Episode Transcript
ANTIFASCIST DAD — Episode 25
Polite Canada Remilitarizes with Brent Patterson
Matthew Remski: This is Matthew Remski with Episode 25 of Antifascist Dad Podcast: Polite Canada Remilitarizes, with Brent Patterson.
Brent Patterson: We're talking about war, which means it does mean death, it does mean injury, it means casualty, it means children being killed, it means theft of our future. There are so many abhorrent things about this course that we're on, but it gets manufactured and modified and sold in ways that sanitize it and elevate it into something that it isn't.
Matthew Remski: Brent is an anti-militarism organizer involved in social movements dating back to the late 1980s, in the areas of prison abolition, Indigenous solidarity, and campaigns against state violence. He joins me to talk about Prime Minister Mark Carney's sleight of hand — how he's framing Canada's remilitarization program as a sovereignty issue over critical minerals, and defence building as industrial strategy, all with the technocratic flair of the numbers man at the bank.
For housekeeping: you can find me on Bluesky and Instagram under my name, and I'm on YouTube and TikTok as AntifascistDad. The Patreon for this show is antifascistdadpodcast, where subscribers get early access to every Part Two of these main feed episodes, including this one. And there's still time to pre-order my book before it drops on April 26th: Antifascist Dad: Crucial Conversations with Young People in Chaotic Times. Pre-ordering is good for visibility and algorithms, so please consider doing that.
I'm going to continue to follow Mark Carney closely on Antifascist Dad — not because he's a fascist dad figure, but because he's something arguably worse: a warm and kindly liberal dad who is so wrapped up in the game of capitalism that he will ignore or facilitate the crises of inequality that lead to fascism. By the time we get to the stage of Trump, it's obvious that there's nothing to do but fight back with limited resources. But with Carney, as with any one of a dozen Global North liberal leaders today now pursuing militarism and austerity in the name of global security, many have this feeling that he's reasonable — making difficult choices in a difficult world with the aim of preserving a fragile peace and the common good. But the facts show otherwise.
Brent and I will be covering a bunch of these facts and numbers, but for this intro I want to focus closely on the F-35 warplane as a peak example of how capitalism mobilizes nationalist fear to literally steal money from the mouths of children.
So the story is: Canada is buying 88 F-35A Lightning II stealth jets to replace its aging fleet of CF-18 Hornets, which have been in service since 1982. This has been a long process, with the intent to buy announced by the Conservative Harper government in 2010, but stalled under Trudeau in 2015. Trudeau actually campaigned for office on cutting this deal, but then turned around and launched a new bidding competition in 2016, which wound up naming Lockheed Martin the top-ranked bidder in March 2022 — on, you guessed it, the F-35. And now we have a formally signed agreement for purchase as of January 2023.
Canada has currently committed funds for 16 aircraft and purchased components for 14 more, even while the Carney government's formal review is underway. First deliveries are expected in 2026, with the first squadron operational by 2029 and the full fleet operational between 2032 and 2034.
How expensive? What began as a C$9 billion deal under Harper in 2010 became a C$19 billion deal signed in 2023, then ballooned to C$27.7 billion by the 2025 Auditor General's finding. Essential infrastructure and weapons add-ons added at least another C$5.5 billion. The full 45-year life-cycle cost estimated by the Parliamentary Budget Office is C$73.9 billion.
To put this in perspective: that same Parliamentary Budget Office says that achieving a 50% reduction in chronic homelessness — among the 35,000 Canadians unsheltered on any given night, and the 265,000 to 300,000 who experience homelessness at some point each year — would cost C$3.5 billion per year. That is approximately one-twentieth of the F-35 program's 45-year life-cycle cost. The federal government has known math like this for decades and has nonetheless consistently chosen to spend less on affordable housing per capita in real terms than it did in 1989.
So how is the F-35 sold to the Canadian public? This is where the magic comes in.
We're told that Canada is obligated to contribute to air defence under the NORAD agreement with the United States. There's also the NATO commitment of spending 2% of GDP on defence, now upped to 5% by 2035 — and of course this isn't something we can possibly change, is it? We can't negotiate our way out of that. Impossible.
But then things get more contradictory. There is the sovereignty argument, especially concerning the Arctic. The Russians are coming, the Chinese are coming. We need to protect the new shipping corridors that burning fossil fuels — including burning them while flying super-expensive jets — are opening up. Also, the government says we need these jets because the F-35s run on a data-sharing architecture that allows seamless integration with US and NATO forces. So in any serious conflict scenario, Canada would fight alongside the US, operating on the same platform, eliminating coordination friction.
