By Scott Taylor
Late last week U.S. President Donald Trump caused a diplomatic flap when he proposed sending American troops to the Canadian border. Trump was of course simply pandering to his voter base by acting as some great protector deploying combat soldiers to keep COVID-19 infected Canadians from sneaking across the mutual boundary.
As soldiers with weapons cannot stop a virus that has already taken hold in the U.S. this deployment of Trump’s martial might would have been for purely diversionary optics.
This can be described as the ‘Humpty Dumpty’ syndrome wherein when a giant egg breaks, the king marches around all his men and horses. No one ever asked how in the hell all these horses and men would put Humpty Dumpty back together again, but it did give the impression that at least the king was attempting to do something about the broken egg crisis.
But Trump’s presumption that stricken Canadians would attempt to illegally cross the border in order to enter the already overloaded U.S. health care system simply makes no sense.
However, on the subject of Humpty Dumpty syndrome, it turns out that Canadians are no more immune to it than our southern neighbours.
A recent poll conducted by the Conference of Defence Association Institute and IPSOS, determined that nine of every ten Canadians believe that the Canadian Armed Forces should be deployed to play a role in combatting the COVID-19 pandemic.
While it is admittedly a refreshing vote of confidence in the professionalism of the CAF, this poll result also illustrates just how out of touch the public is with regards to the role, responsibility, structure and equipment of our military.
It is true that some military medical personnel were used to repatriate Canadians exposed to COVID-19 in foreign countries and the facilities at CFB Trenton were briefly used to quarantine a large number of these same citizens.
However the limited scale of the CAF means that it does not have much of a surplus of medical resources beyond what is necessary to protect and treat its own serving personnel.
Unlike the Chinese and U.S. militaries that contributed 4,000 military medical staff and 2,000 ventilators respectively to the COVID-19 battle, such resources simply do not exist in Canada.
To date there has been no indication of civil disobedience or violent chaos in the streets. By and large a petrified Canadian population has unquestioningly abided by the strict rules of self-isolation and quarantine. Any minor transgressions have been easily quelled by local police forces or in many instances unarmed security guards such as those who are now employed by liquor stores in Ontario to ensure physical distancing between clients.
So if the CAF is not deployed to administer health care or to augment law enforcement, then the question begs just what role would people like to see them perform?
At present and for the foreseeable future the global supply chain remains functioning with no predicted critical shortages of essential goods. There is also no shortage of transportation and delivery means available. While it might be visually reassuring to see army trucks and uniformed soldiers delivering supplies to COVID 19 test centres, this would be a completely unnecessary misuse of our military resources.
The civilian delivery system is more than capable and replacing them with soldiers would only be another kick to one of the few sectors of our economy that are still functioning.
This applies also to the suggestion of using transport aircraft from the RCAF to repatriate stranded Canadians who remain trapped in locked down foreign countries.
As long as civilian charter flights can be arranged it means our battered airline industry still gets the cash flow, albeit a non-sustaining minuscule drip feed.
That said, I count myself among the one in ten Canadians that does not want to see our military employed to battle COVID-19.
If it does come down to Canada employing our resource of last resort – the CAF – then we will need those personnel to remain healthy. A premature, public relations, optics only deployment of the CAF is not going to help fix this broken egg called COVID-19.
