Reports indicate that Canada has proceeded to order M142 HIMARS wheeled launchers and associated munitions from the United States. Canadian interest in the M142 HIMARS, which has become something of a household name as a result of its widespread use in the Russia-Ukraine War, is not a new development, with a public notification to the United States Congress having been released in October 2025.

Much can be said about the wisdom, prudence, and efficacy of this procurement decision, not least on account of enduring tensions with the United States under Trump 2.0, which has made otherwise quite mundane procurement decisions politically toxic and the subject of considerable public curiosity. This post will focus not on the Canada-United States angle but on the question of efficacy with respect to the Canada-NATO angle. Simply stated, why is Canada procuring the M142 HIMARS—or indeed anything like it from any vendor country, including one not named the United States of America? Is this an efficacious procurement decision for Canada itself?

Canada declared its interest in procuring such a ground-based guided artillery rocket/ballistic missile-centric long-range fires capability in Our North, Strong and Free (2024), which resulted in the Long Range Precision Strike (Land) procurement program. According to the former, the objective is to “acquire long-range missile capabilities for the Canadian Army. These missiles will be deployed to enable our forces to shoot at greater ranges than our adversaries in combat.” According to the latter, the objective is to “deliver a long-range precision strike capability that can provide responsive, 24/7, all-weather, precision-guided indirect fire support to defend the continent, enable a combat-capable Canadian brigade within a NATO or FVEY-led Division to deter adversaries, or to neutralize and destroy adversary high pay-off targets.”

All things considered, Ottawa’s intent appears to be to enhance Canada’s contribution to NATO vis-a-vis Russia with respect to a land-based Canadian presence in Europe and with respect to launching such missiles against Russian targets either on NATO or on Russian territory. Given this, Canada is, in effect, buying a political-diplomatic weapon when it comes to M142 HIMARS launchers and associated munitions: the primary objective is to put a pacifier into the mouths of Canada’s NATO allies, including the United States. The fact that the Russian Federation will encounter a greater threat from NATO if and when Canada’s M142 HIMARS launchers are deployed in Europe is, in effect, rather incidental. Unlike many of the other procurement projects pursued by the Canadian Armed Forces, the M142 HIMARS and associated missiles contribute next to nothing to Canada’s security within North America (more on this later).

The October 2025 notification to the United States Congress indicates that Canada had requested to buy up to:

• 26x M142 wheeled launchers (i.e., M142 HIMARS) alongside various types of ancillary equipment.

• 132x M31A1 rocket pods (each loaded with 6x 227 mm diameter M31 series guided rockets, which is to say 792 M31 series guided rockets). M31A1 rockets are equipped with unitary high explosive-fragmentation warheads. These have a maximum range of approximately 90 kilometers.

• 132x M30A2 GMLRS pods (each loaded with 6x 227 mm diameter M30 series guided rockets, which is to say 792x M30 series guided rockets). M30A2 rockets are equipped with the so-called alternative warhead, which is to say a high explosive-fragmentation warhead surrounded by some 160,000 pre-formed tungsten fragments and an airburst fuse. These have a maximum range of approximately 90 kilometers.

• 32x M403 GMLRS-ER (i.e., extended-range) pods and 32x M404 GMLRS-ER pods (i.e., 384x GMRLS-ER guided rockets in total). The M403 is equipped with a high explosive-fragmentation warhead, whereas the M404 is equipped with the so-called alternative warhead, which comes with pre-formed tungsten fragments and an airburst fuse. These have a maximum range of approximately 150 kilometers.

• 64x M57 ATACMS 610 mm diameter short-range ballistic missiles. These have a maximum range of approximately 300 kilometers and are much larger and heavier than the aforementioned 227 mm diameter munitions. Each M142 launcher can be loaded with a single pod. Whereas each pod can be loaded with six 227 mm diameter guided artillery rockets, each pod can be loaded with just one 610 mm diameter ATACMS ballistic missile.

It bears emphasis that it is hardly unusual for governments not to purchase the full quantity of items specified in these public documents, which are intended to notify the United States Congress of the intentions of the American executive branch (other countries do not have a comparable procedure, so we typically do not know what deal other countries offer Canada).

