On November 6th, 1919, a message from King George V was read aloud in the House of Commons.

He wrote, in part, "It is my desire and hope that at the hour when the armistice came into force, the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, there may be, for the brief space of two minutes, a complete suspension of all our normal activities, so that in perfect stillness the thoughts of everyone may be concentrated on reverent remembrance of the glorious dead."

That year, Canada marked its first Armistice Day.

In 1931, November 11th became Remembrance Day.

In the 94 years since, how have the day and its associations changed?

What does it mean to Canadians in 2025?

Then, the federal budget contains a big boost for defence spending, more than $80 billion over the next five years.

Here's Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne last week.

We will meet our 2% commitment.

This year we will modernise NORAD.

We will reinforce our Arctic defence, and we will equip our brave men and women of the Canadian Armed Forces with the infrastructure and technology that they need to safeguard our nation.

This is the most Canada has allocated for defence in decades.

How far will it go to modernising our armed forces?

Welcome to The Rundown.

What does "lest we forget" mean in 2025?

The generation that fought in the Second World War is passing away.

Fewer Canadians today personally know people who fought in modern conflicts.

He's a historian at the Canadian War Museum, and I talked to him about the In Their Own Voices project, which features reflections from those who've served.

Mikal, great to have you on the program.

How are you doing today?

Good, Jeyan.

Thank you for having me.

I want to start off with your family connection.

You grew up with a family connection to Canada's military.

Tell us a little bit about that.

Sure. The most direct one that I had when I was a little boy was my mother's father, William Newberry, who served in the Canadian Army.

He was a lieutenant, an officer, fought through Sicily, Italy, North-West Europe, was with the Ontario regiment, with the tanks.

And it fascinated me as a young boy.

But like so many veterans, he rarely talked about it.

So there was this gap between what he'd experienced and what clearly meant a lot to him.

There were scattered artifacts around his house from the Second World War.

He carried a silver dollar in his wallet that had been given to him by his high school teacher when he enlisted, and he kept that on him every day for his entire life.

It was on his person the day he died.

So clearly the Second World War mattered to him.

It had shaped even the many years that followed.

But it wasn't something that he talked about a lot.

And I think that's quite common with a lot of veterans in the Second World War and veterans of other conflicts and other periods of service as well.

I can imagine, you know, you have your personal connection there.

You work at the Canadian War Museum.

I want to have a better understanding of, do you think most Canadians today feel a personal connection to our military and its history?

Well, certainly less now, I think, than after the Second World War.

And I think when we look at the post-service experiences of veterans, I think that's a really important distinction.

I think it's been fascinating in the course of my work here, I've interviewed more than 200 veterans and their family members, and it's been fascinating to see some of the shared experiences of veterans of the Second World War and veterans of more recent deployments: the comradeship, often the grief, the having experienced something that many people who have not been in the military can't understand.

So there's that shared experience.

But a big difference between the Second World War and today.

When you asked about the personal connections, I think, yes.

Many Canadians do have a personal connection to the military, but it's less than it was after the Second World War.

After the Second World War, a million men and women were veterans.

When they came home, they were surrounded by people that had been part of the war effort, who had a common understanding, in many cases.

That's different now for veterans of Afghanistan, about 40,000 served.

And I think certainly there's still the same bonds of comradeship, but with larger society, I think there might be a little bit of isolation, a little bit of a gap, a big gap, I think, between the veteran's experience and what the broader society understands.

And I think that can be lonely.

I've spoken to veterans who talk about when they get together, that's when the real stories come through in a kind of trusted, safe space amongst people who have a common shared background.

But another veteran told me once, he lives here in Ottawa and he says, you know, I live in a city that's-- I'm surrounded by a million people and none of them know what I did.

And I think that can be a little bit lonely.

So even though there is that personal connection, I think it's less than it has been at other times in our history.

And I think that matters.

I think that's impactful for veterans.

Well, let's talk about that connection in their own voices.

The project, tell me how it came to be and sort of the stories that you are capturing in those.

So the goal of the project, that was the idea, the inspiration was my recently passed colleague, Tim Cook here at the museum, and his goal and our goal was to better understand the ripples of a conflict, the ripples of service, ripples of war, and how an experience in the military, wartime, yes, but also peacetime deployments, peacekeeping.

