aerospace Defence Command), in furtherance of the Canadian Armed Forces’ participation in ongoing and future US-led wars around the globe.
The real objective of the policy was made clear by Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland in early June when she said Canada must be ready to use “hard power,” i.e. wage war, to defend its interests under conditions of growing “threats” arising from the rise of China, “Russian expansionism,” and the collapse in popular support for the US-led world capitalist order.
The document commits the government to a $62 billion increase in military spending over the next two decades, including a 73 percent hike in the next 10 years, which will boost the annual defence budget from its current level of $18.9 billion to $32.7 billion in 2026-27. It includes plans for an additional 5,000 troops, the purchase of 88 fighter jets rather than the 65 proposed by the previous Conservative government, 15 new warships, the procurement of…