Canadians overestimate nation's clout: poll

Well duh. Between First World nations, it's a pissing contest and no one wants toa dmit another has as much or more international clout. The developing ones will say otherwise because they want to get in our good books and their economies aren't completely self-reliant in most cases.

Lets see: small military, cash strapped government, almost completely reliant on exports, we aren't a big lender, and rely on immigration for population growth. Why would we have any influence?

#23 in numbers for military, of those above us all but ~10 are completely number reliant countries. Global Recession, everyone is strapped and yet we are still part of the G8. Everyone relies on exports to make money. Look what happened to the countries that were big lenders. Immigration is a good thing to be reliant on when your country prides itself on being multicultural.

We have more influence because of our history of fighting for peace and working towards peaceful solutions at every chance, people respect what we say.

I notice they didn't come and say that to Our Faces.

#23 in numbers for military, of those above us all but ~10 are completely number reliant countries. Global Recession, everyone is strapped and yet we are still part of the G8. Everyone relies on exports to make money. Look what happened to the countries that were big lenders. Immigration is a good thing to be reliant on when your country prides itself on being multicultural.

We have more influence because of our history of fighting for peace and working towards peaceful solutions at every chance, people respect what we say.
We are only in the G8 due to past history, if they were to reboot the G8 we would not be a member. India would more likely take our place.

Being part of the G8 means nothing really, and the G8 looks to be on its last legs with the G20 being more important now. The recession is not the reason we are strapped for cash, we have always been strapped because we have managed our resources poorly and from this point on Canada will simply go down, since our best time to be a power was when all the baby boomer were entering the work force.


Yes they do but all Canada can manage to export is raw goods, which means we have to rely on others for both income and manufactured goods. Unless we change the way we do things Canada is China's bitch.

Japan was the big lender and those loans are very helpful now for them. China and Russia are buying huge influences in the world with their lending right now. The situation the USA is in can be directly traced to the U.S. Federal Reserve, creating money out of nothing, worse less than nothing and paying interest on it was the dumbest idea since religion.

Being reliant on immigration means you have a dying population and the new population will have no loyalty to Canada or our "culture". Multiculturalism is forced down our throats at gun point, someone says they are against it and they are labeled racist. It is also a fools dream, sure multiculturalism was working with European cultures but no one ever thought to think about if the major cultures/religions could get along, the answer is no.

We can barely keep a few thousand personnel overseas. Without the USA backing us, Canada is a sitting duck.

Granted Canada started the UN peacekeeping but now we barely contribute to that, actions speak louder than words and all Canada has been doing lately for peacekeeping is blowing hot air. If we want be able to call ourselves peacekeepers we have to up the amount of peacekeeping we do. There is no such thing as "moral power" as the Liberals were calling us, its just a way of saying we have no political, economical or military power in the world.

Canada has a lousy military compared top the US. But then so does everyone else.

What do you base you're opinion on?

Look what happened to the areas that are industrial, they are the areas that absorb most of the equalization payments and have trouble balancing a budget.


You base that on the assumption that immigrants are not loyal to their country at all, our population is not so much dying as it is moving away and in its own way can be beneficial to Canada by encouraging others to either visit or move to Canada. People say they are against immigration all the time, most of them are ignored because their favorite claim is that they are 'stealing our jobs'. When was the last ethnic war in Canada? I am pretty sure we have different cultures living right beside each other.


We are able to keep them there, it is the peoples commitment to it that is the problem. For our military a few thousand is a fair number.

Granted Canada started the UN peacekeeping but now we barely contribute to that, actions speak louder than words and all Canada has been doing lately for peacekeeping is blowing hot air. If we want be able to call ourselves peacekeepers we have to up the amount of peacekeeping we do. There is no such thing as "moral power" as the Liberals were calling us, its just a way of saying we have no political, economical or military power in the world.
We contribute a lot to peacekeeping still, there are just less jobs and call for jobs that require thousands of soldiers being surged into countries. Look at who other countries are looking to as a model of economic stability. Politically we have had influence for a very long time. And we have not cared about a large military in our history, we had trouble just forming a long term one in the early days of our country.

Too simplistic and wrong.


I think we previously had an over inflated view of ourselves in the old �soft-power� and �peace-keeping first� days.

These days we are punching above our weight internationally.

I think the ground work laid down by previous Liberal administrations on banking, resource management etc , along with the active military role that the Chretien/Martin era put us on in Afghanistan has raised the worlds awareness of Canada.
Harper has built on this legacy and re-armed the CF with the Afghan mission front-and-centre in procurement.

From a military point of view the Canadian Army is well trained, well armed, combat proven and has a true expeditionary capability with the CC117�s. Don�t fuck with our Army.

Air Command, not so much good news.

It�s CF18�s don�t deploy to support our Army and it�s rotary-wing aircraft are barely capable of their assigned battlefield role. Even the Griffon air-gunners had to be brought in from the Army and the aircraft can barely operate at altitude with a decent fuel/ops load.

We will regain tac rotary-airlift once we get the Chinooks but by that time we will be out of combat ops in Afghanistan.

I�ll not comment on Maritime Command�s condition but from Gunnair�s posts, there are problems on Her Majesty�s Canadian Ships.