But the Arctic argument doesn't track with the F-35's performance. It has a short range and very high per-flight-hour costs — not good for vast northern distances. Not to worry, though, because a lot of what we used our old jets for was 1,600 bombing missions over Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Serbia.
But more importantly, the entire premise that a new Canadian fleet of super-advanced warplanes will bolster national sovereignty is completely undermined by the fact that we are essentially buying really expensive flying iPhones.
Buying an F-35 is not like buying a pickup truck off the line, where you can drive it wherever you want and repair or modify it with the tools and materials you have. The F-35 is an apex product of US-dominated globalization, made up of 300,000 parts from more than 1,100 suppliers, whose sprawling supply chain touches nearly every US state and countries around the world. More than that, it is a networked software ecosystem that integrates maintenance, supply chain, combat mission, and threat analysis.
And who owns that data?
All F-35 data flows through a central server called the Autonomic Logistic Operating Unit, based in Fort Worth, Texas, and run by Lockheed Martin. From there, software and data patches are uploaded to all F-35 users worldwide. This is why I'm using the iPhone metaphor.
ALIS stores data on servers of a commercial company on US soil, placing it under US government jurisdiction. It is a cloud-based logistics system housed on US servers — which means the whole Canadian fleet could theoretically be grounded if the US chose to lock out Canada during a trade war or if a conflict arose.
Would this happen through a kill switch? There's no red button in a box in Norfolk, Virginia. But there might as well be, through the control of what are called Mission Data Files: 8 million lines of code overseen by a US government lab. Buyers of this warplane — Australia and the UK included — will be mostly reliant on US programmers for updates and for programming plans that allow them to execute sovereign missions. But they will pay for this per service, and be subject to US approval.
So basically what Carney is taking money away from — food aid, housing, mental health care, and Indigenous programs — is the purchase of a fleet of wildly expensive iPhones that stay operational based on a subscription model paid to Apple.
We buy the hardware once. We pay recurring fees — annually, per aircraft, per flight hour — for software updates, mission data files, logistics management, sustainment contracts, and access to the reprogramming lab. We cannot cancel the subscription without grounding the fleet. We cannot run the software independently. If the relationship with the provider deteriorates, our aircraft become progressively less effective as mission data files go unupdated and parts become harder to source.
So what are we doing here?
Our southern neighbour is a fascist rogue state arbitrarily hitting us with tariffs. Citizens are nervous about annexation. Carney stokes national pride with the "Elbows Up" slogan — I'll talk about that in Part Two of this episode. He talks of financial independence and control of resources, and encourages people to "Buy Canadian." But the data on the F-35 is just one example of how it's all a lie. That beneath everything, there is no national soul, there is no shared morality, there is no geopolitical stance at odds with the American Empire. Beneath it all, it's just capital flowing through a borderless world, amassing wealth in a few places and killing people in many more.
And the reason I believe it is so crucial to see this clearly is because of how it is sold through the language of liberal proceduralism and folksy independence.
In Carney's own words from Davos: you cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination. Boy, is he ever slick.
Here's my conversation with Brent Patterson. He's been an anti-war organizer for over 40 years. He lives in Ottawa on unceded Algonquin territory.
Matthew Remski: Brent Patterson, welcome to Antifascist Dad. Thanks for taking the time. Generally speaking, militarization is increasing around the globe. We're going to be talking about Canada mainly, but it's happening in Japan, it's happening across Europe. Even Australia is increasing its long-range missile strike capability. What does a surge like this around the world tell us about global capitalism and politics at this point?
Brent Patterson: Thank you very much. Yeah, it's an excellent question, and it's an accurate observation. Military spending is increasing around the world to unbelievable levels. When we look at current spending, NATO spending around the world is just under three trillion dollars a year. Now, if this 5% of GDP target is met, that increases it to $4.2 trillion a year — just from NATO countries. So it's an astonishing amount of money, an astonishing amount of wasted money. What does it tell us about this stage of capitalism or of imperialism? It says that we're in perhaps some new political moment that needs to be defined. It's odd to be asked the question in a way, because I've been thinking there must be a Marxist theoretician or analyst out there who can really say this is a particular stage of imperialism and this is what it tells us. I'm grasping for that analysis, other than to say that in 1911 Rosa Luxemburg was saying: militarism, whether as armed peace or war, is a legitimate child of capitalism.
Matthew Remski: Turning to Canada to get specific about where we live — let's talk about the extent of Carney's remilitarization plans and their costs. Where is he taking that money from?