Once that period of deployment ends, once that conflict ends, we wanted to better understand how those ripples continue to shape the lives of veterans and even their families in the years and decades and sometimes generations afterwards.

So the premise was, a lot of military histories end when the war ends or the deployment ends, but the impacts continue.

The war is not over. The period of service is not over in the minds and in the hearts of people who were there.

And so we wanted to dig into that, uncover that sometimes hidden history, that hidden or underexplored aspect of military service.

What does the archive tell us about how Canadian society was shaped by our military history?

That's, I think, a really important point.

And war and military service. It shapes veterans, it shapes their families.

But through them it also shapes their communities and indeed Canada itself.

So I think sometimes we have a tendency to think of wars or deployments as discrete events, as isolated events.

But they're not.

Even 80 years after the Second World War, Canada is still very much, we are a country that was shaped in many ways.

It is shaped in many ways by the Second World War.

So the veteran's experience, military service has had an enormous impact on Canada, on the role of different people, different groups in Canadian society to look at the Second World War specifically, we can look at the experiences, say, of women.

The role of women in society changed radically because of the service of women during the war and filling roles that were not open to women before, a certain liberation socially, in terms of work, that was a direct impact of the Second World War for certain marginalised communities.

The role of women in society changed radically because of the service of women during the war and filling roles that were not open to women before, a certain liberation socially, in terms of work, that was a direct impact of the Second World War for certain marginalised communities.

Asian Canadians, Chinese and Japanese Canadians served without having enjoyed the full rights of citizenship.

Now, when they came back from the war, to be able to say, look, we had served, we were willing to die, was a persuasive argument in terms of the struggle, the post-war struggle for greater political and civic equality.

Similarly, we look at the experience of Indigenous veterans who many enjoyed a certain, a greater equality while serving in the Second World War amongst their non-Indigenous colleagues, and then came back to society where they did not enjoy the same sort of support and welcome and equality as their non-Indigenous comrades.

And yet their experience in the war was really a galvanising one in terms of nurturing or inspiring or pressing a new generation of post-war Indigenous leaders who were shaped by their experiences in the Second World War.

So all these ripples impacted Canadian society as well, not far beyond the war, all aspects of Canada.

So I think that's an important point, is that the military history does ripple through peacetime and civil society, too.

All right.

With that, we actually have a clip from the archive that we want to show.

This is from a veteran who served in the Royal Canadian Navy in World War II.

Here he is describing what it was like when the war ended.

What am I going to do for the rest of my life?

I wasn't trained for anything.

I wasn't trained to go to university.

I was just, I was shook up.

When you're on, when you're on a gun like that and maybe fire 50 rounds in a battle, it does something to you.

I don't care what anybody will tell you.

You're just not strong enough to handle it.

All right, listening to that, why is it important for us in 2025 to hear what veterans and families have to say, even though, as you mentioned, there is that distance in time from the last time that we went into war?

Well, I think we need to put ourselves in the place of that veteran, that's Alex Baldwin who's since passed.

And he was one of the first Second World War veterans that I interviewed.

And I'll always remember that moment.

I had asked him, how did you feel when the war ended?

And his response was, I was scared.

And that has always, that poured into me at the time.

And it struck, what stuck with me since he described coming into Halifax and for the first time, the boats were lit up. They weren't. You weren't worried about dying anymore.

But he was scared because he was facing this chasm of years and decades in front of him with no idea what to do.

And that was overwhelming.

And it's important to get that perspective.

It's important to understand that it wasn't just celebration and uplifting, it was this jarring, disjointed moment for many people.

What am I going to do with the rest of my life?

And that, that scared Alex.

In addition to some of the symptoms and the impacts of combat, which he talks about being shook up is how he phrased it.

You'll find Second World War veterans may use different vocabularies than younger veterans, but they're describing similar symptoms.

So in addition to that, there's this kind of more existential, what am I going to do with the rest of my life?

So, imagine yourself at 22, imagine having experienced this enormously consequential event, and then imagine coming home and wondering what comes next.

And imagine what that, what that does to you inside.

You can't get that, I don't think, unless you're hearing it directly from somebody like Alex, which I think is what makes interviews like that quite special.

Michael, thank you so much.

Thank you, Jeyan.

