Civil Defence Corps

Mar 9 2025

This article is from The Tyee, an independent, online news magazine from B.C., that is British Columbia, Canada. A lot of my posts refer to the BBC, Guardian, NY Times or other big news organisations, so for a change, something from a smaller independent news outlet.

Canada Needs a New Civil Defence Corps

The lede in this piece is “Trump’s aggression means it’s time to train thousands more civilians for disaster preparedness. Would you join?”

This is a good wake-up-call for Canada, now that the US is looking inwards and becoming isolationist, not to mention the tariffs. But if you really think about it, a reliable and well functioning Civil Defence is what every country should have, all the time. Basic common sense.

I have posted about this before, and so has, with way more experience and authority, the retired US General Stanley McChrystal. He has promoted this idea with the Service Year Alliance. (In case the link does not work, my post is in the Security section, and the piece has links to McChrystal’s piece and another by the The Brookings Institution.)

My post was written in 2021, before the world changed in February 2022 with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and before the US started to turn inwards.

If now, in 2025, is not the time to establish Civil Defence Corps in every country, then when is it? This is a moment of If not now, when? If not me, who?

And this is especially true in Europe. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, many European countries took the peace dividend, a naive decision in hindsight, and now they are ramping up their defence spending.

But, defence is not just about the military, it is about the resilience of the whole society. Military will be fighting in a war, Civil Defence will keep the rest of the society running, the society the military is defending and is counting on to support it.

Talking about Civil Defence Corps, The Tyee article gives some answers to the question What would Canadians actually do?

Some of the issues it deals with:
Universal civil defence training
Optional defence skills track
Reserve forces expansion
Cyber-resilience training
National youth service program
Arctic protection and Indigenous leadership
Readiness strengthens pride

And it ends with “The world has changed. Canada, it’s time to get ready.”

*****

My suggestion is that when you have read the article, read it again and this time substitute your country for Canada.