Cascade Institute plan for national service

I live out on the West Coast, not far from Royal Roads University which used to be Royal Roads Military College.

Royal Roads houses the Cascade Institute, a research and policy group that studies “polycrises” and how society can organize to mitigate them. It is headed by Dr. Thomas Homer-Dixon, someone you may have heard of and who is definitely wired into a lot of what is going on.

It escaped my initial notice, but in August 2025 the Institute released a concept paper written by David Last of the Royal Military College with some loose ideas and back-of-the-envelope costing for a scheme of voluntary national service with four components:

1. National Service: one year of paid training and service in uniformed or civilian security services (CAF, RCMP, CBSA, Coast Guard, CSE etc.).

2. National Civil Defence: civilian volunteers with relevant skills or seeking to develop deployable skills Training in first aid, traffic control, communications, inter-organizational cooperation, and other skills; organized in regionally based units, these would be deployed to support any national, provincial, or municipal emergency under existing funding arrangements. Periodic retraining and regional or national training exercises.

3. Community Protection Service: a federally supported program to develop cadres of volunteers in every community available for immediate response. Would likely give local support to the National Civil Defence units and security services in any affected area when they are deployed there.

4. Youth Development Program: Expand the Cadet movement and other youth programs to mobilize young people and give them useful training for emergencies.

An appendix at the back of the paper gives a figure of about $1.1 bn per year to add 10,000 recruits to the National Service component; the National Civil Defence would cost about the same but give you larger numbers.

For an idea of scale, Canada spent approximately 380 billion dollars (current value) on military recruitment and training during the six years of the Second World War, that saw about 1.1 million people serve in uniform from a population of almost 12 million.

Introductory note says that this was sent to the Prime Minister’s Office in April 2025, which is probably where it stayed.

Anyway, go and have a look at it!

 

Click to access Last-et-al.-Strategy-for-National-Service-v1.6.pdf

Campus Total Defence

Alex Usher’s “One Thought to Start Your Day” is very good today… amplifying on how post-secondary education institutions can contribute to the defence of the nation.

Looking forward to his recap of what might be discussed, or maybe even decided, at the March 23 event.

Campus Total Defence
January 26, 2026
Alex Usher

This blog doubles as an invitation to a very cool event in Ottawa on March 23rd. See the end of blog for details.

If there is anything Canada should take from President Trump’s deeply disturbing rants about Greenland over the past couple of weeks, it is that our country is very definitely a target. The fascist government in power in the United States genuinely believes both that might makes right and that the entire hemisphere is rightfully theirs. The threat to national sovereignty is real, and imminent. A full-scale actual invasion is unlikely, because that takes work and Trump is nothing if not extremely lazy. But, as Philippe Lagassé has pointed out, scenarios where American troops start arriving to “help” Canada aren’t very far-fetched and we desperately need to work out how to “defend against help”.

This is obviously a huge question. From this blog’s perspective, the question is: how can universities and colleges help? To date, this blog has focused on research, because that’s where the government’s primary interest seems to have been. But defence doesn’t happen without people. And so today I want to talk about something which is only starting to rise on the government’s consciousness: how do we train to defend the country, and what role do our post-secondary institutions have to play?

Well, first of all, the military is obviously going to have to grow in size. That means a larger Royal Military College for one thing, and – possibly – a greater role for universities across the country to provide education for both enlisted personnel and officers (both in the Regular Forces and in the presumably much-expanded military reserves). A re-introduction of the Canadian Officer Training Corps on Canadian campuses, as mooted by Jack Granatstein in this piece for the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, is an obvious choice as well.

This would all be to the good. But when it comes to national security, military preparedness is only part of the equation. The bigger issue, obviously, is whether a country has the ability to mount a whole-of-society defence, or so-called Total Defence, where military defence and civil defence combine seamlessly, as is practiced in many Nordic countries. Total Defence, above all, requires civil defence skills, which run from emergency preparedness, transport and emergency logistics to cyber and AI security, environmental and climate security, and psychological defence/information influence. These aren’t necessarily military skills, but they are extremely useful in any kind of crisis. Having more people in more places that have these kinds of skills makes us a safer country.

Now, of course, Canada isn’t ready for a full-on version of Total Defence (it’s usually accompanied by a system of conscription/national service, and however elbows-up Canada may be these days, I have a feeling that step isn’t imminent). It isn’t even really thinking too ambitiously yet about civil defence and how to organize it (Public Safety Canada did a public consultation on this in 2024, but it was framed in some pretty tentative/small ball terms). However, it seems to me that however we end up organizing it, there is still a crying need for more people with more key skills in more places around the country.

And that’s an opportunity for our colleges and universities to make a real contribution to Canadian sovereignty.

Just after the invasion of Ukraine, a group of universities in Sweden – which is one of those countries that has adopted a “Total Defence” posture (they call it “totalförsvaret” – along with the Swedish Defence University, which is sort of a supercharged version of our Royal Military College) began developed something they call “Campus Total Defence”. I will simply quote from the website of one of the program’s founding institutional sponsors, Örebro University:

Campus Total Defence brings together academia, public authorities, industry, and civil society to create a robust platform for education, research, and innovation. It collectively contributes the knowledge and expertise needed to meet current and future national security challenges.

By offering tailored courses, developing new research, and creating conditions for innovation, universities across the country collaborate in areas that will benefit defence capabilities, such as protective security, crisis management, AI, healthcare, food supply, and robust energy systems. The goal is to create a range of courses that will provide skills enhancement and training for personnel in various branches of the defence sector nationwide.

(As you can see, the language here includes research, but that has been a more recent development. To start off with, this was definitely a skills exercise).

Anyways, even if Canada has not quite got there yet politically, the demand for these kinds of skills is going to up. A few of these areas might end up being the subject of bachelor’s or master’s programs, but my guess would be that a lot of these would – as in Sweden – simply be practical single courses delivering specific skills (this actually seems to me like a great use case for stackable, portable micro-credentials, if you ask me), and the potential for institutions to joint program development and delivery seems pretty high.

