Diane Francis: Trudeau's cabinet shuffle is about politics, not governance

financialpost.com:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has degraded Canada’s standing in the world since he took office in 2015. A cabinet shuffle won’t change this fact — not only because Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly remains in her post, but because there is a fundamental lack of understanding of geopolitics and economics among the Liberal ranks.

A Wall Street Journal editorial recently suggested that Canada was such a freeloader in terms of military spending that the G7 should consider replacing it. In the spring, the Washington Post reported that Trudeau told NATO members that Canada would never meet its defence spending commitment of two per cent of GDP.

Another embarrassing revelation was highlighted last week when Blacklock’s wrote a story on a Privy Council briefing note that reportedly said that, “We have some 300 full-time military personnel in the North.”

This is a number the military was actually bragging about last year, when a spokesperson for Joint Task Force North (JTFN) told CBC News that the Forces were not experiencing the same personnel shortage in the territories as it was elsewhere in the country. And according to CBC, most of the 300 are stationed at JTFN headquarters in Yellowknife.

How can it be that Canada has 300 personnel to defend such a large landmass? It’s not as though Canada lacks funds. Last year, Trudeau and his merry band of cabinet incompetents spent $17.7 billion on management consultants because they don’t know what they’re doing. That’s nearly half of the $36.7 billion this country will spend on national defence this year.

It’s important to juxtapose this puny allocation of 300 personnel in the Arctic with Joly’s claim last year that the resolution of a territorial dispute with Denmark