No one is invading Canada.

Throwing away $9 billion on so-called defence in the face of unaffordable housing, increasingly expensive food, layoffs, homelessness, and a crisis in untreated mental illness and dug addiction is a slap in the face to Canadians.

No one is invading Canada, and if anyone did, the U.S. would not allow a foreign military on its northern border. Canadians paying to defend the U.S. is us being suckers to advance the interests of the toxic empire on our border.

Canada sailing warships through the Taiwan Strait is the exact opposite of what our policy should be with the People's Republic of China. President Xi and his entire government have made it absolutely clear repeatedly that China has zero interest in hegemony, despite what U.S. and NATO warmongers shout in our faces every day.

The Chinese nation, whose 5,000-year history and culture are not grounded – as are those of the collective West – in conquest, domination, plunder, and subjugation, wants a global community "jointly built with a shared future for mankind" based on "mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression, non-interference in each other's internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence."

The same is true of the Russian Federation.

Why did Canada participate in the Orange Revolution that prevented Ukraine's duly elected president Viktor Yanukovych from from assuming office in 2004?

Why do we support the Russophobic, ultranationalist regime that seized power in a U.S.-backed, violent 2014 coup – driving Mr. Yanukovych who had been elected a second time in 2010 from office – and immediately launched an ethnic-cleansing campaign against the historically Russian population of Eastern and Southern Ukraine?

Why is Canada complicit in the explicitly stated aims of the U.S. to deal Russia a "strategic defeat" and "cripple Russia's economy?"

By what stretch of the imagination do these policies represent "defence?"

Canada should be trading with the world's 1st and 4th largest economies by PPP as well as with every other country for mutual benefit and shared prosperity.

That $9 billion should be used to finance – not buy, so the money is paid back by its occupants and can be loaned again forever – housing Canadians can afford and fund essential services Canadians depend on for our prosperity and health.