This isn’t an initiative for which institutions need to wait for government funding. They can just go ahead and do it. While Sweden’s Campus Total Defence is now being subsidized by the government as a strategic workforce and security investment, it began as a campus-based, bottom-up initiative. Because it was the right thing to do and the country needed it.

Canada can and should do that too.

To that end, we’d like to invite everyone to join us at Carleton University on March 23rd for a day-long roundtable focused on how post-secondary institutions contribute to whole-of-society defence. We are very excited to be partnering with Carleton University for this event. We’ll have folks over from Europe to explain Campus Total Defence, some experts from Canada to talk through how the concept might work, and some excellent moderated group discussions to generate ideas on moving the concept forward. If you’re from a university or a college, already offering courses in areas related to civil defence, or interested in being part of driving this work forward, please join us. Everyone is welcome. Ticket and event info is available here.

As with our National Defence Research Roundtable in December, this is a chance for the higher education sector to show how we can contribute during this time of rupture. We hope to see you there.

 

Nationallen resiliencenn pamphalentents forren yuu, bork bork bork!

The Swedish Civil Defence and Resilience Agency is an administrative agency organized under the Ministry of Defence. The agency is responsible for issues concerning civil protection, public safety, emergency management and civil defence. The Agency works with municipalities, rural government, other government organizations and the private sector to help prepare the population and its economy, government and society to prepare and cope with emergencies and crises. This is done through education, support, training exercises, regulation and supervision.

Recently the Agency published a pamphlet in English on how private sector businesses can prepare themselves ahead of time. It makes a good companion to the earlier pamphlet “In Case of Crisis or War” which is about individual and family preparation for events.

Have a look!

https://www.mcf.se/sv/publikationer/preparedness-for-businesses–in-case-of-crisis-or-war/

https://www.mcf.se/sv/publikationer/om-krisen-eller-kriget-kommer-pa-engelska/

Higher education and defence preparedness II

 

 

Things that make you go, “hmmm.”

From the Policy Options website, posted yesterday:

Universities can help solve the Canadian military’s mobilization problem

 

Universities can help solve the Canadian military’s mobilization problem
Force-generation planning exposes bottlenecks in training, administration and infrastructure. Universities could strengthen readiness.

January 21, 2026

Recent CBC reporting that the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) are examining large-scale mobilization scenarios has drawn understandable attention. The prospect of dramatically expanding Canada’s reserve force in a national emergency appears, at first glance, to reflect a more dangerous international environment. That focus, however, misses the more consequential point.

What the mobilization planning described by CBC actually tests is not political intent or public willingness, but force-generation capacity: whether Canada could convert civilian availability into trained, sustained military capability on a timeline that would still be strategically advantageous. What it exposes is a limitation that receives far less public attention than recruiting campaigns or equipment procurement – the system’s capacity for turning recruits into trained, deployable personnel.

The figures being modelled help explain why this matters. Canada’s primary reserve currently numbers roughly 29,000 members. The CBC report shows that internal planning scenarios explore expansion toward 100,000, alongside a much larger supplementary reserve, under extreme conditions. While not formal policy, these figures are serious planning assumptions designed to reveal where existing systems would saturate under sustained pressure. They are intended to expose constraints before those constraints become operationally decisive.

Civilian enabling systems are key
Mobilization is often framed as a personnel problem. In practice, it is a logistics and systems problem. Force generation depends on moving large cohorts through a sequence of enabling functions – medical screening, security clearance, enrolment administration, basic preparation, training capacity, accommodation, and sustainment – without degrading standards or overwhelming the institutions responsible for delivery. When any one of these functions saturates, the entire force-generation process slows, regardless of recruitment success. This is why mobilization planning cannot be treated as a challenge for the CAF to solve alone.

Universities and force generation
No modern military is designed to scale rapidly without relying on civilian enabling systems. In a surge scenario, many of the binding constraints are not tactical or operational, but enabling: administrative capacity, instructional throughput, housing, and regional co-ordination. If these functions are not reinforced in advance, force generation stalls long before questions of combat capability arise. Canada already possesses a significant component of this enabling capacity, but it resides outside the defence establishment.

Canada’s universities are provincially governed institutions, but, taken together, they form nationally distributed civilian infrastructure that already performs many of the functions large-scale force generation would require. Each year, they manage high-volume intake, deliver standardized instruction, operate residential and food-service systems, maintain secure administrative processes, and co-ordinate complex operations across regions.

The argument here is not that universities should assume military roles. They should not. This is not a proposal to militarize campuses, outsource soldiering, or place universities within the chain of command. Nor is this to suggest that the federal government should intrude on provincial jurisdiction. Rather, the point here is that force generation depends on enabling functions that already exist within provincially governed systems. Universities in particular are uniquely well-positioned because they already concentrate large numbers of people within structured, administratively coherent environments that can be scaled.

Ottawa does have a legitimate role in contracting and aligning this civilian capacity when national defence objectives are at stake. This enabling approach is well-precedented. Ottawa routinely funds provincially delivered systems – including health care, training, and infrastructure – when national priorities require co-ordinated capacity. Force generation is no different.

Critically, this approach can strengthen national readiness while also improving the utilization of existing university infrastructure, particularly during off-peak periods when capacity is available.

A contract-based, seasonal surge arrangement with clear boundaries
Universities would not be required to suspend core academic functions or absorb unfunded workload. Instead, it could be structured as a time-limited, contract-based surge arrangement, delivered largely in seasonal windows such as the summer months, with any incremental staffing and support funded explicitly through federal–provincial agreements.

In that form, Ottawa would be purchasing additional throughput, while universities would secure a revenue-positive use for summer capacity, when fixed costs persist even as demand and revenue soften.

