Forget the fighter jets. Canada needs a climate army

The sight of Canadian water bombers fighting the Palisades Fire certainly provided a lot of much-needed national pride in recent weeks. The juxtaposition of Canadian and Mexican firefighters coming to the aid of our neighbour, irrespective — almost in spite of — threats of annexation and trade wars, provided a sharp contrast to the inhumanity and incivility of the incoming Trump administration.

It also underlined the sharp contrast between the very real threat posed by climate change — and how unprepared we are to deal with it — and the much less present threats our military is pressured to be ready for.

For the rest of this century, Canada is guaranteed to have an increasing need for water bombers and other tools to combat climate change. It is less certain we’ll need weapons of war. Given Trump’s tariff threats and politicians encouraging a “buy Canadian” campaign to oppose it, we might consider cancelling the $74 billion F-35 program, and buying a fleet of made-in-Canada water bombers instead. This is not to say Canada should abandon combat aircraft altogether, but we might reconsider the utility of acquiring an offensive frontline combat aircraft when our military interests are primarily defensive, and the greatest threats we face aren’t even military in nature. 

If the defense of Canada was organized based on threats that actually caused the deaths of its citizens — rather than hypothetical future war that, should it come to pass, would likely bring about nuclear Armageddon — the military would be responsible for pandemic response, disaster relief, and fighting climate change.

Put it another way, no Canadian has ever been killed at home by Russian or Chinese bombs or missiles, and the idea either nation poses any kind of threat to Canada is laughable. Russia struggles to hold small scraps of Ukrainian territory after nearly three years of fighting, while China hasn’t fought a war with anyone, even its neighbours with whom it has long-simmering territorial disputes, in nearly fifty years. But let’s not kid ourselves into believing our security is guaranteed by contributions to military alliances either: NATO expansion laid the foundation for the conflict in Ukraine in the first place.

Rather than preparing for another Cold War, Canadians might ask themselves whether defending the nation from climate change wouldn’t be a far better use of our military. Granted, this isn’t exactly what NATO or the Trump administration has in mind when they chide Canada for not meeting the arbitrary two per cent — now arbitrarily raised to five per cent — defense spending minimum. But proactively fighting climate change would doubtless quickly surpass that spending threshold anyways (and arguably ‘free up’ personnel and equipment for potential combat missions, should that be necessary). 

If we reorganized defense planning to address climate change as an existential and strategic threat, we would require maintaining a much larger number of active and reserve personnel and to make substantial investments in new military hardware as well. A Canadian equivalent to the US Army Corps of Engineers could easily find itself quite busy building the infrastructure necessary to flood-proof population centres and building new networks of irrigation canals to combat drought in agricultural regions. Thomas Kierans’ Great Recycling and Northern Development (GRAND) Canal — a North American water management proposal that involves damming the James Bay and diverting rivers to replenish North American freshwater reserves — may have seemed like science fiction when the idea was being debated in newspaper columns forty years ago, but today might be considered a kind of “climate change strategic defense initiative.”

Firefighting also takes on strategic dimensions when you consider the threat goes far beyond death and destruction of property. The release of carbon from the fires, as much as the loss of timber resources and the natural carbon storage forests provide, can be even more disastrous. Consider that an area roughly the size of North Dakota, over 183,000 square kilometers, burned between May and September 2023, Canada’s driest summer to date. Research from NASA’s jet propulsion laboratory revealed that the fires released 640 million metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere, more than was emitted from fossil fuels by either Russia or Japan in all of 2022.

While Canadians might be loath to waste more money on weapons of dubious necessity and bristle at the idea of military conscription, there is surprising interest amongst Canadians — particularly Canadian youth aged 18-35 — for a “Youth Climate Corps.” As previously reported by the National Observer’s Seth Klein, nearly two-thirds of Canadian youth surveyed would support an opportunity to serve their country by fighting climate change. Whether this takes the form of massive tree-planting campaigns, rebuilding wetlands or creating firebreaks, the personnel requirements and the raw manpower necessary to defeat climate change will be considerable. If the youth of the nation are already enthusiastic about serving their country in this way, we would be wise not to miss the opportunity.

While Canada should have more self-respect than to acquiesce to Trump’s demands that we increase military spending, we should also recognize that the severity of the threat posed by climate change is fundamentally one of strategic national interest for which the Americans will, at least for the next four years, be of no assistance. That doesn’t mean we don’t still have a responsibility for fighting climate change on a continental level. It is immensely ironic that Canada, long accused of shirking its continental defense requirements, will likely have to go it alone in preparing for the clear and present dangers of our time.