[FORUM] What do you think of the draft?
Nov. 14th, 2009 03:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldIn the comments to my Remembrance Day post on the disproportionate number of Atlantic Canadians in the army, Noel suggested that Canada get a draft in order to even things out.
The idea has some sense to it. In European countries, conscription helped build up national identities by taking people from different regions and of different backgrounds, putting them together, and letting an "official" national percolate all the more freely. More, as I noted in my Demography Matters post, there's abundant evidence that soldiering is a fairly important method of migration, as motivated and educated people leave relatively less prosperous environments for one where their living standards are subsidized and they often learn skills and get connections.
Against this, there's the fact that conscription is wildly unpopular. During the First World War, the federal government's decision to impose conscription nationally, including in an isolationist Québec wary of an Anglophone military, triggered a massive national crisis. Without any perceived need for the mobilization of the proper age groups into the ranks of the military, there'd be no political will to do so, here or in countries which have abolished conscription. The same holds for national service, if to a lesser degree: Trudeau's Katimavik program is widely seen as a joke.
What do you think?
The idea has some sense to it. In European countries, conscription helped build up national identities by taking people from different regions and of different backgrounds, putting them together, and letting an "official" national percolate all the more freely. More, as I noted in my Demography Matters post, there's abundant evidence that soldiering is a fairly important method of migration, as motivated and educated people leave relatively less prosperous environments for one where their living standards are subsidized and they often learn skills and get connections.
Against this, there's the fact that conscription is wildly unpopular. During the First World War, the federal government's decision to impose conscription nationally, including in an isolationist Québec wary of an Anglophone military, triggered a massive national crisis. Without any perceived need for the mobilization of the proper age groups into the ranks of the military, there'd be no political will to do so, here or in countries which have abolished conscription. The same holds for national service, if to a lesser degree: Trudeau's Katimavik program is widely seen as a joke.
What do you think?
