Articles from Canada and the World Backgrounder (May 1, 2006)

Title	Author	Type	Words
Government default: in 1996, Canada's then-top military leader, General Jean Boyle, said the country's army was unfit to fight in a serious war and the rank-and-file had justifiable doubts about the quality of the high command.			1835
Is peacekeeping a relic? Once known as peacekeepers, Canada's military has changed quite dramatically into a more robust force capable of fighting. The transition is not complete and there appears to be some disagreement as to which way to go now.			1971
Marching together: after many years of keeping a distance between Canadian and U.S. defence relations, the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper is moving towards closer cooperation.			2419
Quote ... unquote.			237
The business of war: Canada has a sizeable arms industry that is joined at the hip to the huge military production system in the United States.			2413
The use of resources: a teacher of our acquaintance once asked: "Wouldn't it be nice if, just once, our school got all the textbooks we asked for and the army had to have a bake sale to raise the money to buy a tank?			453
While some say there's never enough, others say there's too much: in the fall of 2005, a Senate report called for a doubling of the Defence Department's budget from $14 billion and increasing enlistment from 60,000 to 90,000.			1922
Why are we there? With almost no public debate, Canada has deployed the bulk of its available troops to a dangerous mission in a country with which it has almost no traditional ties.			3117