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Canada’s recruitment policy comes under fire on Quebec campuses

Darren Shore, The Link (Concordia University)

MONTREAL (CUP) — Despite the cold and
pouring rain, more than 500 people marched
through downtown Montreal on Saturday, Oct.
28, joining a cross-country day of actions and
demonstrations against Canada’s participation
in the Afghan war.

One street-wide line of dripping umbrellas
and placards moved smoothly east along-Ste-
Catherine from Dorchester Square to
Complexe Guy-Favreau, merging there with a
second contingent of anti-war demonstrators.

The march included supporters of a cam-
paign called “Operation Objection,” which
seeks to counter the present Conservative gov-
ernment’s plans to increase the military’s
strength by 5,000 people over the next five
years, raising personnel to over 67,000.

General Rick Hillier said last February that
the military would increase its recruiters from
300 to 30,000, “and then eventually to 80,000.
recruiters touching every community, geo-
graphical and ethnic, in Canada.”

From libraries to latrines

The Canadian Forces will try to recruit about
5,800 people each year until 2010, targeting
Canadians aged 16 to 34, especially young
women, Aboriginals, and visible minorities.
Around a third of soldiers stay on and serve,

according to a May 2006 report by Canada’s

Auditor General.
These new recruits will be wooed all year long
during hundreds of public events like sporting
activities and festivals, and specifically from
Canadian schools and on university campuses,
says the Department of National Defence.
Concordia University doesn’t seek out mili-
tary recruiters, but allows them to recruit on
campus, said Chris Mota, director of
Concordia media relations. “We treat them the
way we would treat any other employer.”
Some counter-demonstrators expressed sup-

port for the government’s initiative. “If the
army wants to send recruiters onto campus,
that should definitely be an option,” said a
Concordia student who wished to be identified
only as John.

“The army isn’t about just going overseas
and killing innocent people, as some of these
people here would simplify it,” he said. “The
army is an opportunity for many individuals to
learn about the world and learn about them-
selves, and gain new skills in the process.”

Conscientious objection?

The Objection campaign’s promoters think a
more important skill is getting organized
against recruitment. The group Act for the
Earth, which launched the campaign, has set
up a website to make anti-war materials avail-
able to Canadian students, including a down-
loadable anti-war activist organizing kit, and
information on the Afghan war for potential
recruits.

The campaign is supported by Collectif
Echec 4 la guerre, the Canadian Peace Alliance,
the Canadian Labour Congress, the Canadian
Islamic Congress and the New Democratic
Party, who all favour banging the soldiers ©
home.

The intensified recruitment speaks to the
Canada’s new, enthusiastic military agenda, said
Rebecca Blaikie as she helped carry a large
NDP banner during the protest march. Blaikie
recently graduated from Concordia’s school of
community and public affairs, and ran for the
NDP in the 2004 federal election against for-
mer prime minister Paul Martin in the LaSalle-
Emard riding.

She said that recruitment advocated with argu-
ments for the war in Afghanistan amounts to
propaganda, since the government has speci-

fied no criteria to measure the war’s success or *

failure.

40 tHe oTHER PRESS NOVEMBER 16 2006

And troops sent there would be involved in a
conflict where Canada spends one dollar on
Afghan development for every $9 spent on
direct military action, according to the NDP.

“These are not the priorities of
Canadians,” said Blaikie. “They’te definitely
not my priorities.”

As humanitarian goals in Afghanistan went
unmet, infant mortality soared to twice the
average for the developing world, and 70 per
cent of Afghans went undernourished in 2005,
the Scotsman, a Scottish daily newspaper,
reported in January.

A 2005 Amnesty International report states
that Afghan women and_girls are still subjected
to abduction and rape by armed individuals,
forced into marriage, used as currency to settle
disputes and debts, and face daily discrimina-
tion from state officials.

Operation Objection organizers have asked
just how much good Canada is doing in
Afghanistan, and by extension what good
more troops there would do, noting extensive
corruption in the Afghan government, the
explosion of Afghanistan’s heroin trade, and
Human Rights Watch accounts of human
rights abuses by U.S. troops.

The recruitment campaign avoids a con-
structive public debate over whether Canada
should be in Afghanistan in the first place,
Blaikie said. ““There’s been absolutely no dia-
logue with the Canadian people, especially

" young people, on these issues.”

Some students in the march expressed resent-
ment that they were not consulted on the

recruitment issue itself, let alone the war.

“T think we should have the right to choose
who comes into our CEGEPs and universities
to recruit. They’re imposing this on the stu-
dent population,” said Marie-Eve Lecours, a
student at CEGEP de Trois-Riviéres.

She came for the day on a bus rented out

 

| Because these

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> FOR SCHOO!

They Are at the Front

DYING NO’

» JOIN THEM
’ ENLIST ; in the ARMY

by Comité de solidarité de Trois-Riviéres,
bringing CEGEP and university students,
and representatives of several NGOs.
Lecouts said she finds the idea of
recruiters on campus revolting. “They tell
students you’re a man if you join the arm
you'll really change, you'll help your coun
try, and people will recognize that,” she
said. “But in the end, I think joining the
army is pointless.”

Marie-Eve Rheault, from the same
CEGEP, said she deplores that the army
under-informs students about the negativ
sides of a military career.

“They ptomise they'll pay for your
school, you'll get to travel and have many
interesting experiences for free, [and that
easily sold] to students who are living on
student loans and need money,” she said.
“But many young people are easily influ-
enced, aren’t strong-minded, and sign up
without being really conscious.”

The Operation Objection website
notes that many students who join the
army because it can pay for their educa--
tion wouldn’t be joining if education wer
properly funded. The Canadian Federatic
of Students is asking for $4.5 billion for
education while the Conservatives plan t
increase military spending to $20 billion |
2010.

As for the risks involved, no fresh
recruit goes directly to Afghanistan, or
into any other direct military service, saic
Capt. Renaud Chartier, who does basic
military training at the garrison in St-Jear
sut-Richelieu. “Units are specially trained
for those missions.” °

A personal choice
Nevertheless, twice as many Canadian sc
diers — 708 soldiers compared to 340, a