The M142 HIMARS and associated 227 mm diameter GMLRS family guided artillery rockets and 610 mm ATACMS family ballistic missiles are potent and proven shorter-range strike systems. Leaving aside tensions in Canada-United States relations, which may well not endure beyond Trump 2.0 and January 2029, and the question of whether a different system, such as the South Korean K239 Chunmoo, is a better option for Canada, my primary objection to Canada’s procurement of any such system from any vendor country concerns how the allocation of Canada’s finite resources toward such a system and capability set is, in effect, increasingly redundant. I say this not least on account of how it is solely a Canadian contribution to NATO within Europe, as opposed to NATO within North America, where Canada’s “homeland” resides—a place that Canada’s European allies simply assume to be secure, even as they make negligible contributions, if any, toward the defence of NATO territory within North America.

At the time when Russia initiated its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, European NATO countries possessed shorter-range strike capabilities in the vein of the M142’s GMLRS guided rockets and ATACMS ballistic missiles in limited and inadequate numbers. Since February 2022, however, European NATO members have made heavy investments toward such capabilities. Existing M270 MLRS operators—the M270 is the older tracked counterpart to the better-known M142 HIMARS wheeled launcher—have doubled down on capabilities that they had been gradually shedding over the course of the post-Cold War era. Some European NATO members, particularly the Baltic states, have, like Canada, acquired such capabilities for the first time. Poland, which borders the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad and functionally borders Russia proper, given the geographic realities of the Baltic states and Belarus, has undertaken a veritable procurement spree in this area. As a result, what was once a glaring capability shortfall for European NATO members is, in effect, no more.

According to the formal public notification to the United States Congress, Canada requested authorization to purchase up to 26x M142 HIMARS wheeled launchers alongside associated 227 mm diameter guided artillery rockets and 610 mm diameter short-range ballistic missiles. Each of the RCAF’s CC-177 military transport aircraft can carry up to two M142 HIMARS wheeled launchers at a time—the pods containing the 227 mm and 610 mm must also be transported from Canada to Europe alongside ancillary equipment required to operate the M142 HIMARS launchers. The RCAF operates a total of 5x CC-177 military transport aircraft, not all of which are flightworthy on a given day. The RCAF’s fleet of 17x CC-130J military transport aircraft can carry one M142 HIMARS wheeled launcher at a time and is also more limited in terms of range, not least when carrying even a stripped-down M142 launcher.

Simply stated, even deploying 8x M142 HIMARS launchers from Canada to Europe, specifically, to Poland and/or the Baltic states, will amount to a very significant logistical undertaking in times of crisis or war, which is to say at a time when non-American and American airlift capacity alike will likely be strained. The RCAF itself will have to transfer other types of equipment, as well as personnel and supplies, to Europe. While personnel and certain types of supplies can be loaded onto airliner-type aircraft chartered by the Canadian government, the M142 HIMARS launchers must be transported either via dedicated military transport aircraft or by sea. Maritime shipping from Montreal to a port in western Europe will take the better part of two weeks, even if a ship is immediately available for a Canadian M142 HIMARS unit that is immediately ready to deploy from a Canadian port. It will likely take a Canadian M142 HIMARS unit that reaches Europe several more days to arrive at potential launch sites from which targets in Kaliningrad and/or Russia proper can be targeted with existing munitions.

There is a real possibility that European NATO member states will run out of munitions for their M142 and M270 launchers by the time that non-forward-deployed Canadian M142 HIMARS launchers arrive in Europe, absent considerable early warning as to the potential onset of a war and considerable initiative in rapidly deploying Canadian Forces to Europe prior to the onset of a war. There is, therefore, a real possibility that European NATO member states will ask Ottawa to prioritize the transfer of Canadian-owned 227 mm diameter guided artillery rockets and 610 mm diameter short-range ballistic missiles. Ottawa may understandably balk at such requests, but it would be imprudent in times of crisis or war not to expedite the shipment of Canadian-owned munitions for Canada’s M142 HIMARS launchers over the launchers themselves, even if it means that Canada’s NATO allies, not Canada itself, will end up launching the munitions that Canadian taxpayers pay for.

