Rise in military contracting hides
human, monetary costs

Story by Stephen J. Thorne

The United States military is spending an escalating proportion of its massive budget on contractors with little accountability for where and how the money is spent, says a new report.

The practice opens doors to overspending and corruption and hides war’s true costs, both monetary and human, says the report from Brown’s University’s Costs of War project, based in Providence, Rhode Island.

The Pentagon handed contractors US$370 billion last year alone—more than half the total U.S. defence budget of $676 billion and a whopping 164 per cent more than it spent in 2001 when it launched the post-9/11 war on terror, says the document written by Heidi Peltier, a project director.

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HMCS Labrador explores the Arctic

Story by Sharon Adams

Commissioned on July 8, 1954, HMCS Labrador was the first warship to sail across the Northwest Passage, returning to home port in Halifax via the Panama Canal, the first to circumnavigate North America in a single voyage.

But the Wind-class icebreaker’s biggest contributions were mapping the waterways and establishing Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic. At the time, it was feared U.S. icebreakers would move into the Arctic, jeopardizing Canada’s claims.

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July 10, 1940
The Battle of Britain begins.

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