Defence spending is a major line item in the 2025 federal budget.

Prime Minister Mark Carney has pledged to hit a NATO target of 2% of GDP this year and 5% by 2035.

Does this sizeable investment make sense?

What kind of difference will it make for our armed forces?

I asked Richard Shimooka, senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and contributing writer at The Hub, and Stephanie Carvin, associate professor at Carleton University.

Richard, Stephanie, welcome to the program.

Thank you so much for making time.

Richard, I'm going to start with you.

This marks 80 years since the end of World War II.

Does warfare today look anything like it looked to the Canadian soldiers who fought back then?

I mean, if you just think about the parallel in our day to day lives, right?

In some ways warfare just kind of reflects how societies, technologies and all that sort of improve over generations.

And certainly our lives are completely different today.

And warfare is no different.

I think some of the major developments in, let's say, telecommunications, like phones, right?

Like back then, the decision making cycle, the decision to make, we're going to bomb something may take a week or so.

And much like if you had a decision a business would take, you know, something like to kind of bring together information.

And then today it's done within minutes or even seconds to some degree of, you know, the identification of a target, all that at the same time, some of the core strengths or ideas that you think about, how you know what Canadians are strong with, which is ingenuity and sort of how we operate on our daily lives is still reflected in the military so that, you know, it is it's a challenge.

And then today it's done within minutes or even seconds to some degree of, you know, the identification of a target, all that at the same time, some of the core strengths or ideas that you think about, how you know what Canadians are strong with, which is ingenuity and sort of how we operate on our daily lives is still reflected in the military so that, you know, it is it's a challenge.

But we have a new technological and societal kind of backdrop, and that's how a war is affected.

And so many of the core values, the ideas that exist, but the technology environment, the military is completely different.

Well, let's pick up on that.

Stephanie, what advancements or technologies would you say have changed the game the most?

Well, I think indisputably, if we're talking since 1945, it's nuclear weapons, right?

Nuclear weapons have really had a huge impact on the way we think about warfare, on the strategy of warfare.

And to a certain extent, with the advent of these nuclear weapons, a lot of the aim now is to deter force as opposed to use force.

And, you know, the threat of violence is really kind of latent in the sense that, you know, you're basically threatening massive retaliation if you do something that we don't like as opposed to, you know, actually having to go and use force and then stop once you agree to our terms.

So I think that's been a large part of that.

But at the same time, we have also seen advancements in other kinds.

It's not like there hasn't been war since 1945.

There obviously has been.

And a lot of them have been very different in the sense that they are conflicts that are between states and non-state actors.

We had, of course, the wars of decolonisation in the 1950s, 60s and 70s.

And, you know, in those cases, you had, you know, armies that had tremendous amounts of lethality, like large numbers of troops and struggled against kind of ragtag groups of, you know, well-organised, well-motivated forces that were nevertheless also supported by states but were able to inflict enough cost that these large militaries were unable to go forward.

So it shows that, you know, technology isn't always the answer.

It's the way.

And I think this was, you know, very much a part of Richard's answer, your ability to make those decisions quickly, to kind of integrate those technologies into how you think, but also your ability to win hearts and minds, which is a part of this kind of information warfare, which is also rapidly changing the way, you know, states have to think about armed conflict.

So with that, Richard, what does a military need to do in order to adapt and keep up with the times when we talk about technology, specifically.

The critical is flexibility.

I mean, you think about the rapidity of how our technology change is occurring right now, right?

You think about think about India in the space of sort of bioethics or biotechnology, right?

That's an area where you see rapid development in sort of new novel forms of pathogens and areas.

And that's the military has to keep it, keep focus on this, because that's the potential vector that one of our adversaries may use.

You know, it's a niche area, certainly, but it's just one of many.

You think about AI right now, just the difficulty that governments are and our societies are trying to deal with this absolutely novel form of technology that really didn't exist in maybe a decade and a half ago.

And the military is viewed as basically being the new commanding heights in the sense that if we are not on the cutting edge of this, at least to understand its effects and its possibilities, then one of our societies like China, which is a huge investor in this field, we may fall behind.

So certainly the ability to be flexible, to have the sort of reservoir of knowledge within the department or the military itself, to identify what are the trends, what are the things we need to watch, and what are the things we need to avoid. Those are the kind of critical areas of flexibility that I think you will see within the department, within everywhere else that are absolutely required.

