Canadian "Weakness"

[mbarrick]

I downloaded some of stats from the CIA Factbook and did some number crunching: at roughly 32 million people, Canada is only 36th most populous country on Earth. Other countries with equivalent populations are Algeria, Morocco, and Sudan. Canada, however is 19th in the world for military spending ($7.9 billion USD), placing us in the neighbourhood of Israel ($9 billion), Spain ($8.6 billion), Turkey ($8.1 billion), Taiwan ($8 billion), the Netherlands ($6.5 billion), and North Korea ($5.1 billion)- and just over six times the military budget of Iraq ($1.3 billion).

While sipping on your cup of shut-the-fuck-up, you can stick this in your pipe and smoke it.

Comments

[seymour-glass.livejournal.com]

quit saying that it makes me laugh...i was thinking about that line all day and laughing at work...classic...the good thing about canada is that we spend that money in a way that benefits the rest of the world...we police many places where they don't have the resources (or the inclination) to do it themselves...most other nations spend the money to look after their own interests...i think we do a hell of a lot with what we have...and it's not so coincidental that the bush administration is pressuring us to do "our" part to protect our continent...after all the more we spend on armaments, the more their defence contractors make...

In agreement...

[reive-d.livejournal.com]

Hey,

I was talking to a friend who used to be in the forces earlier today, and was informed that Canada commits a greater percentage of our armed forces to peace keeping than any other nation.

My friend currently lives in the States, and whenever someone criticizes Canada's lack of involvement she makes sure to point that out, while also mentioning many of the other points you've raised about our degree of involvement in both Afghanistan and the Gulf.

If it weren't liable to endanger our trade relations with the US I'd say, "Damn Americans. I hate those bastards."

Re: In agreement...

[seymour-glass.livejournal.com]

i just made a post outlining canada's contributions to peacekeeping...we provide 10% of the world's peacekeeping forces...pretty impressive indeed...