Chief of the Defence Staff General Jennie Carignan, left, Prime Minister Mark Carney, centre, and Defence Minister David McGuinty, right at Fort York Armoury in Toronto on Monday.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
Prime Minister Mark Carney demonstrated the chasm between the words “can’t” and “won’t” this week when he made the surprise announcement that Canada would at last hit the NATO target for military spending – in the current fiscal year.
For years, the Trudeau government moaned about the impossibility of a quickstep rebuilding of Canada’s long neglected military capacity. Even after Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, Justin Trudeau’s Liberals dragged their feet.
Sure, there were plans unveiled and announcements of intended future spending. But an actual increase to military capacity? Not so much. Official NATO figures show that, in 2017, Canada spent $23.285-billion on defence (that amount is based on 2015 price levels and exchange rates). In 2023, after months of Russian aggression, Canada spent... $23.28-billion, on the same basis. The number of military personnel also declined between 2017 and 2023.
Under mounting pressure ahead of last year’s NATO meeting, Mr. Trudeau said Canada would meet the NATO defence-spending goal of 2 per cent of gross domestic product by 2032, but without any semblance of a plan to do so. Yet, there was no sustained progress; spending fell from 1.44 per cent of GDP in 2017 to 1.31 per cent in 2023.
This was positioned as a matter of circumstances: spending can’t be ramped up that quickly; procurement can’t accommodate new spending.
But it was always clear that the Trudeau government’s failure to live up to its NATO commitments was a matter of choice – won’t, not can’t, being the operative word.
Mr. Carney’s announcement this week has made that fact abundantly clear. Canada will exceed the 2 per cent goal not in 2032, not by 2030 (as Mr. Carney promised during the election campaign), but by March 31, less than 10 months from now. That amounts to an additional $8.3-billion in defence funding this year, on an accrual basis. Such is the power of a prime minister making a choice. That choice is long overdue but, still, Mr. Carney has taken a major step forward that his predecessor refused to take.
Of course, there are caveats. Close to a third of the additional funding is for pay increases and hiring civilians to free up military personnel from administrative tasks. Raises, by themselves, won’t do much to increase Canada’s combat power. But it is true that higher pay could help the Canadian Armed Forces meet a goal of recruiting 13,000 people by 2030, as well as retaining current members.
There are legitimate arguments for incorporating the coast guard into Canada’s overall defence capabilities, particularly with the rising importance of the Arctic theatre.
But that move cannot simply be another accounting shuffle, of the type that the Trudeau Liberals used in an attempt to create a perception that the government was spending significantly more.
In 2017, the government added in items such as military pensions to its official tally. That was allowed under NATO rules, but the shift made it look as if there had been a surge in funding since 2014 – not the case. More recently, the Department of Defence used implausibly weak economic projections in order to assert a claim of rapid progress toward the 2-per-cent NATO goal through this decade.
Perennial procurement snarls are another potential roadblock. The acquisition of major pieces of equipment have often languished for years. It’s not enough for the government to say it will spend more on defence (although that is indeed welcome). Those dollars must actually be spent.
Mr. Carney has recognized the problem, at least, promising to create a centralized agency to break up those procurement roadblocks. The effectiveness of that effort, however, could be diminished if the government puts too much emphasis on using defence spending as a domestic economic boost. The priority must be timely procurement. In the early going, that will mean buying equipment from other NATO countries.
And how will the bill be paid? Mr. Carney is being deliberately vague on that matter, although he did rule out tax hikes. The Prime Minister is being equally non-committal on whether Canada will agree to push defence spending toward the likely new NATO goal of 3.5 per cent of GDP.
But those are caution lights only. Mr. Carney has gotten the main thing right. The world has become a more dangerous place and Canada must respond accordingly, not with rhetoric and accounting, but with action.