Clear boundaries would be essential. Military training authority must remain exclusively with the CAF. No weapons training would occur on campus. Participation by institutions and individuals would be voluntary, governed through transparent agreements, and subject to civilian oversight. The objective is not to blur civil–military boundaries, but to reinforce the enabling layer on which force generation depends.

Three supporting roles for universities
Here are three areas where universities could play a concrete, bounded role in support of CAF readiness:

Pre-enrolment readiness and administrative throughput
Before formal military training begins, potential reservists must meet fitness thresholds, complete first-aid or emergency response certification, and navigate medical and security clearance documentation. These are enabling functions, not combat training. Universities already deliver fitness programming, first-aid certification, and large-scale intake administration. Supporting these functions through advanced federal-provincial agreements would reduce early attrition and administrative backlog without altering CAF standards, selection authority, or training control.

Defence-adjacent instruction that accelerates force integration
Contemporary operations rely heavily on logistics, supply-chain management, communications, cyber hygiene, language capability, and emergency administration. These are core sustainment and support functions. Universities already teach them at scale through applied programs. Aligning specific modules with CAF requirements would shorten time-to-usefulness for reservists and free military training establishments to focus on warfighting tasks that only they can perform.

Surge and sustainment infrastructure
Rapid force expansion would immediately stress accommodation, classroom space, simulation facilities, and regional co-ordination nodes. Universities already operate distributed residential and instructional infrastructure that functions, in practice, as surge capacity. Time-limited access agreements would allow Canada to draw on this infrastructure during periods of expansion rather than attempting emergency construction or ad hoc leasing under pressure.

If universities are not deliberately integrated, this enabling capacity must be created elsewhere. That would require building new facilities, expanding bases, hiring instructors, and scaling administrative systems during a crisis – a slow, expensive, and operationally risky approach. Contracting capacity that already exists is faster, cheaper, and more reliable.

The mobilization planning reported by CBC should therefore be understood as a signal about force-generation fragility, not force numbers. Canada cannot improvise enabling capacity at scale. It must be organized in advance.

Force generation is not only about how many people are willing to serve. It is about whether the systems that prepare, train, house, and sustain them can keep pace. On that front, Canada already owns part of the solution. The remaining question is whether it chooses to use that capacity deliberately.

You are welcome to republish this Policy Options article online or in print periodicals, under a Creative Commons/No Derivatives licence.

(author)
John Walsh is an associate professor of classics at the University of Guelph. He founded the Serving Scholar Program, a university–military initiative supporting members of the Canadian Armed Forces.

 

Can you imagine?

Right now my mind does not stretch all the way to having university campuses become Primary Reserve training sites.

But I think there is definitely existing capacity and more importantly willingness on the part of universities and colleges (let’s not forget colleges) to conduct preparedness training for the people in the Civil Defence Corps that I’ve been writing about, through their existing Continuing Education departments.

First aid training, communications, logistics, planning and project management, leadership, technology training… these are all things these departments do now, alongside Conversational Spanish and Paint Your Pet in Watercolour. And they would be very happy to accept DND money to do it, with a reduced chance of faculty associations getting upset.

Hmmm….

 

Maple Leaf Rag

From the Globe and Mail today.

Military models Canadian response to hypothetical American invasion

The Canadian Armed Forces have modelled a hypothetical U.S. military invasion of Canada and the country’s potential response, which includes tactics similar to those employed against Russia and later U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan, two senior government officials say.

It is believed to be the first time in a century* that the Canadian Armed Forces have created a model of an American assault on this country, a founding member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and a partner with the U.S. in continental air defence.

A military model is a conceptual and theoretical framework, not a military plan, which is an actionable and step-by-step directive for executing operations.

The Globe and Mail is not identifying the officials, who were not authorized to discuss the military’s thinking on this matter publicly. The officials, as well as a number of experts, say it is unlikely the Trump administration would order an invasion of Canada.

The Globe reported this week that Canada is considering sending a small contingent of troops to Greenland to join a group of eight European countries that are holding military exercises as a show of solidarity for Denmark, of which the self-ruling island is a territory.

U.S. President Donald Trump has been challenging NATO allies with repeated calls for the U.S. to acquire Greenland and threats to impose tariffs on European countries who oppose the takeover. Those threats escalated after his attack on Venezuela and capture of President Nicolás Maduro earlier this month.

Mr. Trump has also repeatedly mused about Canada becoming the 51st state. On the weekend, NBC reported Mr. Trump has been increasingly complaining to aides in recent weeks about Canada’s vulnerability to U.S. adversaries in the Arctic. Steve Bannon, the former Trump chief strategist who remains close to the President, said Canada is “rapidly changing” and becoming “hostile” to the United States.

The two senior government officials said military planners are modelling a U.S. invasion from the south, expecting American forces to overcome Canada’s strategic positions on land and at sea within a week and possibly as quickly as two days.

Canada does not have the number of military personnel or the sophisticated equipment needed to fend off a conventional American attack, they said. So, the military envisions unconventional warfare in which small groups of irregular military or armed civilians would resort to ambushes, sabotage, drone warfare or hit-and-run tactics.

One of the officials said the model includes tactics used by the Afghan mujahedeen in their hit-and-run attacks on Russian soldiers during the 1979-1989 Soviet-Afghan War. These were the same tactics employed by the Taliban in their 20-year war against the U.S. and allied forces that included Canada. Many of the 158 Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2014 were struck by improvised explosive devices or IEDs.

The aim of such tactics would be to impose mass casualties on U.S. occupying forces, the official said.

The modelling provides the keenest insight yet as to the level of threat assessment now being actively discussed by Canada with respect to the Trump administration.

One of the officials noted, however, that relations with the U.S. military remain positive and the two countries are working together on Canada’s participation in a new continental defence system, or “Golden Dome,” to defend against Russian or Chinese missiles.

The military has also run models on missile strikes from Russia or China on Canadian cities and critical infrastructure.

Military planners envision an American attack that would follow clear signs from the U.S. military that the two countries’ partnership in NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defence Command, was ending, and the U.S. was under new orders to take Canada by force.

