Not a Single Youth for Imperialist War
Unacceptable War Games at St. Mike's
Hospital in Toronto
The Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) vehemently protests the "mass casualty war-game" carried out at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto recently. Code-named Exercise Canada Paratus, the game simulated hundreds of casualties with various injuries, including burns and shrapnel wounds, arriving by boat and plane from Eastern Europe. The mock patients included injured Canadian and NATO soldiers as well as civilians and prisoners of war. The war game also involved a cyber attack that knocked out operations at Pearson International Airport.
This was the third edition of Exercise Canada Paratus. Besides logistical considerations of bringing in casualties "from Eastern Europe," its stated goals included identifying "weaknesses in Canada's civilian health care system" -- not in response to severe cutbacks and the privatization of health care but "in response to a major military conflict overseas."
Following the prior edition of Exercise Canada Paratus in September 2025, also held at St. Mike's, a post-exercise report was issued which contained close to 50 recommendations. These included increasing civilian-military health care collaboration, exploring the use of Canadian Armed Forces Reserves to support the health care sector, developing a casualty-tracking system, reinstating a national trauma registry and scouting airlift or sealift options to evacuate casualties. Other recommendations included building up a domestic supply chain for blood, skin and prosthetics, including setting up more skin banks for grafts for burn victims.
Again, the everyday and emergency
needs of the people due to causes
not related to military conflict are ignored. It is an
unconscionable
way to militarize life in preparation for an eventual
militarization of
Canada.
Every day, Canadians and Quebeckers are confronted in profound ways by the "weaknesses in Canada's civilian health care system," namely that the economic and social arrangements do not recognize people's right to health care and pay-the-rich schemes divert public resources in ways that systematically diminish the expectations, quality and humanity of human beings who are left to fend for themselves in navigating the private systems.
Health care workers themselves are literally battle-hardened from fighting unacceptable working conditions as they seek to meet the needs of patients as well as their own and those of their families. No "simulations" are needed to see where the problems in the health care system lie, about which the workers in the health care sector are fully cognizant.
The casualties from this anti-social offensive, namely all those who have died because they did not receive adequate care or even any care at all, or who continue to suffer because the system cannot provide adequate care and services are ignored while these war games take place under the pretext of high ideals. This is to say nothing about mass casualties among the workers themselves, who are injured and made ill on the job or forced out of their professions by the untenable conditions or because they fight for change.
The
COVID-19 pandemic revealed Canada's lack of self-reliance for
necessary
health care equipment, medication and other supplies such as
personal
protective equipment. Far from correcting this situation, in
2023 it
was reported that 90 per cent of businesses involved in the
production
of personal protective equipment in Canada had closed or
switched to
other production, in part because government granted major
contracts to
manufacturers in the U.S. financed by incurring huge debts from
private
sources for which the interest payments are onerous.
"Health care war games" like those being held in Toronto are a matter of serious concern. They are part of preparations for militarizing all of life and must be discussed and rejected.
More and more of the social wealth created by working people in Canada is misappropriated for military spending which does not favour the people or their cause of making Canada a Zone for Peace.
No Means No! No to War Preparations!
This article was published in
Volume 56
Number 3 - February 12, 2026
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/TML2026/Articles/T560035.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca