Tony Bernardo is the Executive Director of the Canadian Shooting Sports Association.Mark Carney stands up in front of NATO and vows that Canada will finally hit the magic 2% defence target, even accelerate the timeline, and then keep going toward the new 5% “defence and security” goal. On paper, that sounds bold and committed. But then you see the trick. Instead of building a serious fighting force, the plan leans on relabeling existing agencies under armed forces control.Move the Coast Guard to throw hundreds of thousands of people under a “defence” label. With this move, payroll accountants, policy analysts, and clipboard commandos are rebranded as Canada’s great contribution to NATO security..BORG: Budget 2025 passed on fear, not principles.You are supposed to smile politely while Ottawa calls this “meeting our obligations.”In reality, it’s “creative accounting” that walks the razor’s edge between political spin and outright fraud.NATO says “spend 2% of GDP on defence.”.What Carney hears is, “2% on whatever you can cram into a spreadsheet cell labeled ‘defence-related.’”In the last election, Mark Carney was sold to Canadians as a world-class financial mind.This move is dollar-store sleight of hand..OLDCORN: Alberta’s classrooms are becoming English language camps.It insults both your intelligence and Canada’s allies in one moronic move.Disarming citizens while arming the cubicle brigade.At the same time, Mark Carney’s government obsesses over confiscating firearms from heavily vetted, statistically safe, law-abiding owners, while gang shooters and smugglers laugh their way across the border with illegal guns..Here’s the unspoken logic pill you’re supposed to swallow:The responsible person who passed every background check is the problem.The bloated bureaucracy is the solution.And if you need to pad defence numbers, you can always hand “assault-style” rifles to a freshly minted army of desk jockeys and count them as “force multipliers.”It is hard to know what is more ridiculous: calling that a strategy or expecting anyone with a pulse to take this “plan” seriously.The militia that already exists, but Ottawa refuses to see..NORRIS: Alberta’s recall circus — How losers are hijacking democracy.Buried inside Mark Carney’s latest hair-brained scheme is a joke that exposes the absurdity of it.If Carney actually wanted a capable reserve force on the cheap, he already has one: millions of licenced gun owners. They are trained, they store their firearms safely, and they did not cost the government a dime to equip.Imagine, (tongue firmly in cheek), what a rational plan could look like:Scrap firearms licence fees.Pay a modest annual stipend to licenced firearms owners.Recognize them as a formal reserve militia and invest in real training and coordination..Instantly, you would have a distributed, motivated, cost-effective defensive backbone across the entire country.Instead, Carney prefers to demonize that population while pretending bureaucratic musical chairs equals military readiness.It is as if he looks at people who actually know how to handle a rifle and thinks, “That is the enemy,” then looks at a building full of policy analysts and thinks, “There is my army.”.QUESNEL: Workers' party or working government? NDP at a crossroads.Why you cannot just shrug this off as comedy.On one level, this is darkly funny. You can riff about goofy berets, “51st State Militia” patches, and tank-driving contests all day long.But we live in a world where deterrence, alliances, and real military capability matter..When a prime minister turns defence policy into a spreadsheet game, he is not just clowning for domestic optics.He is signalling to allies and adversaries alike that Canada is more interested in looking serious than being serious, so we end up with the worst of both worlds:A government that punishes the most responsible citizens in the country.A defence plan that confuses headcount with hard power.A leader who seems convinced that if the numbers add up in Excel, reality will politely cooperate..EYRE: What would Elizabeth I think of Canada’s out-of-control spending?.At some point, you stop calling this leadership and start calling it what it is: a cartoon.And the punchline is that Carney expects you to pay for the tickets, applaud the show, and never mention that behind the curtain there is no army, just a very expensive pile of HR files and bureaucrats hired to handle every single one of them.Tony Bernardo is the Executive Director of the Canadian Shooting Sports Association.
