Joe Varner is a Canadian defence and security analyst and a former reserve officer in the Canadian Armed Forces. He was director of policy to Peter MacKay as minister of national defence and later as minister of justice and attorney general, and has been a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, deputy director of the Conference of Defence Associations and an adjunct scholar at West Point's Modern War Institute. He is the author of Canada's Asia-Pacific Security Dilemma.
What DI has documented
DI has documented statements by Joe Varner on Body Image, Military and Defense, and Sexism, among other topics. Read the quotations, original sources and related cases below.
Role at the time: Former director of policy to Canada's minister of national defence and former Canadian Armed Forces reserve officer, in an interview with the Toronto Sun
Condemned
Statement summary
Joe Varner, a former policy director to Canadian defence minister Peter MacKay, told the Toronto Sun that Hegseth's post was "a petty tweet by a man that typically doesn't like women in uniform" and said that 68% of the U.S. military "are considered to be overweight or obese."
“It was a petty tweet by a man that typically doesn't like women in uniform”
Open source (opens in a new tab)U.S. war secretary mocked for dragging youth military cadets into MAGA warParagraphs beginning "Joe Varner, a senior Macdonald Laurier Institute Fellow"
Why we used this label
The reference point is Hegseth's "this is real" post about the Vernon cadet image. Varner calls the post petty, ties it to Hegseth's attitude toward women in uniform and praises the instructor shown. That is an express criticism of the post, so we labeled it Condemned. Challenged the characterization loses: his explanation that cadet instructors are community volunteers is offered to support the criticism, not as a standalone correction. Evidence level: a direct quotation in a Toronto Sun report of an interview with the speaker; no primary recording was available.
Pete Hegseth reposted a photo of a Canadian cadet receiving an award, adding a Canadian flag and the words "this is real." Canadian officials, a cadet group, a Republican lawmaker and George Clooney called it mocking; the Pentagon stood by the post.
