When it comes to Canada meeting its NATO obligation to spend 2% of GDP on defence, it looks like we’re being played for suckers.
A NATO report released last year estimated we spent 1.37% of GDP on defence in 2024, as one of a handful of NATO countries that hasn’t met the target.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said last summer he expected Canada to reach the 2% target by 2032, seven years from now.
U.S. President Donald Trump, appearing virtually before the World Economic Forum last week, said all NATO members should be aiming for a new target of spending 5% of GDP on the military.
In response, Defence Minister Bill Blair said it was “absolutely achievable” for Canada to hit the 2% target two years from now, telling CBC News, “My goal is to do it as quickly as possible and I’m increasingly confident we’ll be able to.”
Which begs the question, what is going on here?
Why were Canadians told one thing about the timeline for reaching the 2% NATO target last summer by Trudeau (seven years) and another by Blair last week (two years) in the wake of Trump’s call for NATO members to hit a new target of 5%?
Funding the military is hard enough to follow given chronic cost overruns, technical failures and long delays in delivering equipment that the public only find out about years after the fact.
On top of that are reports of soldiers and their families having to rely on food donations during training because their pay is so low.
Figuring out the real situation with military funding should not resemble a game of 3-card Monte, where taxpayers have to figure out which card the correct amount of cash is under.
Canada committed to the 2% target, along with other NATO countries, in 2014 and we should fulfill that commitment in order to be taken seriously within the defensive military alliance.
That doesn’t mean just throwing money at the issue in the hopes that in lands in the right places.
As important as hitting the 2% NATO target is getting good value for money spent.
That starts with not treating taxpayers like mushrooms on this issue — kept in the dark and covered with manure.