Brent Patterson: I think we can look at some specific things. First, the cost. Last year, military spending in Canada was about $40 billion. Within ten years, Carney wants to take us to $150 billion a year in military spending. He'll be taking that from somewhere. Before we get to where it's coming from, I should also say there are other aspects to this beyond annual military spending. There's the push around critical mineral mining in Canada — the Carney government pushed a critical mineral mining alliance at the G7 summit this past June. There are meetings happening right now in Montreal around a bizarrely named Defence Security Resilience Bank — it's like a World Bank architecture for low-cost financing of military spending, and Canada is vying to host this new international institution. There's a new defence industrial strategy where the Carney government wants to increase Canadian military exports by 50%. There are multiple ways in which we're seeing the Carney agenda pushing military spending and militarism, and it's increasingly clear that it's a central aspect of his economic strategy — a core pillar of the Canadian economy. And so beyond strictly speaking an increase in military spending, a vast amount of resources and the time of public officials and politicians is being put into industrial strategy, the war bank, and so on.
More to the point, or to your question: where is this coming from? I'd divide it into two streams. There's close to three billion a year from international aid — a billion dollars next year out of Global Affairs Canada. Money being taken from existing institutions that could theoretically promote peace or do some good in the world. That's one stream. Then one can frame the rest as theft. It's the theft of our future. It's from health care, it's from housing, it's from a fair transition to a more sustainable energy future. It's being taken from youth, it's being stolen from mental health. Anything we can imagine as part of a progressive, more socially and economically just future — that's where that money is being stolen from.
Matthew Remski: It seems that Carney's proficient skills in banking and resource management and funding extraction enterprises around the world have led him to understand that his skills are best applied to the machine of remilitarization. It seems like the incentives to both increase economic production and the way in which that production is financed are just perfectly met by the military industrial complex in Canada. We'll get into what he's actually saying it's for, but would you say that's fair — that we're not just talking about rearming for the sake of rearming, but rearming as a way to establish economic resilience? That's an amazing word for him to use — we'd usually use it to talk about climate, or our capacity to be prepared for environmental disaster.
Brent Patterson: Carney as an investment banker is observing the economic moment, and both through his own preferences and a reading of the economic situation, is understanding, seeing, and — I'll say exploiting, because it feels stronger — exploiting the moment where Canadians are nervous about Trump's rhetoric of invading Canada, where Canadians through a mainstream narrative are concerned about the dangerous world we live in. And even if the popular mood may have some inclination against militarism, it's seen as a practical, common sense response to the world as it is right now. I think Carney is navigating that and using it as a way to build this economic agenda.
Matthew Remski: From my understanding, when a country begins to remilitarize and there's a sense that we have to fortify defences, that's generally understood by the public as: well, we have to spend money, it's going to hurt. And then whatever austerities come along with that are going to have to be sold to the public. But I think what Carney seems to be doing is selling remilitarization as an economic project — that's at the core. And I think that probably allows for the entire proposition to be more acceptable than it would have been ten or fifteen years ago, when you might not have had a technocrat who was able to actually make that sales pitch. Because hey, we're going to develop these rare earth resources, we're going to develop the far north. So turning to those details: a lot of the remilitarization is focused on the far north. There's talk about securing the northern frontier — which, if I think of myself as fifteen years old, I'd say sounds really important. Nobody's up there and the Russians are going to come. But how much is that plan about encouraging and then controlling new lanes of shipping opening up as the ice melts?
Brent Patterson: Maybe fifteen years ago, the Globe and Mail was reporting on this — not as leftist analysis against militarism, but as the reality of climate change. Climate change is profitable. It opens up shipping lanes in the north. It means that some 90 billion barrels of oil located up there, and trillions of cubic feet of gas, become differently accessible. It means that critical rare earth minerals are accessible. So it becomes part of an economic paradigm where the interest is not to address climate change, not to stop a planet from literally burning, but to treat climate change as economic opportunity. And then I think there's this notion of "our north," the Canadian north, which also completely marginalizes the sense of Indigenous lands and territories and the Indigenous peoples who live there. It negates the sense of the north as a colonial project of Canada. So I think the militarization of the north, which does include military bases and a greater Canadian military presence, has very much to do with a competition amongst other countries for an assertion of control over lands and waters that are rich in natural resources.
Matthew Remski: There's an estimated 90 billion barrels of oil in the north. Is it similar to the tar sands in the sense that it's going to be very difficult to extract?
Brent Patterson: My understanding is that it's a more complicated process of extraction — a lot of it involves underwater drilling. So it brings massive environmental risks and concerns about catastrophe, let alone continuing to contribute to an economy of burning fossil fuels and further burning the planet.