Toward the beginning of this post, I characterized Canada’s procurement of M142 HIMARS launchers and associated munitions as buying a political-diplomatic weapon: the primary purpose is to put a pacifier into the mouths of Canada’s NATO allies, including the United States. As stated earlier, the fact that the Russian Federation will encounter a greater threat from NATO if and when Canada’s M142 HIMARS launchers are deployed in Europe is, in effect, rather incidental. Naturally, a permanent forward presence of Canadian M142 HIMARS launchers and associated crews in Europe will change things, but Canada is unlikely to forward-deploy its entire arsenal of M142 HIMARS launchers and/or the associated munitions in Europe, and the marginal utility and value of a Canadian M142 HIMARS launcher is inherently lower now that European NATO countries are deploying such systems in growing numbers. All things considered, the M142 HIMARS is a great example of precisely the type of system and capability set that European NATO countries themselves need to be procuring alongside the relevant munitions, and themselves forward-deploying closer to Poland and/or the Baltic states so as to bring Russian targets within range in the opening hours of a war, not the opening days or weeks of a war. M142 HIMARS launchers are simply useless to NATO if they are not within 300 kilometers of potential Russian targets (500 kilometers, if and when NATO member states procure and deploy the new longer-range American PrSM ballistic missile).

As stated earlier, unlike many of the other procurement projects pursued by the Canadian Armed Forces, the M142 HIMARS and associated missiles contribute next to nothing to Canada’s security within North America. In principle, Canada’s M142 HIMARS launchers can be used to target American forces, and perhaps American territory, in the unlikely but nevertheless non-zero probability event of an American invasion. I would, however, caution Canadians that the current state of relations with the United States under Trump 2.0 may not endure past January 2029, and that no amount of M142 HIMARS launchers and associated munitions—or, say, South Korean-built K239 Chunmoo launchers and associated munitions, will either solve the political-diplomatic challenge problem that is Trump 2.0, or afford Canada security—arms procurement is about sourcing means through which to reach the desired ends, above all enhancing Canada’s security.

Even if Canada were to employ the requested 610 mm diameter ATACMS ballistic missiles against the United States, a 300-kilometer range ballistic missile is rather inadequate for Canada’s purposes in a hypothetical American invasion scenario, and Canada’s M142 launchers will likely be subject to the full breadth of American counterforce capabilities in any such potentiality. There is a case for Ottawa to buy out some proverbial insurance policies for such an eventuality, but the M142 HIMARS launchers and associated munitions are a far cry from a suitable insurance policy for Canada’s purposes.

According to a CBC News report, the Carney government will soon review proposals from the Department of National Defence as to whether and how Canada should pursue a major expansion of the country’s military reserves to a target strength of 100,000 primary reservists and, more ambitiously and controversially, to establish a lightly trained and equipped supplementary reserve of 300,000. The latest reports follow a series of reports over the past year or so concerning what the Department of National Defence had in mind for the country. This notably included a proposal, which has since reportedly been abandoned following controversy, to target Canada’s federal public servants for recruitment into the Supplementary Reserve.

It is productive to offer a reminder of what this particular proposal reportedly entailed:

“The Supplementary or other Reserve should accommodate skilled and unskilled contributors while still differentiating those with previous CAF service from new members,” Carignan and Beck wrote in a nine-page, unclassified document obtained by the Citizen. “It should initially prioritize volunteer public servants at the federal and provincial/territorial level. The entry criteria for the Supplementary or other Reserve should be less restrictive than the Reserve Force for age limits as well as physical and fitness requirements.” [Emphasis added]

I have previously argued that there may be more to the notion of tapping into the labour pool composed of federal public servants than meets the eye.

In this post, I will explain why a hypothetical American invasion, which the Department of National Defence has been reportedly giving some thought to—a major headline in itself—is perhaps the only scenario in which there is a case for essentially sabotaging the administrative capacity of Canada’s federal government so as to arm more Canadians, not least in and around the Ottawa metropolitan area.

The Inherent Opportunity Costs of Revervist Mobilization

An expansion of military reserves can be tempting for a variety of reasons. If nothing else, a greater reliance on part-time military personnel means significantly lower military spending than would otherwise be the case if Canada were to only recruit additional full-time military personnel, not least in a context in which more than 30% of Canada’s annual military expenditures are allocated toward personnel expenses. An expansion of Canada’s military reserves also means that part-time military personnel will, at least in part, continue to contribute to the civil economy, unlike their full-time counterparts, who are, in effect, economically unproductive. In principle, an expansion of military reserves has many benefits, although there are inherent costs and trade-offs in terms of readiness, as well as the broader issue of the level of training and competency that can be attained and sustained over x years. Leaving aside a federal response to a natural disaster, for which Canada does not require uniformed part-time military personnel, let alone armed and unfiformed part-time military personnel, a military reserve that is not ready for any kind of combat-oriented deployment—without a dramatically elevated and, all things considered, politically unacceptable risk of combat losses—within several weeks or months may as well not exist, with the exception of one specific scenario: a hypothetical American invasion of Canada.

