25. Polite Canada Remilitarizes w/ Brent Patterson

I sit down with Brent Patterson, a veteran anti-militarism organizer whose four decades of work span prison abolition, Indigenous solidarity, and campaigns against state violence. We examine the Carney government's remilitarization agenda. It is not a response to genuine security threats, but as a coherent economic strategy dressed in the language of sovereignty and national pride.

We look at the math on the F-35 warplane purchase: what it actually costs, who controls it, and what that money could do instead. We talk about Arctic resource extraction and the military infrastructure being built to enable it, the integration of Canadian and US military supply chains, the No More Loopholes arms export bill, and the gap between Canada's international self-image and its actual record of 1,600 bombing missions over Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Serbia. We close with Brent's forty years of organizing experience — the losses, the marginal wins, and what sustains people in a long struggle.

Bluesky: matthewremski.bsky.social
Instagram: @matthew_remski
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Pre-order Antifascist Dad

Brent Patterson is Executive Director of Peace Brigades International, and writes for Rabble.ca.

SOURCES

NATO total military spending 2024: $1,506 billion — SIPRI Trends in World Military Expenditure, 2024

NATO 5% GDP target agreed at The Hague summit — Atlantic Council NATO Defence Spending Tracker

Canada's Department of National Defence spent $34.5 billion in FY2024 — Canadaspends

Carney commits Canada to $150 billion annually in defence by 2035 — Globe and Mail, June 2025

Carney's first budget: $81.8 billion in defence investment over five years — CBC News, November 2025

DND defence spending targets and NATO commitments — Canada.ca

Full 45-year F-35 life-cycle cost estimated at C$73.9 billion — Parliamentary Budget Office, November 2023

F-35 acquisition cost jumps 50% to C$27.7 billion — Skies Mag / Auditor General, June 2025

Full acquisition cost now C$33 billion including infrastructure and weapons — Flight Global, June 2025

Full history of Canada's F-35 procurement process — Wikipedia

Chapters

(00:03:23) - Canada's $35 billion F35 deal
(00:12:18) - What Does Militarization Tell Us About Global Capitalism?
(00:14:13) - Canada's Remilitarization Plans
(00:29:23) - Canadian Military Spending and National Sovereignty
(00:38:59) - Wins and Losses
(00:42:07) - What Would You Tell Young Activists in Their 20s?

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Jaksot(82)

UNLOCK 42.1 Friendship (is not easy)

An excerpt from the audiobook of Antifascist Dad: Urgent Conversations with Young People in Chaotic Times — Chapter Eight, Friendship Is Not Easy. I'm putting this out as a companion to my interview w...

9 Elo 43min

UNLOCK: 41.1 The Anti-Vance Would Like a Word Pt 2 w/ Nathan Evans Fox

Part 2 of my convo with Nathan Evans Fox, going deeper into the psychological and theological architecture of what JD Vance is actually doing in his new memoir, and what it costs him and everyone else...

2 Elo 45min

42. Keep the Little Flame Alive w/ Carsie Blanton

I sit down with socialist singer-songwriter Carsie Blanton to explore how unstructured freedom — from schooling, the music industry, and institutional religion — became the soil for her political and ...

29 Heinä 1h 1min

UNLOCK 40.1 Episodic and Thematic Thinking and Feeling

Picking up a on thread from my interview with Nora Loreto interview: a coda on the tension between zooming in on the daily news cycle and zooming out to a coherent analytical framework. I draw on Shan...

26 Heinä 19min

41. The Anti-Vance Would Like a Word w/ Nathan Evans Fox

JD Vance's Communion presents itself as a spiritual memoir but functions as a rebranding operation: It's the same narcissistic trick he played with Hillbilly Elegy. Who better to sit down with to sort...

22 Heinä 52min

UNLOCK 39.1 Epistemic Injustice

Years ago, I failed to understand my autistic son's needs. Instead of fully taking in his distress at school, I projected my own story, values, and experience on him. He'll manage. He'll get used to i...

19 Heinä 21min

40: We Live on This Planet to Do Good Work w/ Nora Loreto

Today I sit down with Nora Loreto, a Quebec City-based journalist and labour organizer, to discuss her five-volume Canada in Decline series — a forensic history of the dismantling of Canada's social d...

15 Heinä 1h 8min

UNLOCK 38.1 Gramsci’s Wars of Position, Wars of Maneuver

Antonio Gramsci, writing in a fascist prison in the early 1930s, distinguished between wars of position—the slow struggle over culture, values, and consent—and wars of maneuver, or direct confrontatio...

12 Heinä 33min