On Dec. 27, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced that Canada would be giving Ukraine an additional $2.5 billion. This is the equivalent of throwing money into a bleeding black hole, all while saddling ordinary Canadians with cuts and austerity.
Since the beginning of the war, Canada has given out almost $22 billion in “multifaceted assistance” to Ukraine, including $13.5 billion in direct financial aid. As a percentage of GDP, no one has given more to Ukraine than the Canadian government.
This new $2.5 billion commitment is nothing more than throwing money into a pit, because Ukraine has effectively lost the war. For years Western news media has played make-believe by insisting Ukraine had a chance of winning the war, but now they can’t deny that “Ukrainian defences are retreating faster than at any point since the start of war.” Desertions from the Ukrainian army are skyrocketing, and even Western media is admitting that “Zelensky is losing touch with reality.” This is a war of attrition, and Russia has the advantage in both men and material; they will win sooner or later.
By funding the Ukrainian war effort, Carney is not helping to “end the war,” as he claims—rather, he is drawing out the slaughter. Ordinary Ukrainians themselves are sick of war; 69 per cent want Ukraine to negotiate an end to the war as soon as possible. They are the ones who are suffering.
Meanwhile those with the power to stop the war are getting fabulously rich off of it. Canada isn’t just paying for war—we are paying to line the pockets of corrupt officials and oligarchs.
On Nov. 10, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) uncovered a huge corruption ring, responsible for embezzling $100 million from Energoatom, the Ukrainian state-owned nuclear energy company. NABU arrested five people, all belonging to Zelensky’s inner-circle and the highest levels of government. They had allegedly taken 10 to 15 per cent of every Energoatom contract as kickbacks. The scandal is all the more egregious as the country’s energy infrastructure is crumbling under Russian bombardment. Some areas are enduring 16-hour electricity and heating blackouts in the midst of winter.
While Zelensky himself hasn’t been implicated, he is not above suspicion. In July he attempted to reign-in NABU before backing down in the face of huge protests.
This scandal should not be surprising. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine has been run by gangster oligarchs. European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker has called Ukraine “a country that is corrupt at all levels of society.”
None of this has given the Canadian government pause, however. After the NABU scandal, Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand said that Canada’s support for Ukraine would not be affected. She also said, reassuringly, that Canada has offered to help Ukraine tighten oversight and accountability in government to prevent corruption. She failed to clarify whether the Ukrainian government had accepted the offer.
The scandalous thing is that Carney is providing all this largess while running a projected $78.3 billion deficit. This is Canada’s second-biggest deficit of all time. The deficit will add to Canada’s debt, and paying interest on that debt will reach a projected $76.1 billion by 2029—more than the federal government spends on health care. Running deficits, which Canada has been doing for years, also drives inflation, another burden on the working class.
To try to reign in the deficit problems, Carney’s latest budget slashes 40,000 federal government jobs. Cutting 10 per cent of the federal workforce will have a real effect on the quality of services for ordinary Canadians, including employment insurance, childcare benefits, and food safety oversight.
Supporting Ukraine militarily is costly in more ways than one, but Mark Carney would have us believe it’s a worthy sacrifice, to protect our values. “Canada stands with Ukraine, because their cause—freedom, democracy, sovereignty—is our cause,” he said. Isn’t that worth a few measly billion?
The problem is that “freedom, democracy, sovereignty” are demonstrably the last things Carney cares about. His simpering response to Donald Trump’s criminal intervention in Venezuela and abduction of President Nicolas Maduro prove as much. Not to mention, Carney’s continuing support for Israel’s genocide of Palestinians makes any appeal to “freedom” and “sovereignty” stink of hypocrisy.
No, Canada is not funding this war out of love of democracy, but for its own imperialist interests.
The war in Ukraine started as a fight between US imperialism and Russia to decide who is the master in Eastern Europe. Canada joined in as a loyal lapdog of Washington. Canadian arms manufacturers like CAE and General Dynamics saw business opportunities, and Canadian capitalists were salivating at the prospect of partaking in the looting of the country once the war ended. To get a seat at the table, Ottawa had to chip in, which they did with taxpayers’ money.
NATO’s plan was to drag Russia into a quagmire and ruin its economy—but they gravely miscalculated.
Trump sees the writing on the wall; he’s been trying to pull out of Ukraine since he came to power. As part of his “America First” policy, he is distancing America from Europe and NATO to focus on retrenching in the Western Hemisphere.
Alone, the Europeans are too weak to face Russia. That’s why they keep throwing money into the Ukrainian bloodbath: to try to keep the war going for as long as possible, to keep the US involved in Europe for as long as possible.
As for the Canadian ruling class, they are also desperately hanging onto a dying world order. NATO, with the U.S. at its head, once dominated the world, and Canadian imperialism benefited enormously. Ultimately too weak to defend its own interests around the world, Canadian imperialism has become totally reliant on U.S. imperialism and the NATO alliance. For decades, Canadian companies took advantage of this situation, able to exploit the resources and labour of countries all over Latin America, Asia, and Africa, without needing to spend billions on the military to defend those interests. But this is coming to an end.
When the war in Ukraine inevitably ends in a humiliating defeat for NATO, it will deal a blow to this alliance. The United States has very little interest in maintaining NATO, because they can fend for themselves—but Canada can’t. A weakened NATO means a weakened Canadian imperialism. This is why Canada continues to back Ukraine, out of a vain hope for a NATO victory.
All the noble-sounding talk about “standing by Ukraine” and lies about “defending democracy” are simply a screen for Canada’s flailing attempts to protect its own imperialist interests, prestige, and stature.
And so Carney keeps feeding money to the monster NATO created and hopes against all signs to the contrary that it will turn out alright.