Conscription has been ruled out for now, but the level of sacrifice that would be asked of Canadians remains a central topic, the officials said. General Jennie Carignan, Chief of the Defence Staff, has already announced her intention to create a 400,000-plus-strong reserve force of volunteers. The officials said they could be armed or asked to provide disruptions if the U.S. becomes an occupying power.

A senior Defence Department official said Canada would have a maximum of three months to prepare for a land and sea invasion. The first indications that invasion orders had been sent would be expected to come from U.S. military warnings that Canada no longer has a shared skies policy with the United States, the source said.

This rupture in the joint defence agreement would likely see France or Britain, nuclear-weapon states, being called on to provide support and defence for Canada against the U.S.

The Globe is not identifying the senior defence official, who was not authorized to discuss Canadian war-modelling scenarios.

Retired major-general David Fraser, who commanded Canadian troops in Afghanistan alongside the United States, said Canada could also use drones and tank-killing weapons like the Ukrainians used against the Russians to blunt their invasion in February, 2022.

Mr. Fraser said it is unthinkable that Canadian planners have had to draw up a U.S. invasion scenario. Whatever Mr. Trump does with Greenland and possibly Mexico would weigh into any Canadian scenario, he said.

But Canada can count on support from European countries, Britain, Japan, South Korea and other democratic nations.

“You know if you come after Canada, you are going to have the world coming after you, even more than Greenland. People do care about what happens to Canada, unlike Venezuela,” Mr. Fraser said. “You could actually see German ships and British planes in Canada to reinforce the country’s sovereignty.”

Mr. Fraser said Canada should immediately place more military assets in the North to claim its right to the region.

If the threat from the U.S. became serious, he said Canadian soldiers would be placed along the border even though there is no realistic possibility that Canada could defeat the U.S. militarily.

Insurgency tactics would be the best way to deal with U.S. invading forces, he said.

“There is a quantum difference between defending another land like Canadians did in Afghanistan versus defending Windsor, Ontario. You do not walk across that border because everybody is your enemy then,” Mr. Fraser added.

Retired lieutenant-general Mike Day, who headed Canadian Special Forces Command and served as chief strategic planner for the future of the Canadian Armed Forces, said it was “fanciful” to think the Americans would actually invade Canada.

But he acknowledged Canada’s armed forces could not stand up to the world’s biggest and most sophisticated military. He said, however, that the U.S. would have great difficulty occupying a country the size of Canada.

“We wouldn’t be able to withstand a conventional invasion. We would, for a limited period of time, be able to defend a very small civilian population, like the size of Kingston,” he said.

“Notwithstanding the size of the American military, however, they do not have the force structure to occupy, let alone control every major urban centre in Canada.”

“Their only hope would be a Russian-like drive to Kyiv and hope that works and the rest of country capitulates once they seize the seat of power in Ottawa,” he added. “Like Ukraine, it would inconceivable to me that we would give up if they seized our capital.”

Gaëlle Rivard Piché, executive director of the Conference of Defence Associations, said she did not see a situation where the U.S. would attack Canada. But she also said it’s crucial for Canada to significantly build up its defence capabilities.

“Clear signalling to our neighbour to the south that we want and we’re willing and able to rapidly be a credible ally that is capable of defending itself, ensuring our own national security, our national defence, will play a deterrence role towards a potential willingness by the United States to control some of Canada or to invade a portion of Canada,” she said.

University of Toronto political scientist Aisha Ahmad said Canada needs to drastically boost its homeland defence capabilities, regardless of the potential U.S. threat to the border.

“The better Canada can embrace this approach to homeland defence, the less likely all of these horrible scenarios that nobody wants will ever come to pass,” she said.

U.S. generals would be aware that Canadians would fight back against an invasion, using whatever tactics would be the most effective, she said.

“I do believe that there are intelligent generals south of our border who could very easily identify that risk environment.” ❞

 * “first time in a century”: This is of course a reference to COL Sutherland-Brown’s “Defence Scheme No. 1” a plan created in the 1920s by while he was working as Director of Military Operations and Intelligence for the Canadian Army. Basically, it was a scheme for a pre-emptive limited incursion into parts of the United States to disrupt an imminent full-scale invasion by the US, in order to win some time for British forces to make their way across the Atlantic to defend the country. 

Anyway, as interesting as drawing up this model might have been, it does point out the obvious: there is no way the United States could militarily occupy or administer this country without crippling its own defence, unless its inhabitants were completely supine. Which they won’t be, I’m fairly sure.

Maple Leaf Raggregator

Canada: Higher education and defence preparedness

Some of you may know, and likely none of you will care, that my day job involves research, writing and some program development or administration in or rather adjacent to the BC public post-secondary system. 

One news source that crosses my path nearly every day is  a blog entry or other item from Higher Education Strategy Associates or HESA, led by one Alex Usher who is the usual go-to guy fo rthe big picture on post-secondary education in Canada. If you are interested in this topic, you should certainly subscribe to his “One Thought To Start Your Day” blog. 

Today he gave an account of a “National Defence Research Roundtable” that was held in Ottawa on December 15, 2025. About 77 representatives of universities across Canada met to discuss the new security situation, the new alignment, priority and above all spending on the part of the federal government concerning national defence, and how post-secondary education could contribute to this urgent issue.

Usher presented the notes and proceedings of the roundtable:

https://higheredstrategy.com/report-back-on-the-national-defence-research-roundtable/

Certainly there was a lot in there about how miserably fragmented and seemingly hopeless the situation is given the pace of current events, but a certain amount of optimism too, if enough people would wake up. Much of the discussion also centred around pure and applied research and technical points, and I zipped through it in search of anything that might related to professional military education or civil defence, since this sort of thing is related to professional wargaming and training. One passage stood out for me as a model we might follow (p. 8):

 

In discussions, participants identified components of international models that were best suited
to the Canadian context, namely Sweden’s Campus Total Defence model and the Australian
Defence Science and Universities Network.

