Covid and its expected social and economic consequences is now our greatest risk to personal and national security. Millions of Canadians in crisis, facing debt, work and food insecurity. We're facing a grim future. Climate change, in addition to degraded farms, forests and fisheries now outranks nuclear war as the greatest threat to humanity. We just lost the smelt, the base of the food chain, Without a doubt, our planet is dying. Barely a decade remains to turn things around, to save this generation of Canadian kids. That's barely long enough to plant apple trees for food.
The world’s top scientists including every living Nobel laureate have united in declaring we need action on the scale of a world war if our children are to stand a chance of surviving what is coming. The Pentagon has recognized climate change as a major threat to the safety, security and stability of nations. As with the rise of Hitler, people simply do not want to believe that what is coming will be so bad.
But in one generation, we watched as birds disappeared from the sky, as Canadian ecosystems like the Grand banks fisheries collapsed, as we no longer saw wild animals, as family farms were lost, as forests were cut so thin the quality of lumber fell.
In the market we see poor quality goods that break and cannot be repaired. We see waves of scams and vast quantities of money disappearing at the highest levels.
An entire generation is now trapped between low wages and high house prices, facing a future of permanent lifetime debt for essential human needs.
What we need most urgently is an army of people to do the work so clearly laid out as necessary by our top global minds. They wrote the most important document in world history, the World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity.
They recently issued another warning, a climate emergency. All those news items you’ve been seeing? Arctic smog. Antarctic ice shelf. Acid rain. Still happening.
This direct threat to our lives is not like an invading army, but is a matter of National Security, more like knowing we’ve not planted enough wheat to survive the winter.
We the Canadian people call on you, the Canadian Forces, to put your organization systems to the test before we need to evoke the Emergency Measures Act.
From a population of 38 million, we need you to direct just a quarter-million youth to do the work needed to divert disaster.
We know you are practical people sticking to sound values and principles. We see how you emphasize building skills and character.
You have the best organizational systems in the world for dynamically moving assets around, strategizing and organizing.
We know you are busy with peace-keeping missions around the world.
And we love your work.
But we are not at war and we need you to robustly use your systems to face this challenge of diverting Canada from disaster.
We have seen how political and corporate corruption and greed has stymied your efforts to build or buy ships, planes, vehicles and helicopters.
We’ve also seen you get swamped in paperwork. red tape that makes it impossible to do even the most practical things.
We’ve seen your budget get attacked, drained by people taking the money for themselves, people who do nothing to defend our lives or build our country.
In two world wars and numerous conflicts you fought for our freedoms.
You know that when things get bad, when people cannot work hard enough to eat, when our freedoms to meet essential human needs are denied, when we are completely backed into a corner by no recourse, only then do we protest.
The dates of crisis are being set. You know perfectly well that by the political inaction of not tackling real and urgent issues with bravery and moral courage, this negligence to defend our lives leads directly to crisis.
And in crisis our freedom to do the right thing is further reduced. But we need increased freedoms to act now.
We don’t want martial law. We renamed The War Measures Act to The Emergency Measures Act so we can deal with our broader issues.
Here we say “Canadian Forces”, to recognize your broad roles in war and peace. What do you think an emergency is? Should we not respond with emergency measures now? We can predict with great certainty the year in which we will need to invoke the Emergency Measures Act, and we want to prevent this.
We have dates set for complete groundwater depletion. Not here but in areas of the USA that produce our food. Those dates describe when produce prices go through the roof. We can plot our population and consumption against farmland loss to set dates of food crisis.
We lost our cod fisheries and dates are set for when we can no longer catch fish in the ocean. You’re now watching entire countries collapse. You’re watching the biggest human migration events in world history. You’re watching countries that destroyed the ecosystems critical to supporting human life, get engulfed in the flames of war.
In Canada, we can set a date at which a harsh and hard political leader will take control and eventually ask you to point a gun at youth that are climate victims.
The top minds on the planet, acting in care and concern for people, understand the need for an active response. An effort at the scale of a world war is needed to save this generation of Canadian kids.
We have only a decade to turn things around. That gives you 2 years to ramp up, 5 years to do the work needed to save us, 2 years to ramp down. We must act.
Most of the work laid out by our top scientists is friendly and community based.
Some of what we need to do requires friendly persuasion and negotiation using strength, care and intelligence. You’re good at this. We need you.
We know you can do this. We are now seeing an entire country mobilized to action. Now is the time to do what you do best, and defend the Canadian people by a robust and realistic response addressing the basis of life and life security itself, exhibiting care for people and the ecosystems that sustain out lives as the sole basis of our economy.