Prime Minister Mark Carney walks in front of members of the Canadian Armed Forces during his visit to the RCAF 440 Transport Squadron in Yellowknife in March.Carlos Osorio/Reuters
Prime Minister Mark Carney played down the Trump administration’s suspension of a United States-Canada defence co-operation body and rejected its suggestion that Ottawa has not boosted defence spending.
Elbridge Colby, the U.S. undersecretary of defence for policy, announced Monday that Washington was putting the 86-year-old Permanent Joint Board on Defense on hold. He accused Canada of failing to live up to its military responsibilities, despite Ottawa boosting defence spending over the past year.
“Unfortunately, Canada has failed to make credible progress on its defense commitments,” Mr. Colby said Monday when he announced what he called a “pause” in the joint board.
The development marked the latest flare-up in a testy defence relationship between the White House and traditional U.S. allies, whom U.S. President Donald Trump has frequently accused of taking unfair advantage of American military spending. When asked about the move, Mr. Carney noted the board – which co-ordinates continental defence – had not met since 2024.
“It has a long heritage, but I wouldn’t overplay the importance of this,” the Prime Minister told reporters Tuesday during an unrelated resource project announcement in Quebec.
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The board, first established in 1940, is made up of military leaders and diplomats who consider major strategic issues in Canada-U.S. defence and make recommendations to both countries’ governments. It meets infrequently and some experts view it as having little influence now, as compared to its Cold War heyday.
Mr. Carney pushed back at the suggestion that Canada has fallen short on defence obligations. He noted that in 2025, Canada added more than $80-billion in new military spending over the next five years, and exceeded a NATO commitment to spend 2 per cent of gross domestic product on defence.
“This is the first time since the fall of the Berlin Wall that Canada has reached its NATO defence spending target,” the Prime Minister said.
“Canada is acting,” he said. “Everything is changed.”
He added that Canada is still working on its plan to further raise defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP. He declined to give further details on that plan, saying doing so would be premature. The Prime Minister also noted Canada has committed billions over 20 years to modernize the North American Aerospace Defense Command, an air defence organization run jointly with the U.S.
Mr. Carney said Canada will “diversify its defence co-operation” beyond the United States, as he said it should do as a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization alliance and a strong supporter of Ukraine as it resists Russia’s military assault.
“Ukraine is going to triumph, and we’re going to be on the right side of history,” the Prime Minister said.
Former Liberal MP John McKay served as the Canadian chair on the joint board for seven years. He said it was a useful place to spot growing irritants in the Canada-U.S. defence relationship.
Mr. McKay said he thinks the Trump administration is “irritated” that Mr. Carney has been building new defence relationships with other allies.
He added that he thinks the suspension of the joint board is in part also a reaction to Canada reconsidering buying 88 U.S.-made F-35s from Lockheed Martin. After Mr. Trump began imposing protectionist tariffs on Canada, Ottawa said it was weighing whether to proceed with the full order – a measure seen as an effort to gain leverage in talks with Washington.
Mr. McKay said he is concerned the Trump administration may next try to scrap NORAD. “I think the Americans want to throw the whole thing under a bus and just run the whole thing themselves.”
David Perry, president of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, a think tank, said Canada’s participation in the board had become a performative exercise.
“We were just going through the motions of having a meeting because the board was set up a long time ago, but we weren’t using it to drive anything.”
Mr. Colby’s Monday announcement also criticized Mr. Carney’s viral World Economic Forum speech from Davos in January, which was widely seen as critical of Mr. Trump.
We can no longer avoid the gaps between rhetoric and reality. Real powers must sustain our rhetoric with shared defense and security responsibilities. 2/3 https://t.co/qpQ2guTwW8
— Under Secretary of War Elbridge Colby (@USWPColby) May 18, 2026
Mr. Colby included a link to the speech and a map of North America in his announcement. “We can no longer avoid the gaps between rhetoric and reality,” he wrote, saying Canada should prioritize “hard power over rhetoric.”
U.S. Vice-President JD Vance on Tuesday took aim at other NATO allies, reiterating Mr. Trump’s long-standing complaints that Europe is relying too heavily on Washington for its defence.
In response to a question about the U.S. freezing a plan to rotate 4,000 troops to NATO member Poland amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Mr. Vance told a White House press briefing that it was time for European countries to do more for themselves.
“We want Europe to take more ownership over its own territorial integrity,” the Vice-President said. “Europe has to stand on its own two feet.”
Mr. Trump has regularly questioned the value of NATO, as well as U.S. military aid to Ukraine. Mr. Vance did not say anything on Canada-U.S. military co-operation.
While Canada has reached the 2-per-cent NATO target that was originally established for defence spending more than a decade ago, Mr. Carney has yet to lay out a plan to hit the alliance’s newest target.
NATO leaders in June, 2025, pledged to further boost defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP by 2035. This target is comprised of two parts: raising core military spending to 3.5 per cent of GDP, with the remaining 1.5 per cent allocated to dual-use infrastructure, such as ports, which can be used by the military or civilians.
The Canadian government has said the 1.5-per-cent infrastructure target is readily achievable based on already established infrastructure spending plans across Canada.
Canada’s budget watchdog, the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, has noted that the Carney government has yet to detail a path to reach these higher NATO targets.
Mr. Carney on Tuesday defended this lack of detail, saying it would be irresponsible to provide details until his government verified the best plan of action given fundamental shifts – driven by new technology – in how wars are being waged.
He said Russia’s war on Ukraine is “changing fundamentally the nature of offence and defence” in a ground war, referring to the role of drones and artificial intelligence. Any plan that Canada might have drawn up in 2025 after the new NATO pledge would have reflected priorities five years earlier.
The Prime Minister also noted NATO has scheduled a review of this 2035 target in 2029. The date provides NATO allies an opportunity to adjust the target – including lowering it – if circumstances warrant.
“That’s the reason why we don’t just draw a simple line, take a list that was prepared five years ago and say, ‘Yeah, we’ll have all that.’”
Mr. Trump is supposed to finish his term as President in 2029.
Mr. Carney said Canada doesn’t want to waste money on defence spending that is not appropriate for 21st-century warfare, given other priorities. “We want to keep taxes low, we want to support our cultural industries, we want to support health, we want to support Indigenous housing,” he said.