The Swedish model is rooted in an expansive whole-of-society definition of defence that encompasses civil preparedness and emergency response in addition to military capabilities. Participants felt this was an apt culture fit for Canada and would align well with the needed culture shift
in post-secondary towards a whole-of-society readiness framing of defence and security. This
model is also rooted in a coordinated network of 30+ Swedish universities (civilian and military)
oriented around providing upskilling education for the total defence mandate and developing
specialized research hubs reflecting each member university’s areas of strength. This coordination has largely been bottom-up and organized by universities themselves, which resonated with
post-secondary leaders and representatives from funding bodies. Participants felt that the
Canadian post-secondary sector could self-organize and coordinate in similar ways, enabling
them to proactively develop strategies and solutions in response to governmental priorities
rather than awaiting top-down instruction.

Again the Swedes are helping to show us the way, I think. 

I’ve written before about a “Canadian Civil Defence Corps” on the Swedish model, and the amount of training and skills development that could be quickly and hopefully efficiently be done at our universities and colleges has great potential. 

Ditto also, for the professional military education needs of the instructors, analysts, officers and NCOs of an expanded Canadian military (regular and reserve). This is where wargaming and wargame thinking comes in!

I hope something concrete will come of this roundtable. Meanwhile, let’s keep thinking about this. 

Click to access Presentation-on-International-Defence-Research-Funding-Models.pdf

Click to access 2025-01-14_2025-NDRR-Report_web.pdf

Maple Leaf Battalions

Card from O Canada game.

https://charlieangus.substack.com/p/canada-mobilizes-a-peoples-army

Well, this is kind of interesting.

For those who don’t recognize the name, Charlie Angus is one of Canada’s more interesting political commentators with an interesting pedigree. Born in northern Ontario (Timmins), in the 80s and 90s he was a punk rock musician and community activist in Toronto then went back to northern Ontario to write books and produce a magazine. From 2004 to 2025, he was the Member of Parliament for Timmins and an important figure in the left-wing factions in the New Democratic Party. He left politics and broadcasts on the Meidas Touch network and writes some good Substack.

I’ve written before about the Department of National Defence’s proposals for building a supplementary reserve force of up to 300,000 members (though they realize that it is not going to be easy! https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/army-mobilization-canada-troops-9.7009323 ).

A Canadian Civil Defence Corps

“Canadian military wants mobilization plan in place to boost reserves to 400,000 personnel”

Personally I believe it should be called something like the “Civil Defence Corps” with only a minority of its members trained in weaponry (I’ve long since come to the conclusion that most people are more useful without a rifle in their hands, nor do they necessarily want one) but here are his ideas for the “Maple Leaf Battalions”:

• Choose an inspiring name rooted in Canadian pride and patriotism – perhaps the Maple Leaf Battalion.

• Build from the bottom up. Decentralized local networks of resistance will foster esprit de corps and can respond quickly in the event of a local emergency.

• Equip members properly with a uniform and access to a weapon so they can carry out their responsibilities confidently and safely.

• Draw on the expertise already in our communities: involve health care and front-line workers, community planners, retired military and police.

• Invite the Canadian Rangers to play a role in establishing local training programs and consider a Junior Rangers-style program for our young people.

• Prioritize training in first aid, communications and logistics that can be used at the local level in case of emergency.

• Bring in Ukrainian trainers to help with drone skills and civilian-defence expertise.

• Give the battalions a strong social media presence to highlight local service and build national unity.

Again, I’m of two minds about giving everyone access to a weapon but there are some interesting touches here… I like the one about bringing in Ukrainian trainers, a fair trade since so many Ukrainian soldiers were trained by Canadian soldiers before the current war and who helped turn that military around quickly. And by all means, train everyone possible in first aid, communications and logistics to help deal with inevitable and real-world disasters and build community resiliency and a sense of belonging, protection and pride.

Again again, I do not at this point believe that the United States wants to literally occupy this country still less make it some kind of formal territorial acquisition. But they do want formal and informal acquiescence: a vassal state that poses no threat or alternative, gives unfettered access to anything the United States wants, and retains a performative government of Quislings that will keep the lid on while the looting and asset-stripping continues. The methods used to obtain this state of affairs are not so crude as an armed invasion and resisting them will take organization and intelligence (in both senses of the word).

“Canadian military wants mobilization plan in place to boost reserves to 400,000 personnel”

 

[note: I’ve added a couple of bits to this piece as the story wanders around. See below. ]

[Infantry School Phase III platoon photo, class of 1985. Whether the people in this picture made a career of the military or not (and some had some illustrious careers), they could now all be liable to be recalled to the colours. (Can you find me?) ]

When I first saw the headline referenced in another story online I thought this was science fiction but on reading it I can see the mechanism and how they will likely do it.

Boosting the Primary Reserve from its current 28,000 to 100,000 is doable with effort, would be a good choice (Canada has long been in the minority of nations whose reserve forces are smaller than their regular ones, I’ve never understood why) and is perhaps even sustainable with some basic changes.

But the article, quoted below gives the rest away: the other 300,000 will be the Supplementary Reserve, which used to be composed of the Supplementary Ready Reserve (somewhat recently detached members of the Regular Forces or Primary Reserve who were still fit and declared would serve in an emergency) and the Supplementary Holding Reserve (if the Really Big Balloon goes up, we’ll call you OK?). The Supp Res is now less than 5,000 people because they shut that whole arrangement down quite a few years ago… I may still have the badly copied mass letter that told me so.

So I think much of this “mobilization plan” will actually consist of searching through old databases (may require sifting through boxes of old floppy disks!) for even older names and getting them back onto a big list to make up the numbers. Kind of reminds me of the Mormon church’s rumoured trick of boosting numbers by keeping dead members on their active rolls (not a true story, as it turns out). And there will be no requirement to build training bases or secure equipment or weapons for those 300,000, or even the ability to do so, like the Local Defence Volunteers (later Home Guard) of Britain during the Blitz, we’ll show up as we are, in the event of a newer version of War Plan Crimson being executed.

