Canada

A sub has more than the single purpose you mentioned. You can't just hand-wave away their most critical role: intelligence gathering.

If it was about spending as much money as possible we wouldn't be buying from South Korea as they manufacture vessels faster, and cheaper, than other countries. If we built these at home they'd probably cost 5x as much, we'd get them 10 years late, and they'd be riddled with issues.

I'm trying to see your point. Do you want us to increase our shipbuilding capacity to build these in Canada, or do you not want subs at all?

Do you want the government to give all of this money to our local shipbuilding industry so that they can continue to gouge taxpayers? They can't even provide our military with the equipment they won bids for without inflating costs and timelines by an exorbitant amount, and that's not even for subs which are significantly more complicated than something like a supply or patrol ship. At least Davies shipyard was able to provide the CAF with a supply ship within reason, but others, like Irving, are a giant money pit.

Absolutely no country can withstand the full might of the US military. I'm not talking about going head to head with the US. I'm just saying if something happens by another country we cannot rely on the US for support.

Okay well hard to have a conversation with someone who says anyone who disagrees is a "fucking idiot," but here I go anyway.

Never said I agreed with buying those submarines, specifically. But we have real, ongoing threats in a big ass watery zone that's about to get more watery where, yes, a few submarines would make a massive difference. One submarine is capable of monitoring hundreds of kilometers of ocean at a time, and an attack submarine is capable of moving quickly to engage — which is exactly what we need in the north.

Currently, we use NORAD and ancient F-18's that have been frankenstein'd with modern technology they were never built for. I could say a whole lot more about Canada's bullshit selling out our aviation industry to the states, but that's another issue.

Point is, Russia has been testing our northern borders for decades, often, and they are demonstrably imperialist. How do I know? I lived on the base where we scrambled our jets to greet them. Where we already spend a fuck ton of money keeping those antiques in the air.

I'm absolutely with you on healthcare spending. There's a lot of shit about the budget I don't like.

At the same time we need to be monitoring and protecting a zone where Russia will have submarines if they don't already, and we don't currently have the technology to engage them.

More Canadians would die if we had American healthcare once we become the 51st state. Funding the military might not stop it but it might delay it.