Stephanie, what kind of capabilities do other militaries have that the Canadian Armed Forces don't?

It's a really interesting question.

You know, and on some level, it actually kind of gets down to bullets, right?

Like we've heard stories that, you know, Canadian armed forces haven't been able to train with bullets because there's an ammunition shortage.

So that's kind of some of the level that we're dealing with right now.

And we can get back to that maybe more in the budget part of the conversation.

But I think to a large extent that it's not, you know, we have really some really advanced capabilities.

You know, we saw the Canadian Armed Forces just recently start up a cyber command.

I think it's CAF Cybercom.

We have space based abilities, although we're looking to enhance them, and we have really good capabilities in the Arctic, in certain capabilities up there that, you know, even our NATO allies are, are interested in and are working with us on developing further.

So, you know, so it's not to say we don't have capabilities, but one of the things that I think that the Canadian Armed Forces is looking at right now is how warfare has been changing, particularly in the last, you know, even just 3 to 4 years.

They're looking at the lessons of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Right. And they're seeing how quickly adaptation takes place.

You know, the challenges that both sides are really having in terms of manpower and how to integrate force and technology together in order to basically survive in the case of Ukraine or, you know, just simply some of the brutality that still continues to exist.

You know, if we think back to the Syrian conflict in, you know, the over the last ten years, which is, you know, thankfully largely resolved, although there's still some fighting in that region.

But, I mean, the Russian armed forces were using barrel bombs, which are just simply, you know, metal containers full of junk dropped at large heights with dynamite and cause huge, immeasurable suffering.

So this isn't exactly an advanced technology, but it is a willingness to use brutal, brutal force on civilian populations.

That has definitely been a character of the wars we've been seeing in over the last couple of years, whether it's in Sudan, Ukraine, Gaza, anywhere.

Richard, in August, the Canadian army put out a policy proposal about modernising the force.

They said in that document, the army we have is not the army we need.

Can you describe the gaps that exist between the army we have and the army we need?

Well, it's manifold.

I mean, to some degree, you have to remember that most of our allies had starting a major modernisation cycle around 2014, 2015.

And that kind of aligns with the Wales summit, the NATO Wales summit, where that was where the 2% guidelines were first instituted.

And since then they have sort of viewed what's gone in Ukraine to such a great point and also in other conflicts to identify, well, what are these major trends, right?

And where can we go from here to sort of deal with, to, to address those issues?

So, for example, in the Army, specifically air defence is seen as absolutely vital enabler.

We watched today what goes on Ukraine with just the amount of drones that they've really taken up, a huge part of sort of the Army's existing capabilities.

It's not a it's not a replacement, but it's certainly a supplement, let's say, for a long range artillery, for the ability to sort of identify targets to reconnaissance is probably the most important development this area.

And so air defence systems are absolutely vital to ensure that, you know, armies can remain protected, able to be mobile and sort of undertake operations.

We don't have any real effective long range artillery.

Our tanks are starting to get old.

We don't have many because we've actually donated a fair few to Ukraine.

And I can get on and on and on.

But the one part that I think is really lacking that really needs to be addressed and accelerate progress.

So the networking component, because just like in our society today, as I mentioned before, we think about phones and, and sort of other sort of social media systems sort of bind us and make us more effective in a lot of our work.

The military has really been slow to adopt this because of those funding cutbacks, and that's a real core area that we need to address and move forward.

All right.

You talk funding.

Let's talk budget.

The Liberal government's budget laid out more than $80 billion over the next five years to rearm and reinvest in the military.

There is money set aside for recruitment and retention, for infrastructure and training and for new equipment.

Stephanie, we know that we want a line there for bullets, but what else do you want to see the money go to?

Well, one of the most interesting things that is in the budget is that of that $84 billion, 25% is earmarked just simply for raises, right?

Just paying people to get to, who have joined the armed forces, improving their salary.

And hopefully that will help improve recruitment and retainment.

And I think that's a good thing overall.

I mean, we want our soldiers to be well paid because they are in many ways making sacrifices that many of us in the civilian world aren't making on on a regular basis.

So I think that's a very good thing.

