Over the past couple of weeks, as the government’s “interim” fighter acquisition plans were announced and the fallout has been filtering down since. I’ve seen a lot of fairly disturbing commentary around it, not just from some of the usual ass clowns on social media, but I’ve also seen it in the House of Commons. No less than Rona Ambrose told the Prime Minister that the government needs to get out of the way of military procurement decisions and let the military decide what it needs or wants.

Nope. So much nope.

In case Ambrose or anyone else has forgotten, in a liberal democracy we insist on civilian control of the military. That’s kind of a big thing, and as Stephen Saideman points out, it’s a central ingredient and necessary thing for democracy. And it’s not just this attitude creeping out in Canada, but we’re seeing it in spades in the United States right now as Donald Trump is looking to put former military members into cabinet who haven’t passed their designated “cooling off” period yet.

It’s also why I get annoyed by these stories about how the government’s plans and policies are characterised as “contradicting” the head of the Royal Canadian Airforce, for example. The problem with these kinds of headlines is that if you’ve at all paid attention to the Canadian Forces for the past number of years, you’ll see that they will always say that they have the resources at hand to do the job they’re asked to do. If the government says that 65 new planes are enough, well, then the RCAF will make sure that 65 planes are enough, no matter how much they might like or need more. Plenty of stories filtered out during the air mission in Iraq about how the RCAF was managing it despite their budget constraints, and it was a lot do to with cannibalising training budgets and so on to ensure that those missions that were being asked of them still flew, and they did it without public complaint. (Never mind that they were concerned about the declining readiness of the fleet at the time, but they still had a job to do that was being asked of them, so they made it work).

We need to remember that governments set policies, and they are held to account for the policies they set, but it’s not up to the military to tell us what that policy should be. We’ve had procurement problems in the past where the military were allowed to set their own parameters and went wild looking for the biggest and the best kit available, and boondoggles resulted. So yes, the government can set its own policies and align procurement to match it. That’s fine. And we can hold them to account for that policy on any number of metrics. But we should really refrain from that metric being “the military said the old policy was fine” because of course they were going to say that. It’s also not their job to be yet another cudgel for opposition parties to wield and then hide behind like they do with every other institution and officer of parliament. Civilian control matters. Let’s remember to treat it that way.

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/805181340673048576

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/805184815691681792

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/805187027419459584

Good reads:

• Justin Trudeau is fine with pot dispensaries being raided because the whole point of (eventual) legalization is to choke off the illegal supply, not please users.
• Trudeau also says that we’re doing peace operations in Africa because we can’t just sit back in a dangerous world when we can make an impact.
• In a separate interview, Trudeau said that more people need to get involved in politics across the spectrum so that no party run against Canadian Muslims.
• The Chief of Defence Staff is looking to oust those sexual assault perpetrators who took plea deals rather than face full charges.
• Here’s a look at how the demographics of pipeline protesters are changing, and how it’s not just hippies anymore.
• The Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Inquiry won’t hear testimony until next year, because shockingly, it takes time to build an organization from scratch.
• Chris Alexander went to Ezra Levant’s anti-NDP rally in Edmonton and grinned gleefully while the crowd changed “lock her up.” (Video) But he didn’t them because “politicians need to listen to what voters have to say.”
• Aaron Wherry explores how Conservative leadership candidates try to define “elite” as the object of their scorn.
• Brenda Fine writes about what appears to be Maryam Monsef’s disdain for metrics in the electoral reform conversation.

Odds and ends:

Artifacts from HMS Erebus of the Franklin Expedition are to be shown in Britain before Canada, and there are disputes over ownership with the Inuit.

Here’s another look at the restored Wellington Building, now that it has officially reopened.