Yeah, I know it has been a while (over 1 year) but this little tidbit of info just passed by everyone and I just couldn't let it slide by. Back in May, the cons announced their new military spending plan that would increase spending by $30 billion over the next 20 years. Now a $1.5 billion increase per year to buy new equipment and train new soldiers seemed like a nice little boost to the military to help keep the military up to date and the fact that it would be a 5% increase in current spending seemed fiscally conservative especially for this government. Well, that plan of theirs ended up being considerably higher as seen by their dead of night spending increase of the military.
Currently, the Canadian government spends $17 billion on the military for troops, equipment, training, and any other expenditures that may arise. With their new proposal, the cons would spend close to $25 billion a year. That is almost a 50% increase in spending. Now that is more like the cons I know and despise. Even with these raw numbers there can still be some interpretation, so let’s break down the numbers.
1. $250 billion in military salaries in the next 20 years. There are currently 87,000 troops (62,000 full time & 25,000 part time) in the military and the cons plan on increasing it to 100,000 (70,000 full time & 30,000 part time) over the next 20 years. Let’s do the calculations shall we...say we had the 70,000 troops tomorrow and paid them full time salary of $66,000/yr which is the top pay a soldier would get paid after 5 years of service, give them a 2% pay increase every year and let’s see how much would be spent:
(70,000 troops x $66,000) = $4,620,000,000
That’s right folks, 70,000 troops being paid the maximum salary would only be paid $4.6 billion during the first year. If you add in the 2% annual pay increase and total it up over the next 20 years, the grand total would be $112,253,848,471. Yup, $112 billion in 20 years. Even if you make it 105,000 full time troops, it would only be $168,380,772,706.50. Now of course the actual pay would be lower because the 30,000 part time troops would be paid less than the full time troops, and not everyone will be paid the maximum pay, but I just wanted to see how close I could come to the cons numbers....and I could barely get half way there. Where the hell is the other $100+ billion going to?
2. $60 billion for new equipment. Since I have no clue about how many pieces of equipment need to be replaced, I won't comment on it except for that this seems a little high.
3. $140 billion on training and maintenance. Like the new equipment, I don't know how much these costs are, but these also seem rather high.
4. $40 billion on new buildings and infrastructure. That is crazy too high. Even if they replace every building with a new one this would not even get to $40 billion. What the hell are they spending this money on?
I think somebody with more knowledge of military spending should take a look this because this seems far too excessive for a government to spend. When the cons say $30 billion increase over 20 years and they mean $130 billion, makes you think about how poor their fiscal management is. Do they seriously think that oil will keep on going up every year and surpluses will keep on going up too? I know they are mainly from Alberta and most Albertans think the good times will always last (oil price increase in the 70's followed by bottoming out of the market in the early 80's) but they will be in for a rude awakening in a couple of years when the price of oil settles back down. Wait a minute...that’s it!!! Now I know what they are doing. They are going to pull an Ontario PC government by trying to buy votes, hide debt and then complain when the new Liberal government comes into power and has to cut all of the governments spending. (clap, clap, clap) Bravo stupid con people, that is a very...um...dumb move.
