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From the Canadian Border Services Agency to the Canadian Coast Guard to our municipal police and fire services, to various employees of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the Communication Security Establishment, our security personnel carry out their duties in the defence of Canada and Canadians as members of a unionized workplace. Soon to be added to the extensive list of union shops in Canada’s security and defence network is the RCMP which, in a recent Supreme Court ruling, won the right to organize.

And though, for obvious reasons, many of these services may not have the right to strike, they still maintain the right to form an association, bargain collectively, and advocate on behalf of their fellow members.

If we trust our police, firefighters, coast guard personnel and border guards to organize and bargain for better working conditions and benefits , why then do we still find it necessary to deny our army, navy and air force personnel the same right?

It is a question that will inevitably be asked by an increasingly better educated and informed military

“In the decades ahead, Canada, like most advanced democracies, will find it increasingly difficult to compete on the open market to recruit and retain personnel to serve in the military,” says retired colonel and lawyer Michel Drapeau. “Given that the rank and file (and their spouses) are increasingly more sophisticated and educated, they will want to have a say in their conditions of service. At present, the individual has no voice whatsoever; it is all totally one-sided.”