It is important to note that there are a series of approaches to non-full-time military reserves. This post—and public debate within Canada more generally—focuses on part-time all-volunteer military personnel and associated units in a manner largely pioneered by the United States, which is best understood in the context of the U.S. Army National Guard and the U.S. Air National Guard. There are, of course, other conceptions of military reserves, including the more or less universal notion of mobilizing ex-military personnel in wartime, as well as the notion of mobilizing discharged cohorts of conscripts where conscription still takes place.

The Canadian Armed Forces are composed of professional all-volunteer full-time Regular Force personnel as well as all-volunteer part-time Reserve Force personnel. There is no serious discussion about introducing (military) conscription or some kind of national service, and the proposed Supplementary Reserve force of 300,000 is expected to be nothing other than an all-volunteer part-time military force, one that will, in all likelihood, follow the American national guard model of “a weekend a month, two weeks a year” part-time military service (excluding initial training).

Discussions of military reserves often focus on what part-time reservist military personnel can offer a country, and why the approach may be preferable to an expansion of the full-time regular force (these are not, of course, mutually exclusive approaches). As with most things in life, there are, however, major trade-offs, and there exists a tendency to overlook how military reserves are fundamentally subtractive: when mobilized, the country loses something. To explain this dynamic, it is productive to offer a recent vignette from the United States.

Several years ago, schoolteachers in California went on strike. In response, the governor of California mobilized the California National Guard to help keep schools open. This resulted in a part-time enlisted national guard member who happened to work a day job as a Ph.D.-wielding physicist for one of the United States Department of Energy’s national laboratories temporarily working as a schoolteacher while dressed in a camouflage uniform. The strike affecting public schools was brief, and the physicist in question may not have missed much important work. Even so, the fact that such a difficult-to-substitute and highly skilled person working for the American federal government volunteered to join the national guard as a part-time reservist—an inherently personal choice—raised a complex and difficult-to-answer question for any democracy: was this a sensible allocation of the country’s human resources? In the event of a major war, such as a war with Russia, or a likely protracted war with China, did the United States really want to have volunteer reservists enlist as privates and serve in, for example, the infantry, even if they are neurosurgeons, food safety inspectors, air traffic controllers, or schoolteachers?

I draw attention to this vignette because it highlights something important about military reservists: unlike their full-time counterparts, which is to say the personnel who constitute the Canadian Armed Forces’ regulars, reservists are doing something on a typical workday, and often something economically productive at that. Reservists may be hairdressers, school teachers, bus drivers, medical doctors, musicians, electricians, truck drivers, carpenters, and so forth. When called to duty, whether in time of war or in response to a natural disaster, mobilized reservists naturally cannot do what they otherwise do on a typical workday, and Canadian society and Canada’s economy will feel their temporary absence. In this particular sense, military reserves are fundamentally subtractive. If, for example, a country has a reserve military field hospital of company or battalion size, it will in all likelihood be staffed by persons who work as civilian healthcare providers in peacetime. When mobilized to serve in uniform, the Canadian Armed Forces gains another field hospital at the expense of the rest of the country: healthcare systems across Canada will have to operate at a degraded capacity for as long as said reservist healthcare providers are mobilized.

Why Would Canada Mobilize Federal Public Servants For Military Service?

The above can be largely distilled into an argument that Ottawa would do well to very carefully consider who it recruits into a military reserve and whether the country benefits from having one additional person in uniform doing x at the cost of losing one civilian doing y, at least for the duration of mobilization—and perhaps forever, should the mobilized reservist in question be killed or injured—this entire debate only exists because Ottawa is concerned about a major war. All things considered, I am more understanding of the case for mobilizing, say, Canadians who work as medical doctors and school teachers that volunteer to join the Supplementary Reserve—in whatever capacity, including infantry—than I am of mobilizing federal public servants in a war that is significant enough for the mobilization of the proposed 300,000-strong Supplementary Reserve to be given much consideration given the economic damage and disruption that the mobilization of so many Canadians in uniform will inherently entail.