So I’ll keep an eye on my mailbox; after all I turned only 61 just last month.

Canadian military wants mobilization plan in place to boost reserves to 400,000 personnel

The Canadian Forces has established a “tiger team” to look at how such a massive influx can be achieved, as the current reserve strength stands at 28,000.
Author of the article: By David Pugliese • Ottawa Citizen
Published Oct 31, 2025

The Canadian military has set in motion an initiative to increase the number of its part-time soldiers from the current 28,000 to 400,000 as part of an overall mobilization plan, according to a directive approved by senior leaders.

The directive, signed by Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Jennie Carignan and defence deputy minister Stefanie Beck on May 30, 2025, outlines the need to increase the current reserve force from 23,561 to 100,000 and supplementary and other reserves from the current 4,384 to 300,000.
Beck and Carignan approved the creation of a “tiger team” which will work on setting the stage for a Defence Mobilization Plan or DMP to accomplish such a goal. That team will examine what changes are needed to government legislation to allow for such a massive influx of Canadians into the military.

Beck and Carignan pointed out that the plan would require a Whole of Society or WoS effort, meaning that all Canadians would have to contribute to the initiative.
“In order to assure the defence of Canada against domestic threats ranging from a low-intensity natural disaster response to high-intensity large scale combat operations, the DMP will be developed to empower a timely and scalable WoS response by achieving pre-conditions for the expansion and mobility of the CAF,” according to the nine page unclassified directive.

Work on the initiative by the tiger team located at DND’s Carling Campus in Ottawa began on June 4. The Ottawa Citizen made multiple requests to the Department of National Defence and Canadian Forces for comment. No comment was provided.

Other government organizations will also be involved in the initiative, according to Beck and Carignan. “Defence will not accomplish the outcome alone, rather it will necessitate shaping, facilitation and engagement with the Privy Council Office, other government departments and agencies as well as socialization with the Canadian public,” they wrote.

The tiger team will also consult with Canada’s allies, “including Finland which is a recognized leader in this area,” the document pointed out.

Finland has a conscription-based military. Every male Finnish citizen aged 18-60 is liable for military service, and women can apply for military service on a voluntary basis, according to the Finnish defence department website. After Finnish citizens complete their compulsory full-time military service, they are transferred to the reserves. In May, the Finnish government proposed an initiative that would raise the age limit of conscript reservists to 65.

Canadian Forces reservists are volunteers who serve part-time in military units.

The Supplementary Reserve is made up of inactive or retired members of the Canadian Forces who are willing to return to duty if called. It is unclear how the Canadian military will reach its 300,000 goal for such individuals. The document did note that supplementary forces could include “other” reserves but no details were provided.

DND and the Canadian Forces also declined to comment on how ongoing recruitment problems might impact its mobilization plan.

A new report by Auditor General Karen Hogan revealed that the Canadian Forces is not currently recruiting enough individuals to meet its operational needs. “The Canadian Armed Forces continued to have challenges attracting and training enough highly skilled recruits to staff many occupations such as pilots and ammunition technicians,” Hogan said of the report, which was released Oct. 21.

The Canadian Forces has a target of between 100 and 150 days for the recruitment process for individuals. But Hogan’s audit determined that under the current system it takes twice as long. Part of that is because of significant backlogs in the security screening for recruits. It is unclear how the mobilization plan would overcome such obstacles.

The audit also highlighted the military’s current lack of capacity to train new recruits.

In their document, Beck and Carignan noted the Canadian government has called for greater resiliency and autonomy on security matters. In order to achieve that goal, the Defence Mobilization Plan is needed, they added.

The tiger team will also look at the investments needed for the reserves as well as determine how to sustain a 400,000-member force.

The document does not set out the specific criteria for the mobilization plan to be put into action. But it does mention that global security has been dramatically affected by the rise of strategic competition among states.

Some Canadian Forces leaders have claimed that a war between western nations and China or Russia could happen in the near future. In June, 2025, Brig.-Gen. Brendan Cook, the Royal Canadian Air Force’s director general of air and space force development, warned that Canada needed to rearm for a potential war with China or Russia. That war could come between 2028 and 2030, Cook suggested.

In October 2023, the Ottawa Citizen reported on a document issued by then Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Wayne Eyre pointed out that Canada is already at war with Russia and China.

 

That briefing note can wait…

[EDITED TO ADD, 10 November 2025]

Oh boy, was I wrong… here is another piece from the Ottawa Citizen of 10 November 2025, same writer with more details.

You have got to be kidding me… I cannot recall any Western nation whose civilian public servants were required to complete regular military training. (If you can, please enlighten me… I did find one mention of a one-week limited training program in the Indian state of Maharashtra for 161 senior civil servants: https://www.mypunepulse.com/pune-army-led-training-at-aundh-military-station-boosts-leadership-and-crisis-management-skills-of-161-state-officers/)

On the other hand, using these people to fill out the cadre of a “Civil Defence Corps” on the Swedish model (seriously, why study Finland’s methods?) that would mostly be unarmed and intended for use in a wide range of emergencies and promote community resilience would be a great idea. See

A Canadian Civil Defence Corps

The fact is, there are a lot of people who are far more useful without a rifle in their hands. And you can’t instil civic virtue automatically in people just by sending to the rifle range or obstacle course once a year.

 

Canadian military will rely on an army of public servants to boost its ranks by 300,000
Federal public servants would be trained to shoot guns, drive trucks and fly drones, according to a defence department directive.

Author of the article: By David Pugliese • Ottawa Citizen
Published Nov 10, 2025

The Canadian Forces is counting on public servants to volunteer for military service as it tries to ramp up an army of 300,000 as part of a mobilization plan, according to a defence department directive.

Federal and provincial employees would be given a one-week training course in how to handle firearms, drive trucks and fly drones, according to the directive, signed by Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Jennie Carignan and defence deputy minister Stefanie Beck on May 30, 2025.