Matthew Remski: It's interesting that the imagery with which that idea is sold hearkens back to some kind of nineteenth-century adventurism in the north, where the notion is about discovering the vast wilds that we somehow have purchase over. When I see Carney getting off the plane in Iqaluit and meeting military brass already stationed up there, there's this feeling that we're keeping an eye on things, being more responsible stewards of this vast place we've somehow been given — no matter what the colonial history says. And it's so interesting because the way it's going to go is that military development will facilitate oil extraction. You put in the infrastructure you need for military operations and suddenly you've got roads and landing strips and docks and transportation infrastructure that you need for the beginnings of oil extraction. So they're really bound together.
Brent Patterson: It's about establishing a narrative that enables these horrible things — these crimes, this extraction — to happen. There's definitely the verbal narrative we're offered, but there's also the imagery: the snow, the vast expanse, the vistas that are sold as part of that narrative, in complete contradiction to the reality of military bases and all the pollution and devastation that comes with oil and gas and mining. We're sold images that tell us another story than what is actually happening. In terms of the F-35 purchase, a big part of that narrative is about protecting Canada's north — Russian bombers infringing on Canadian sovereignty, that's why we need fighter jets. And a lot of people would accept that mainstream narrative. When we look at the current F-18s, I think that's what people assume they're doing: protecting the north, in a very defensive way. But over the past thirty years, those jets have engaged in about 1,600 bombing missions in Libya, Iraq, Serbia, and beyond. That is not the narrative we're told. It's more the protecting-the-far-north thing. So there's a lot of distance between the narrative and the reality.
Matthew Remski: Turning to the F-35s — most Canadians, and I think people around the world, assume that Canadian remilitarization is about elbows up, protecting national sovereignty from the US. The reality is that the US and Canadian militaries are joined at the hip with regard to supply chains. I was reading that the F-35 can't even work without continual maintenance and software coordination with the US. So we're buying hardware that is ostensibly about sovereignty and national pride, but really we're buying into a transnational US-dominated military system that doesn't have anything to do with national interests — unless we're talking about corporate interests being national interests. Can you tell us about how this integration gives the lie to the notion of sovereignty?
Brent Patterson: It's a thinly veiled lie — that it's somehow elbows up to be purchasing military equipment from the United States, ostensibly the country we think we're defending ourselves from. And as you point out, we'll spend around $90 billion on F-35s — the same planes engaged in the genocide of Palestine — except the United States will continue to control the software upgrades required for the plane.
Matthew Remski: It's like we're buying iPhones to use, and Apple has the throttle on how they're going to be used and how they're going to be updated.
Brent Patterson: There were a couple of mainstream news reports — I think Toronto Star, Globe and Mail — over the past few weeks examining this question of increased military spending and Canadians' concerns about a potential US invasion. They said: well, there's such a small chance of that happening, but it still prevails as a concern. But apparently the various scenarios have been reviewed, and even with these billions on Canadian F-35s, you know — the United States spends a trillion dollars a year on its military. Any sense that Canadian military spending is somehow elbows up and is going to stop that particular threat doesn't really hold up.
There's also the Globe and Mail from this week — I think yesterday or the day before — saying that as part of the NORAD agreement between Canada and the United States, US bombers en route to the Middle East were being refuelled by US aircraft over Canada, and that doesn't require permission. So so-called Canadian sovereign airspace is being used as part of violations of international law and illegal wars. That's part of that integration, part of that complicity. There's also the recent vote around the No More Loopholes Act — Canada exports an estimated billion dollars a year of weapons and components to the United States that go into larger weapons systems that commit crimes around the world. And I think there's a kind of Canadian nationalist narrative of holding the bully's coat — that's how it's been framed in the past — versus a recognition of deep integration, deep complicity, a common agenda of militarism, of US imperialism and Canadian imperialism around the world.
Matthew Remski: Holding the bully's coat in the sense that we're slowing down or providing some moderating effect on the warmongering of our larger neighbour. It also means that all of the rhetoric around whether Canada is actually involved in this illegal war against Iran comes down to: are any of our soldiers actually boots on the ground? With no real reflection on the supply chains, whether we're allowing planes to refuel, or any of the things that are actually materially important in the moment.
Brent Patterson: Canada is different. Canada is green. The world needs more Canada. All of that versus a recognition of deep complicity.