The Covid-19 pandemic serves as an instructive recent case in which Canada’s federal government, alongside its provincial and sub-provincial counterparts, had to, in effect, mobilize for an “all hands on deck” type of emergency, notwithstanding the work-from-home provisions. Simply stated, a national emergency, whether a pandemic or a war, is not the time to deprive the machinery of government of the public servants who run it as well as it runs on any given day. A major war in which Canada’s federal government will even consider mobilizing up to 400,000 reservists—some 1% of Canada’s total population and some 1.4% of Canadians aged 18-64—will, by definition, be a very major crisis for the country, one in which the entire federal public service will have to rise to the challenge in an “all hands on deck” type of emergency.

While the Department of National Defence has backtracked on the notion of targeting federal public servants as a source of recruits for a 300,000-strong Supplementary Reserve, it is important to consider that there is one very specific scenario in which it actually behooves Canada’s federal government to heavily draw upon the federal public service as a source of recruits for the Supplementary Reserve: a hypothetical American invasion of Canada. This is, in effect, the only plausible scenario in which there is a case for essentially self-sabotaging the administrative capacity of Canada’s federal government so as to bolster the country’s military capabilities. Canada may well require an expanded 100,000-strong Primary Reserve as well as a 300,000-strong Supplementary Reserve to meet its NATO commitments, but the country will need its federal administrative apparatus to be working at “110%” in a major war, and simply cannot afford to, in effect, place experienced bureaucrats well-versed in running the machinery of state in uniform—supplying and sustaining up to 400,000 mobilized reservists, who will collectively outnumber the entire federal public service, will be herculean administrative undertaking.

While there are strong arguments against using federal public servants as a pool of labour for the proposed 300,000-strong Supplementary Reserve, it nevertheless worth noting that some 40% of Canada’s federal public servants are based in the Ottawa area. That is to say, some 140,000 Canadians of working age, and some 9% of the total population of the Ottawa-Gatineau metropolitan area (and an even larger percentage of the adult population, and of the adult population aged 18-64, in said metropolitan area). By virtue of geography, most Canadians—and most of the Canadian Armed Forces’ regular and primary reserve units and personnel—are nowhere near Ottawa—the nation’s capital and a likely high-priority target for the United States in an unlikely hypothetical invasion scenario—on any given day. If Canadians in the supplementary reserve are going to contribute to the defence of the nation’s capital, they will have to be in and around the Ottawa-Gatineau metropolitan area at the start of a crisis or war.

By virtue of geography, Canada will also have little time to respond to a hypothetical American invasion. A distance of less than 75 kilometers separates Parliament Hill in Ottawa from American territory. For context, that is some sixteen minutes of flight time by helicopter from the United States (CFB Petawawa is, meanwhile, some 135 kilometers from Parliament Hill). Fort Drum, New York, which is home to the United States Army’s active duty/regular force 10th Mountain Division—some 15,000 military personnel, including two permanently assigned transport helicopter battalions, is located some 155 kilometers from Parliament Hill. In the very unlikely event that the proverbial hammer falls, it will likely fall very fast and very hard in the Ottawa area. Beyond whatever grouping of regular force and primary reserve personnel that Canada can rapidly mobilize in and around Ottawa, any Canadians, including everyday citizens not part of a lightly trained and equipped Supplementary Reserve taking up arms in the defence of the country and the nation’s capital, will have to be in and around the Ottawa-Gatineau metropolitan area at the start of a crisis or war.

As explained, mobilizing federal public servants who volunteered to join the federal public service, some 40% of whom are based in the Ottawa-Gatineau metropolitan area, amounts to self-sabotaging the administrative capacities of the federal government precisely when it is most needed during a major crisis or war. If, however, Canada faces the prospect of an American invasion, one that will almost certainly include rapid American movements toward Ottawa in this still unlikely scenario, Canada will face an existential struggle in which the nation’s survival as a sovereign and independent country is at stake, an existential struggle that justifies self-sabotaging the administrative capacities of the federal government as a necessary sacrifice. Canada will need additional military forces in and around the Ottawa-Gatineau metropolitan area to deter American military action by denying Trump—and perhaps future American presidents—a low-cost and low-risk fait accompli type of scenario. Most Canadians do not live anywhere near Ottawa. Most regular force Canadian military personnel are not garrisoned anywhere near Ottawa. Around 15% of the adult population aged 18-64 in the Ottawa-Gatineau metropolitan area works for the federal government. Federal public servants who reside in the Ottawa-Gatineau metropolitan area are the right people to recruit for a proposed 300,000-strong Supplementary Reserve if a hypothetical American invasion is the scenario motivating this proposed policy.