The public servants would be inducted into the Supplementary Reserve, which is currently made up of inactive or retired members of the Canadian Forces who are willing to return to duty if called. At this point, there are 4,384 personnel in the Supplementary Reserves, but in the case of an emergency, that would be boosted to 300,000, according to the directive from Beck and Carignan.

While the supplementary recruiting push will “prioritize volunteer public servants at the federal and provincial/territorial level” the entry standards wouldn’t be strict, according to the nine-page unclassified directive.

“The entry criteria for the Supplementary or other Reserve should be less restrictive than the Reserve Force for age limits as well as physical and fitness requirements,” the document noted.

After the initial entry into the ranks, the public servants would be required to do one week’s worth of military training each year but would not be issued uniforms. Medical coverage would be provided for their annual military service, but that time would not count towards their pensions, the directive pointed out.

The training focus would be on “basic skills (e.g. shoot, move, and communicate; drive a truck; fly a drone: etc.)”, Beck and Carignan wrote.

Their directive approved the creation of a “tiger team” which will work on setting the stage for a Defence Mobilization Plan or DMP. That team will examine what changes are needed to government legislation as well as examine other factors required to allow for such a massive influx of Canadians into the military.

Department of National Defence spokeswoman Andrée-Anne Poulin confirmed in an email that participation in the expanded reserve force would be voluntary. “Initial planning has begun to explore how the CAF (Canadian Armed Forces) could contribute to greater national resilience, including leveraging increased readiness from an expanded Reserve Force for defence purposes, in times of crisis, or for natural disasters for example,” she added.

Neither DND nor the military would provide comment on the timelines for the creation of the mobilization plan.

Work on the initiative by the tiger team located at DND’s Carling Campus in Ottawa began on June 4. DND would not comment on whether Carignan and Beck have been briefed on the initial work of the team.

The directive also points to a massive increase in the number of Canadian Forces reservists. The reserves are made up of volunteers who are in current military units. Although they are considered part-time, they are involved in training on a year-round basis.

The current reserve force would jump from 23,561 to 100,000 for the mobilization plan. There are no details on how that increase would be handled.

Beck and Carignan pointed out that the plan would require a Whole of Society (or WoS) effort, meaning that all Canadians would have to contribute to the initiative. That would require the Privy Council Office to lead a government “approach to population engagement to advance servant culture around sovereignty and public accountability,” according to their directive.

“Defence will not accomplish the outcome alone, rather it will necessitate shaping, facilitation and engagement with the Privy Council Office, other government departments and agencies as well as socialization with the Canadian public,” they added.

The tiger team will also consult with Canada’s allies, “including Finland which is a recognized leader in this area,” the document pointed out.

Finland has a conscription-based military. Every male Finnish citizen aged 18-60 is liable for military service, and women can apply for military service on a voluntary basis, according to the Finnish defence department website.

After Finnish citizens complete their compulsory full-time military service, they are transferred to the reserves. In May, the Finnish government proposed an initiative that would raise the age limit of conscript reservists to 65.

DND and the Canadian Forces also declined to comment on how ongoing recruitment problems might impact its mobilization plan.

A new report by Auditor General Karen Hogan revealed that the Canadian Forces is not currently recruiting enough individuals to meet its operational needs. “The Canadian Armed Forces continued to have challenges attracting and training enough highly skilled recruits to staff many occupations such as pilots and ammunition technicians,” Hogan said of the report, which was released Oct. 21.

In their document, Beck and Carignan noted the Canadian government has called for greater resiliency and autonomy on security matters. In order to achieve that goal, the Defence Mobilization Plan is needed, they added.

The document does not set out the specific criteria for the mobilization plan to be put into action. But it does mention that global security has been dramatically affected by the rise of strategic competition among states.

Some Canadian Forces leaders have claimed that a war between western nations and China or Russia could happen in the near future. In June 2025, Brig.-Gen. Brendan Cook, the Royal Canadian Air Force’s director general of air and space force development, warned that Canada needed to rearm for a potential war with China or Russia. That war could come between 2028 and 2030, Cook suggested.

In October 2023, the Ottawa Citizen reported on a document issued by then Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Wayne Eyre pointed out that Canada is already at war with Russia and China.

 

[EVEN FURTHER EDITED TO ADD, 12 November 2025]

On the weekend I saw this article in “The Conversation”, an online publication with material from “the academic and research community”. It was written by Ilona Daugherty of the University of Waterloo. 

https://theconversation.com/how-the-canadian-armed-forces-could-help-solve-the-youth-employment-crisis-268433

In it, she writes about the rather spotty content of the new federal budget with respect to initiatives that will actually help youth find jobs, especially in comparison to the much larger amounts of money that will be spent on the CAF. She advocates vastly different and more energetic methods to make the CAF more attractive to young people, with multiple important payoffs.

Not a bad piece but the first comment out of the gate [Dammit Brian, never read the comments! You promised!] was a bizarre item by one “Joseph Balos” who reacted: 

Joseph Balos

Time to stop pretending and build a national service force, now.

Your, already thoroughly exhausted, renewed calls for Canada to “attract more youth” into the Canadian Armed Forces has been tried and failed, more outreach, better marketing, more scholarships, ah you know we’ve tried that for decades, and it has failed again and again.

No amount of slick recruitment videos or patriotic hashtags will change the hard truth: today’s youth, both Canadian-born and new arrivals, are not signing up in meaningful numbers. The volunteer system is exhausted. Many young Canadians simply do not feel drawn to military life, and a growing share of newcomers , and now an essential to Canada’s demographic future , struggle to pass strict security screenings nor feel a strong sense of national military identity to Canada. We have greatly expanded our population but they aren’t “Canadians.”

Canada needs a credible, realistic plan to restore readiness and this means accepting that the voluntary recruitment model no longer meets our national defence needs and therefore we need to shift towards a structured national service.

