Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s recent surprise announcement that Canada would reach its defence spending target within the next decade would be welcome news, if it had any credibility at all.
A week ago, at the NATO summit in Washington, D.C., Defence Minister Bill Blair complained about how a previous federal government had cut defence spending to less than one per cent of GDP. That complaint illustrates two points.
One: that previous governments, of all stripes, have always treated defence as an orphan child, neglected and never given the care and attention it so sorely needs. And two: after nearly nine years in power, the Liberals are trying to cover up their failure on the defence file by pointing fingers at previous governments instead of taking responsibility.
In reading Blair’s statement, one could be forgiven for thinking that NATO’s target of countries spending two per cent of GDP on defence was a recent invention.
“At the 2023 NATO summit in Vilnius, allies agreed to invest at least two per cent of their gross domestic product annually on defence,” he said.
In fact, NATO defence ministers agreed to the two per cent target in 2006 and member countries reiterated that commitment in 2014, in response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
Canada has been reneging on its promise for 18 years — the last half under a Trudeau government.
According to NATO, Canada will spend 1.37 per cent of GDP on defence in 2024, which is still a far cry from the target. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, most NATO countries have increased spending to meet the target, which is described as a floor rather than a ceiling by Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s secretary general.
But even if that target never existed, the need for Canada to spend more on defence is obvious.
The four second-hand Victoria class submarines bought from the British are barely seaworthy and spend more time in dock than in the water. Canada’s 12 frigates are past their best-before date, with only a few able to deploy at any one time due to maintenance issues.
And Canada can give the world an objective lesson in how to really screw things up when it comes to procurement with the fiasco around replacing the CF-18 Hornets, fighters considered to be “in crisis,” according to a report prepared for the Department of National Defence.
The process to find a replacement began in 1997 under Liberal prime minister Jean Chrétien. In 2010, Canada agreed to buy 65 F-35s (with a total lifetime cost estimated to be US$29.3 billion by the parliamentary budget officer).
Before becoming prime minister, Justin Trudeau campaigned on not buying the F-35s. Then, seven years after taking office, he changed his mind and announced that Canada would buy 88 of them (with the total lifetime cost now estimated at C$73.9 billion.)
Adding to the military’s woes is a shortfall of 30,000 personnel, not because of despair over Canada’s decrepit fighting equipment, but due to sheer incompetency and a glacial bureaucracy. In the last fiscal year, 70,000 people applied to the military but only 4,000 were admitted.
All this at a time when Gen. Wayne Eyre, the recently retired chief of the defence staff, said the world had entered a “pre-wartime security environment.” But that shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. Russia’s aggression, China’s expansionist policies, an arms race in Asia and unrest in the Middle East — to name a few of the world’s trouble spots — are hardly secrets.
Only lately has the Trudeau government started taking seriously the threat posed to the Canadian Arctic by Russia and China, which are colluding to advance their own sovereignty claims in the region.
Still, last year, according to a leaked Pentagon document seen by the Washington Post, Trudeau told NATO officials that Canada would never reach the two per cent target. Yet we are now being led to believe the Liberals have had a damascene conversion.
This year’s long delayed defence policy review, “Our North, Strong and Free,” said the government expected to spend 1.76 per cent of GDP by 2030. It was a significant, and surprising, investment announcement. In a speech in May, Blair trumpeted the figure but acknowledged it was still less than NATO’s target.
Then, near the closing of the Washington summit last week, Trudeau suddenly announced that Canada would meet the target by 2032, and all it took was years of being harangued by allies, and some special criticism in the last few months and weeks, notably by U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, who accused Canada of “refusing to pony up” and “riding on America’s coat-tails.”
There’s just one problem with Trudeau’s announcement: we don’t know how we’re going to get to that figure. What will it cost and where will the money come from?
Trudeau said the goal would be achieved by investing in new equipment, such as submarines, although no such new capabilities have been approved, much less costed.
In 2022, when defence spending stood at 1.33 per cent of GDP, the PBO said the government would need to spend $13-$18 billion more per year over five years to reach the NATO target.
Embarrassed on the world stage, the prime minister seems to have engaged in some magical thinking. But this is Canada, not Hogwarts, and Russian and Chinese aggression won’t be stopped by fairy dust.
Canada owes it to our allies to be a serious partner on the world stage. A reasonable first step would be to lay out a costed and credible plan for achieving that NATO target.