There's another, I think, $18 billion that's aimed at some of the weapons that, you know, Richard was just mentioning.

And, you know, if we look at the, the the document that the Army has been putting out, they've identified a number of those capabilities that they need, just things to help them just do better war fighting generally. Right.

So things like better precision becoming harder to detect, deny.

I think, you know, that's part of the lessons of Ukraine for sure.

You know, being able to target better, target faster.

I think that's a large part of it.

They've also identified the need to engage in long range capabilities.

So a lot of that kind of long range precision is a part of that $18 billion.

And and then finally kind of long term, I don't think this is in the $84 billion, but it is in the budget generally is the ability to, you know, help develop the Arctic. Right?

You know, if you want to be up there, you need strong, safe, healthy communities in the Arctic.

And so having things like roads that exist year round is going to be very important, particularly if you're going to emphasize the Army and military's ability to have persistence in the north.

So just simply building up those capabilities so we can put numbers of people up there in the Arctic in this, this document, you know, all the recent documents, whether defence policy update or the inflection point.

2025 Army document, really are emphasizing the Arctic as a central area of importance in the future.

2025 Army document, really are emphasizing the Arctic as a central area of importance in the future.

Richard, I want to get your take on that as well.

But overall, what do you make of the budget's plans for defence spending?

I think it's maybe the first initial blueprint to use some of their language, but I think it still requires a lot more detail to actually get a full appreciation of what it may entail.

And I also, as a general view, because we've been so delayed on the actual modernisation vis-a-vis our allies, we probably need more investment or significantly more investment.

The problem is, is there's just not enough capacity within the department to actually execute on, on, on some of these ambitions.

So it has definitely has a great rundown of those aspects.

The only one area that probably add might be is that there is $6.6 billion for the defence industrial base of Canada, an area that in order to sort of, let's say, get the munitions, get the ships and whatnot that are required to sort of execute on on the broad policy, ambition is really required.

And even there, I would argue that there's just there's just not enough amount.

The other one aspect that I think is, is important to view is that a lot of this was put into a five year time frame, and we don't know about exactly the details and also the sequencing.

Is it going to be backloaded like a lot of other previous policy documents or budgets, or is it frontloaded or evenly distributed?

Those are big questions.

So we need to see a bit more, as would be my thought.

And we probably need to spend more as well.

Yeah.

And if I could just complement that point I would just say that, you know, the word submarine doesn't really appear in the budget.

Right. And so we know that's something that's coming.

That's a decision down the road.

But yeah I mean I wouldn't exactly call it's a blueprint.

But like the faintest, faintest of blue, there's a lot more detail that's going to have to come out in the next couple of years.

But I think that clearly the military is seeing this as a generational opportunity.

And hopefully we will see that plan come to to fruition.

A friend of mine put it recently, it's like they it's as if the government has invited the military to go to the buffet, but not given them any dietary restrictions.

And so we're going to have to wait to see how that works out.

All right.

On paper, some people might look at that and be like, hey, that's really good.

Two for one right there.

Does that is that the right strategy?

I think it carries a fair bit of risk.

And I'd say the Ministry of Finance's comments just after the budget, where he says it has to support Canadian economy, I think is kind of reflects the potential risks of it.

Frankly, if you look at defence industries in most other countries, it's subservient to defence policy.

It is it is a direct line towards it.

And one of the ironies that Canada actually exports about as much as it produces for its own domestic utility, right, in the defence industry.

So we actually have a highly globalised industry.

But the reality is that the Canadian Forces have basically been starved for 20, if not 30 years of some pretty critical investments.

And if you start sort of diverting to look towards, oh, what can we get the most for the domestic benefit of Canada without actually addressing those?

Arguably the most fundamental concern that government has in terms of its foreign policy or its sovereignty, you are not going to get the bang for your buck.

You may actually get less capability at much higher costs.

Right?

And and just not even you wouldn't get the great economic output because it's not really hinged on what the forces needs.

Right.

And and what what are you what would be sustainable in long term because you're just kind of making economic bets rather than actually sustained bets on, you know, what what is required for those for the national sovereignty of the country.

We are going to leave it there.

Stephanie, Richard, it looks like we're going to have this conversation in a few months' time.

So looking forward to it.

And thank you for your insights.

Thank you.

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