So much for bringing the jets home

The longer Trudeau keeps bombing, the more people will ask why we should stop at all

Canadians could be forgiven f or previously assuming that one of the first major moves taken by the new Trudeau government would be to recall our CF-18 jets from the fighting in Syria and Iraq. After all, our new prime minister said as much — to the president of the United States, no less — within 24 hours of winning the federal election with a majority mandate. Voters had reason to believe Justin Trudeau would eventually get around to restoring the longform census, to launching an inquiry into missing and murdered aboriginal women, to cutting the middle- class income- tax bracket, but first things first: those jets were coming home.

It is now mid- December, and airstrikes against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant targets in the Middle East are continuing just as they had before under then- prime minister Stephen Harper. Days ago, two CF-18 Hornets successfully struck an ISIL fighting position northwest of Mosul; two days before that, they did the same north of Al Kuwayr, Iraq. In fact, at the time of writing, there have been 25 reports from the Canadian Armed Forces ( CAF) of airstrikes in the region since Trudeau won the election, and 21 since he was sworn in as prime minister. If the Trudeau government does indeed plan to withdraw Canada’s fighter jets ahead of schedule — which would have seen them withdrawn by March 2016, anyway — the CAF certainly isn’t showing signs of slowing down.

The delay has yielded room to a belated discussion of why Canada should end its airstrike mission in the first place. According to Trudeau, it’s because that’s what Canadians voted for, and because the Liberals promised, and because finite National Defence resources mean we have to look at “how best Canada can be helpful in the fight against ISIL.”

Suffice to say these arguments wither with the acknowledgment that the majority of Canadians did not vote Liberal, as well as the fact that the DND has been running concurrent training and bombing missions in Iraq and Syria for the better part of a year. But never mind; as the anticipation of a satisfactory “why” starts to ebb, the focus has again turned back to the question of “when.”

According to Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion last week, Canada’s bombing mission against ISIL would end “in a matter of weeks.” Next, about four days later, Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan said in an interview that there was no timetable for withdrawing Canada’s jets, since it would depend on his conversations with Canada’s coalition counterparts. Then, Dion piped in again on Tuesday, saying that Canada’s CF18s won’t be pulled from the region before the end of 2015. This, of course, is nearly two months after the Liberals flaunted Trudeau’s notice to U. S. President Barack Obama that Canada’s jets would soon be making an exit.

We shouldn’ t castigate the government for this flexible deadline. Indeed, there’s good reason for the Trudeau government to waver on this campaign promise — or at the very least, to delay its implementation: the pledge was made before ISIL- inspired terrorists attacked and killed people in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif., before coalition partners committed to step up their bombing campaigns, and before President Obama gave a morning briefing on Monday calling on allies to increase their efforts against ISIL, naming Britain, Germany, France, Italy and Australia — but not Canada. The Trudeau government hasn’t said whether these events play any role in the decision to delay the withdrawal of Canada’s fighter jets to, at the earliest, three months before they would have been grounded anyway — and that’s the issue. If these events haven’t influenced the delay, what has?

The government played the same sly game on the question of whether it would indeed welcome 25,000 Syrian refugees to Canada before the end of 2015. Trudeau stuck to his campaign promise until nearly the end of November, when it became manifestly clear that there was no logistical way Canada could screen, process and transport that many people in such a short period of time. That fact was fairly obvious even weeks before, but Immigration and Refugees Minister John McCallum nevertheless repeated that his government would be adhering to its target as late as four days before he announced the target would be revised.

It is unremarkable to note t hat when circumstances change, policies often have to change, though the Trudeau government seems to have some difficulty acknowledging that. Partisans and other dedicated critics will chide the government for breaking a campaign promise, no matter how good the reason, but breaking a promise is arguably better than parroting an ill- defined election commitment, then airing some conflicting messages while staying mum on pointed logistical questions, then precipitously dropping a plan. By every indication, that’s precisely the blueprint the Liberals will follow for the denouement of Canada’s bombing mission.