LILLEY: Poilievre promises to end woke culture in military

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Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre isn’t just promising to spend more money on Canada’s military, he’s promising to change the culture.

In an exclusive interview with the Toronto Sun last week, Poilievre said he wants to eradicate the woke culture forced into the Canadian Armed Forces by the Trudeau Liberals.

“We will rebuild our military, and our soldiers will once again, have a warrior culture, not a woke culture,” Poilievre said.

While the Trudeau Liberals love to pay lip service to Canada’s military, they mostly view it as an agency to respond to natural disasters and a place to run social experiments. We have trouble taking on new roles in organizations like NATO, and despite promises on bringing back Canada’s proud tradition of peacekeeping, it has never happened.

We have lots of time and effort for Trudeau’s woke causes though.

Did you know that Canada’s military, which can’t recruit enough people to fill the ranks, is sending gender advisors to other countries? In fact, as Ukraine is fighting for its very survival against Vladimir Putin’s invading army, part of Canada’s contribution is lecturing the Ukrainian military on GBA+ issues.

For those not in the know, and that would be anyone not obsessing over identity-based politics, GBA+ stands for Gender Based Analysis Plus. It’s probably still murky to most of those reading, so let me quote directly from the government’s website on what this actually is.

“GBA Plus is an intersectional analysis that goes beyond biological (sex) and socio-cultural (gender) differences to consider other factors, such as age, disability, education, ethnicity, economic status, geography (including rurality), language, race, religion, and sexual orientation,” the government’s website states.

And this relates to Ukraine’s existential fight against the Russian invasion how?

If you have to ask, it’s probably because you aren’t woke enough, because you are a hater, because you don’t have the right politics. Or, because you aren’t obsessed with these issues that matter little in the lives of everyday Canadians but take up an inordinate amount of time in the lives of bureaucrats, including in our military, under Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government.

Here’s a section on sending “Gender Advisors” to war zones and hot spots taken from the recently released report into the state of the Canadian military.

“In 2023, notable opportunities to apply Gender Based Analysis plus (GBA Plus) and intersectional perspectives to operational support occurred in Poland, Ukraine, Haiti, and Latvia,” the report states.

“In Poland, the Task Force Gender Advisor was involved in all aspects of this training mission and supported the local Defence Attaché in connecting with local and Ukraine- based non-governmental organizations and interested parties.”

OK, great, we can’t send Ukraine proper munitions to defend itself, our soldiers in Latvia were told to buy their own helmets, and we can’t deploy a peacekeeping force to Haiti because we don’t have the troops but … we can send “Gender Advisors” to these locations.

The GBA+ mentality was one of the reasons cited by the Royal Canadian Navy for dropping their march anthem, Heart of Oak. There were concerns around “gendered language” for a song written in 1759.

The Trudeau government revels in this sort of thing and therefore the Canadian military under Trudeau revels in these things. Meanwhile, our military finds itself more than 16,000 troops short and is unable to recruit enough people to fill the positions needed.

I wonder why?

“The first thing I will do when I’m prime minister is to bring back a warrior culture, not a woke culture,” Poilievre told the Toronto Sun.

“We will be recruiting warriors to fight for this country. That will be the purpose,” he said.

“They will be here, to defend our homeland against danger and threats abroad. I can tell you, when you put out that clarion call, the young people of this nation will come rushing in and put on that uniform. I guarantee it.”

Imagine a military where warriors can be warriors again, where traditions that have united us for centuries will return, where chaplains aren’t warned against praying at Remembrance Day ceremonies. That’s what Pierre Poilievre is promising if he is elected prime minister.

Justin Trudeau is promising what he has already delivered, not enough troops, half our equipment not fit for deployment, but plenty of “Gender Advisors” for war zones around the world.

blilley@postmedia.com