I am mindful that Ottawa’s motivations in expanding the country’s military capabilities are not solely motivated by concerns about the United States under Trump 2.0. I am mindful that the Canadian Armed Forces have their own institutional interests, and that civil-military relations in Canada’s constitutional order mean that it will ultimately be the incumbent prime minister and cabinet who will decide such matters, whether through acts of commission or omission. I am also mindful that there is a future for Canada-United States relations beyond the life of the mere mortal Donald John Trump, and that a hypothetical American invasion of Canada is just that—a hypothetical scenario—and a thankfully still very unlikely one at that. Even so, Canada has shifted from a very long era in which there was essentially a zero percent probability of American military action against Canada to a non-zero percent probability of American military action against Canada. Reporting suggests that Ottawa is giving this grave scenario, however unlikely, some thought at a time when the country is working on enhancing its military capabilities for reasons unrelated to Trump and the United States. Be that as it may, the very fact that Canadian federal public servants were even being considered as a recruiting pool for a proposed 300,000-strong Supplementary Reserve—at the cost of self-sabotaging Canada’s federal administrative capacity at times of mobilization—should alarm Canadians, given how there is only one scenario in which there is a case for essentially sabotaging the administrative capacity of Canada’s federal government so as to arm more Canadians, not least in an around the Ottawa metropolitan area: a hypothetical American invasion of Canada.

Note: The following text was originally posted on my 𝕏/Twitter account. The original post may be expanded upon and edited for grammar and style in this post. Link

Originally posted on 20 January 2026

All things considered, the mental/conceptual models of the approaches to “total defence” undertaken by the likes of Finland, Sweden, Singapore, and Ukraine, etc., do not apply to Canada. The interplay of Canada’s human and physical geography with America’s immense military capabilities does not afford Canada such options. If the proverbial hammer falls, most of the surface area of even the ~densely populated areas of Canada will likely be militarily irrelevant. The same applies to the more populated segments ot the Canada-U.S. border—unless we are talking about a de facto scorched earth strategy in which Canada makes concerted efforts to independently demolish transportation infrastructure and the like, such as the seven major bridge and tunnel crossings in the Detroit-Windsor and Niagara Falls sectors (which is much easier said than done).

All things considered, the following three sectors are likely to be the most important in a(n unlikely) worst-case scenario:

• (A) The intertwined Kingston and Ottawa Valley sector(s).

• (B) The Windsor/Niagara Falls sector, including the approaches to the densely populated Greater Toronto Area sector.

• (C) Remote/non-urban oil facilities in Alberta—one of the bigger "prizes," as it were—which can also be subject to a scorched earth strategy.

There is no viable so-called Fabian military strategy for Canada against the United States. Canada is not in Ukraine’s position vis-a-vis Russia. The United States will be able to overrun most of Canada's populated areas and, more importantly, leave no opportunity for international shipments of armaments to Canada, should anyone even be so bold as to extend military support and face America's wrath in the unlikely event that the proverbial hammer falls.

While there are several viable approaches through which Canada can make itself "difficult and/or costly to swallow"—none of which are suitable subjects for serious discussion in public fora, the fact remains that Canadian Forces are far too small and spread out far too thin to be decisively used in irregular warfare vis-a-vis the United States, and their garrisons and armouries will likely be subject to intense bombardment in the unlikely event that the worst-case scenario comes to pass. There is scope for an armed insurgency, particularly in Canada's largest population centers, should the United States occupy Canada, but that is another matter entirely.

