125
National poll finds majority of Canadians are opposed to military conscription if war breaks out.
(theconversation.com)
this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2024
125 points (97.7% liked)
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'Twas ever thus. We've imposed conscription exactly twice since Confederation, during the two World Wars. During WWI, it caused riots because Francophones thought the way it was being imposed was inequitable. At neither time did any significant number of Canadian conscripts get shipped out to fight—instead, they took on domestic roles like guarding military posts to free up volunteers to be shipped out instead (I think a few did go overseas in the trailing months of WWII, but it was a pretty small percentage).
In other words, the draft has never been popular here, and likely never will be. And inequity in how it's imposed has been an issue for more than a century. (The nature of the inequity is different this time, but I don't think that matters so much.)
Times have also changed. The information available on our fingertips is showing that things are not as black and white as they seem. Back during the world wars, mass propaganda convinced us to go fight for imperialist reasons (remember, we did not go to war with Nazis over their treatment of the Jews).
It's a lot harder to convince a populace to go to war when it's not clear the opponent is entirely in the wrong.