Stephen Harper government chooses military spending over social and environmental responsibility

by Traci Lawson

The Ottawa Citizen documents that Canada's military related spending has hit its highest level since World War II. This is indeed a sad commentary on the acceptance of the U.S. Bush administration's jingoistic policies. While Mr. Bush spends, spends and spends some more on the latest Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs), more and more Americans are without basic healthcare, suffer from poverty, and live in cities with large areas of social despair. In the United States, the rich get richer from a political-military-industrial complex, and the poor get poorer, alongside a shrinking so-called "middle class". This is the kind of milieu that Mr. Harper seek to bring into Canada.

Based upon NATO figures, Canada, with its military budget now slightly more than $18 billion a year, is the six highest military spender in the alliance, concludes a new study.

Meanwhile, under the auspices of the Harper minority Conservative government, homelessness and poverty including child poverty escalates, that in turn fosters crime. But rather than increasing vitally needed social spending, the Harper government has sought to use "crime" as a pre-text to emulate the U.S. Bush administration's efforts to create a police state, which undermines vital human rights.

Mr. Harper's neo-con government also escalates military expenditures while ignoring vitally needed spending on research, development and implementation on environment protecting technologies. Such expenditures would critically help Canada fulfill its Kyoto targets.

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