Here’s the most practical and immediate way to do it: (just follow my suggestion as it’s the best- and I’m an expert) use Canada’s existing public service as the foundation of an expanded reserve and civil defence force.

Public servants already form a nationwide, highly educated, and security-cleared network of professionals. They are organized by department, location, and function. They already have office infrastructure, training facilities, and communication systems in place. Most importantly, they have already passed extensive background checks and are on the government payroll , meaning no need to build a new bureaucracy or conduct large-scale vetting.

By making limited national service mandatory for all eligible public servants, Canada could rapidly establish a Reserve Civil Defence Corps of approximately 150,000 personnel. These individuals would train periodically, learn basic weapons handling, emergency coordination, and command vocabulary, and be assigned to units aligned with their existing departmental or regional offices. In a crisis, whether military, environmental, or cyber , they could muster at their own workplaces within 24 hours, forming the backbone of a national response grid.

This system would complement an active full-time force to be expanded to 100,000, ready for front-line defence. Together, the structure would give Canada both teeth and depth, a professional army supported by a civilian-based reserve with technical, logistical, and administrative expertise.

To respect their service and time, public servants would receive a stipend or credit for training days. But the greater return would be to taxpayers and to national resilience: a trained, organized, and patriotic civil-military partnership rooted in duty rather than advertising campaigns.It’s time to stop pretending that we can “attract” our way out of a structural crisis. Canada doesn’t need slogans we need service and DEFENCE!

The volunteer model has failed. The future of national defence lies not in recruiting posters, but in a smart, mandatory, modernized public service reserve that finally matches the times.

 

I tried to find out more on this Balos guy, since he is a self-proclaimed expert on these things after all – and he did have the buzzwords in full play – but all I could find, anywhere on the Net, was a comment from 8 months earlier by him to another story in The Conversation, advocating annexation of Canada by the US as it would provide us all with family doctors, free up markets and allow us to elect the Prime Minister directly. 

Strange support from an even stranger quarter… is “Balos” even real?

But maybe no stranger than the ultraconservative weirdos who think these bureaucrats with bayonets will be used as some kind of internal security force, a Bolivarian mob for enforcing ideological purity.

 

A Canadian Civil Defence Corps

https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2025/03/05/Canada-Needs-New-Civil-Defence-Corps/

This article appeared in the Tyee yesterday, suggesting a Canadian Civil Defence Corps based partly on the Swedish model.

The practical suggestions in it, built around training, community preparedness and personal responsibility:

• Universal civil defence training: Every Canadian should receive basic training in first aid, emergency preparedness and cybersecurity. This would be mandatory for Grade 12 students and newcomers, with local, in-person and online options for all adults.

• Optional defence skills track: Similar to the Swedish approach, tens of thousands of Canadians could receive additional firearms training, tactical first aid, search-and-rescue skills and survival techniques — not to militarize society, but to ensure that we can take care of ourselves.

• Reserve forces expansion: We must add at least 20,000 reservists to ensure we have a force ready to respond to crises — military or otherwise — aligning us more closely with NATO norms and attainable given our population.

• Cyber-resilience training: Every Canadian should be able to recognize and defend against cyberthreats, disinformation campaigns and economic coercion. Germany has invested in tackling disinformation by training its population in media literacy, foreign influence detection and digital resilience — Canada must do the same.

• National youth service program: The existing Canadian Service Corps is far too limited with only a few thousand young Canadians participating each year. We should dramatically expand national service opportunities, offering paid programs in trades, emergency management and infrastructure resilience, allowing young Canadians to develop valuable skills and experience other parts of the country while actively contributing to national security.

• Arctic protection and Indigenous leadership: As global powers eye the Arctic, Canada must train more Indigenous rangers and local defence units to safeguard the North. Inuit and other Indigenous communities must be at the centre of Arctic security planning, ensuring they have the resources to defend their land and way of life.

I was thinking about this very thing last night. Some very good suggestions here.

The optional “defence skills track” potentially gives us the capability of an effective insurgent resistance, similar to other countries’ militia-based defence programs (e.g. Yugoslavia once upon a time, Switzerland historically (https://archive.org/details/total-resistance-swiss-army-guide-to-guerilla-warfare-1965) and the idea has been advanced by socialist and anarchist groups (e.g. https://libcom.org/article/towards-citizens-militia-anarchist-alternatives-nato-and-warsaw-pact )) though it would necessarily be urban due to how the population is distributed and the unforgiving rural climate. I’ve done a bit of studying about that….

The Reserves have to be drastically expanded, counter to the regular pattern with countries our reserves have been smaller than the regular forces for a long time and I can’t think why except for reasons of economy. However, the Reserves cannot simply be retasked with civil defence duties… back in the 1950s they tried this, it was called “National Survival” or something like that and recruitment plummeted.

This, or something like this, can definitely be done and it would not take long to stand up parts of it. After 2017, Sweden realized there would be no ongoing “peace dividend”: they reinstated limited conscription, got serious about fortifying their infrastructure and pushed the concept of total participation in civil protection and resilience. (One example is the excellent brochure “In Case of Crisis or War” which was published in many languages including English, download link is here: https://www.msb.se/en/advice-for-individuals/the-brochure-in-case-of-crisis-or-war/download-and-order-the-brochure-in-case-of-crisis-or-war/ )

However, other parts of it would take longer to stand up, because I think our sense of community and civic contribution has been drastically eroded over the years… except in times of crisis, when we are as generous and helpful and practical as any but we have to think and prepare in advance of crises… and there will be many of them, many and varied. I’ll be the first to admit that among our faults are distraction and complacency, they are quite common to humanity after all.

One of the comments to the article above, in response to someone making the obvious and hyperbolic comment “you can’t snap your fingers and have a million trained soldiers appear” and carping about the cost and time, was the motto “The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The next best time is now.”

I’d like to see this happen, even some of it… because half a loaf is better than the crumbly wet cracker we might be left with by events.