Matthew Remski: I think the marketing of Elbows Up is particularly effective because on one hand it provides this folksy, very accessible image — well, we all played hockey, we know what it's like to get a little bit rough in the corners. But at the same time there's this implicit acknowledgement that it's a game. In the end, you're all playing the same game. It's just a matter of how tough you're going to be on the ice. But after the game you'll all go to Tim Hortons and you're all on the same side. I think it's kind of brilliant, and I think it got a lot of people to sign on to this Canadian innocence identity in a new way.
Brent Patterson: Yeah, that's really brilliant. I hadn't thought of it that way. My understanding is that in terms of hockey as a sport, the elbows up idea comes from a Gordie Howe, Saskatchewan-era conception of how hockey players were viewed. But as you're saying, it also points to a certain conception of Canada that's not really factual. And then the game part — it makes me think of Tony Benn, the British Member of Parliament, who when speaking on the eve of the US-British attack against Iraq was saying: what fools are we to live in an era where we see war as a video game. And so when you say hockey game, it makes me think: here we're talking about massive military spending. We're talking about war, which means death, injury, casualty, children being killed, theft of our future. There are so many abhorrent things about this course that we're on. But it gets manufactured and modified and sold in ways that sanitize it and elevate it into something that it isn't. So it's both brilliant and nefarious.
Matthew Remski: Brent, how long have you been an anti-war activist?
Brent Patterson: I place my beginnings as an activist, as an anti-war activist, way back in 1988. The G7 was having a meeting in Toronto that year, and I was a graduate student at York University. I joined a broader effort — this is of the time — to arrest the G7 for war crimes, for crimes against humanity. We did a massive march on University Avenue in Toronto towards where the G7 were meeting. There were police fences set up, and the idea was we were going to climb over and try to arrest the G7. You can guess who got arrested instead. But I think it doesn't take away from the truth of what the G7 is about and the integrity of the intent of the action. That's where I would place my start.
Matthew Remski: And what over all that time have you won? What have you lost with your comrades? How have you dealt with losses?
Brent Patterson: We've had more losses probably than wins. I wish there were a long list of wins to note. There have been some incidental, marginal wins. I was involved in a campaign to stop a massive garbage dump north of Toronto that would have polluted a pristine water source. When Nelson Mandela was in prison and it seemed like he would never be released — not to say that South Africa went on a brilliant path after that — but right after that G7 summit, about a month later, I was with a group of people who went to Nicaragua to support the Sandinista Revolution, to support the literacy campaign by installing light fixtures in schools so adult literacy could be done in the evenings. So there are moments of incredible revolution that brought immense international solidarity — and arguably the authoritarianism it has devolved to now. There are moments of win, complications, losses.
To more directly answer your question: where I am right now is that the win, the importance, is continuing to participate in the struggle. To stand with people who are in struggle, to stand with the oppressed, to physically be with them in the course of that struggle. And to recognize that wins — substantial, meaningful wins — against an immense economic system and immense powers aren't easy. A petition isn't going to do it. It's recognizing the depth of that struggle, and finding the win or the strength in human connection, community, bonds of trust, comradeship, friendship, being in the right place. Dealing with loss, I think, is knowing that that is a massive part of a struggle like this.
Matthew Remski: I think that leads me towards wrapping up, and maybe getting a summation from you of your best advice — both pragmatic and emotional — that you might give to a person in their early twenties who wants to follow this long path that you're describing, who wants to help organize and protest effectively and sustainably. What would you tell them?
Brent Patterson: That's a beautiful question. I would want to start by saying I have the privilege right now of working with a lot of people in their twenties, young activists. And really, I sometimes think they're already so much smarter than I ever was and have such a strong analysis that I wonder what I actually have to offer to people who seem to get it already and who are already well engaged in the struggle. When I was younger, I was told: understand that it's a marathon, not a sprint. That seems to be good advice. I think finding community, finding comradeship, finding people you trust and enjoy working with are essential components. There are also the aspects of taking care of yourself — emotionally, physically, feeding yourself, nurturing yourself with information, education, analysis, having other aspects to your life. I think sometimes we can all be overly critical of ourselves, or focus on what we haven't achieved rather than on the sustenance that comes with staying in a fight and being part of a community. Increasingly for me, it's about recognizing the strength of human connection and really being open to that.
Matthew Remski: Brent, thank you so much for your time. It's been a pleasure to talk with you.
Brent Patterson: Lovely to meet you, and lovely to have this conversation. Thank you.
Matthew Remski: Hey, so that's it for today. Up now on Patreon you'll find Part Two of this week's episode — a little audio essay about the Elbows Up slogan and just how slick it is in terms of pushing some very tender Canadian buttons. If you subscribe, you'll hear it right away. If not, it'll be unlocked here in a few weeks. Take care of each other.