Whatever approach(es) Ottawa comes to pursue, Canada will have to undertake military preparations that cannot be hidden, certainly not from the United States. Ottawa will, in all likelihood, also have to turn to a series of "unconventional" armament supplies—bullets are bullets, explosives are explosives, and needs must—if the country is to prepare itself for such an eventuality. Ottawa and Canadians more generally will need to have an extremely serious and sober discussion of what it will mean to go down with a fight vis-a-vis the United States, and continue an insurgency afterward (possibly without our current cohort of elected leaders alive, or in power—the continuity of Canada's constitutional order cannot be taken for granted). There is no whitewashing this: we are talking about nothing other than a very major bloodletting in an extreme worst-case scenario.

The government's proposal to establish a supplementary military reserve of 300,000 in late 2025 did not receive enough attention for reasons that I still do not understand. All things considered, there is only one realistic scenario for which Canada will need a military of such size. If Canada's duly elected leaders truly believe that the threat of American military action is not only non-zero but perhaps even quite high, then concerted military preparations will be required, including the training and possible arming of the civilian population.

Note: The following text was originally posted on my 𝕏/Twitter account. The original post may be expanded upon and edited for grammar and style in this post. Link

Originally posted on 11 December 2025

No one in Ottawa appears to be willing to go on record characterizing the reported planned build-up of a military reserve of 400,000 personnel—85,000 regulars + 100,000 military reservists + 300,000 supplemental “citizen” reservists—as being motivated, if only in part, by Trump and the United States under Trump 2.0, but it is otherwise difficult to explain the rationale behind such a move, which will likely cost billions in baseline overhead expenses (i.e., uniforms, personal equipment, admin/payroll, facilities upgrades, etc.) even without procuring lots of heavy/expensive military equipment for hundreds of thousands of additional military personnel.

One does not need people in military uniforms, armed or otherwise, to undertake disaster response roles. The reported numbers are also difficult to explain. A full-time national disaster response force, plus paid/unpaid volunteer units at the federal and provincial levels, makes more sense, even if these are thrown under the Department of National Defence budget as part of the creative accounting exercises that most NATO countries are undertaking to meet the second Trump administration’s spending targets for NATO. There is a case for a backstop to the Canadian Forces (regulars), RCMP, and provincial police forces in terms of the aid to the civil power role, but that is a topic that will likely be as, if not more, contentious as publicly characterizing the planned expansion of Canada’s military reserves as being motivated by the increasingly too-high-to-do-nothing—albeit still very low—threat of an American invasion.

As hedging approaches go, there is a certain appeal to expanding the military reserves in this manner. It will not make Canada much harder to invade and occupy, but it will make any such American decision have a higher human toll—albeit likely more in terms of greater Canadian casualties than American casualties, unless the planned new reservists get suitable training and equipment, which will entail an approach of a very different character and require much larger budgetary allocations that will be impossible to hide.

All things considered, the mental/conceptual model of the approaches to “total defence” undertaken by the likes of Finland, Sweden, Singapore, etc.—which the Canadian Forces have reportedly been studying for reasons beyond a potential American invasion—do not apply to Canada. The interplay of Canada’s human and physical geography with America’s immense military capabilities does not afford Canada such options in the unlikely event of an American invasion. Canada’s elected leaders evidently feel that they have to do something across the board in terms of national defence, including deviating from their longstanding procurement plans, and this appears to be resulting in some short-term thinking. One hopes that decision-makers in Ottawa realize that if an American invasion does come to pass, the nobility of “going down with a fight” will likely come with a hefty human price tag expressed in terms of corpses and mangled bodies, as well as physical destruction across Canada.

Canada is not the only NATO country to find itself in the—with respect to recent history—unfamiliar and very uncomfortable position of having to view the United States as a potential, if not an actual, adversary, and, as such, deal with the threat of invasion. Denmark is the other. Denmark confronts an unwanted reality in which it needs the United States and military cooperation with the United States via NATO to secure itself and European NATO countries against Russia, even as it faces the prospect of American territorial aggrandizement in Greenland. Denmark is hedging and selectively engaging with the United States where possible and as and when required.

Neither Canada nor Denmark have good “outside options,” unless their leaders are willing to fly to Moscow and/or Beijing seeking protection. Denmark is in a better position in terms of geographical distance from the US in terms of core Danish territory—where most of its population lives, which is not Greenland, membership in the European Union, and proximity to European NATO countries. Canada must, in effect, go it alone. Unlike Denmark, which is increasingly discussing the unfortunate new reality in public, Canada’s policy response is being made behind closed doors without any semblance of a public debate, even in Parliament. These are fateful decisions for Canada to make.