Justin Trudeau hints at boosting Canada’s military spending

I'll believe it when I see it.

 

[KevinB]

I don't have much good to say about Canadian foreign and defence policy but thank fuck we stayed out of Iraq. What a bloody quagmire for nothing.

Having spent several years in Iraq I would disagree.
However much like Afghanistan, once cannot simply invade a country without thinking through the consequences of ones actions. Part of that is to have a stability/transition plan in place.

Allowing Saddam's Chemical weapons to be moved to Syria was a massive blunder and has cost a lot more lives that it would to have interdicted them when we had eyes on during their movement.

Not having enough Troops to garrison the Country when the Baath party was dissolved was another colossal screw up -- as was not thinking through what was going to happen with all the out of work Baathists - and OFC the sectarian violence between Shia and Sunni while the power vacuum was being attempted to be absorbed.

 

[GR66]

Having spent several years in Iraq I would disagree.
However much like Afghanistan, once cannot simply invade a country without thinking through the consequences of ones actions. Part of that is to have a stability/transition plan in place.

 

[Halifax Tar]

Eugene Lang, remember him? He coauthored, in 2007, with Janice Gross Stein the book 'The Unexpected War: Canada in Kandahar,' opines in the Globe and Mail that both the Conservatives and the Liberals went to ignore the more dangerous world in which Canada finds itself and shuffle defence spending out of political and policy sight and mind:

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Our federal leaders won’t trust Canadians with the hard truth about defence spending​

About $15-billion, a year: that is the amount that the Parliamentary Budget Officer estimates the federal government would have to invest to reach NATO’s defence spending requirement of 2 per cent of GDP.

It is a big number and a major challenge, one made harder in the context of a large federal budget deficit, an affordability crisis, and demands on Ottawa from premiers, interest groups and other Canadians to spend even larger sums in many other areas – not to mention those who want tax cuts. Compounding the problem is that Ottawa has spent 10 years trying to justify why it has not met this goal, rather than developing and executing a plan to get there.

This is why getting to 2 per cent has become such a Herculean task today. Political leaders in both Conservative and Liberal governments over the decades have put Canada in this unenviable position. They now need to get us out of it.

What this challenge really boils down to, then, isn’t so much about the money. It’s about leadership. Canada is a relatively rich country, and it can afford to spend 2 per cent of its GDP on national defence, but doing so requires setting clear priorities.

Coming out of July’s NATO summit, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called the 2-per-cent threshold a “crass mathematical calculation.” In reality, however, it is a clear expression of collective defence, solidarity and burden-sharing among NATO members – an alliance that Canada played a key role in creating. If this measure is as arbitrary and offensive as Mr. Trudeau suggests, one wonders why both he and his predecessor Stephen Harper signed up for it, rather than standing up against it. But that, too, would have taken leadership.

It is now hackneyed to say the world has become a more dangerous place in recent years, but that makes it no less true. That Canadians seem to be slow to wake up to this reality – including the new and direct risks to Canada’s sovereignty in the high north and Arctic – is in part a function of leadership, or lack thereof.

Politicians and governments can choose to follow public opinion, or they can choose to try to shape it. In the last “war” this country faced – the COVID-19 pandemic – the Trudeau government chose to lead by shaping public opinion and influencing public behaviour. By and large, it worked. Canadians were told by the federal government, in clear, strong and frequent terms, that we were up against the wall, that our individual behaviour needed to change for the collective good, and that we will all had to make sacrifices to get through this. That is leadership.

Some suggest that increasing defence spending is warmongering and inevitably leads to war. But it is rather the opposite: The 2-per-cent requirement is designed to show our enemies – and we do have enemies – that the European and North American liberal democracies are strong, aligned, resolute, and not to be trifled with. The requirement is designed, in other words, to prevent war, not encourage it; it is fundamentally about deterrence. This needs to be explained frankly and clearly to Canadians by our political leadership – but it has not been, to date.

We are likely heading into a federal election next year. It now seems clear that none of the Liberals, the Conservatives or the NDP want to talk about this more dangerous world in which we find ourselves. Mr. Trudeau, Pierre Poilievre and Jagmeet Singh have yet to put forward any real plan to meet NATO’s requirement. It’s evident that the three party leaders don’t want this to be an election issue.

They are not interested in telling Canadians the hard truth: that spending 2 per cent of GDP is no longer a nice-to-have, but an absolute imperative. They don’t want to say that national defence is the exclusive jurisdiction of the federal government and one of its prime responsibilities under the Constitution – and that Ottawa will have to spend less in other areas to meet our 2-per-cent obligations. They don’t want to tell us the truth because, to paraphrase Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men, they don’t think we can handle the truth.

But Canadians can handle it, just as we did during the pandemic. But we need to hear it loud, clear and repeatedly from Ottawa. Tell us the truth; lead, rather than follow. That is what we need, if we hope to meet our duty to our closest allies and collective defenders.

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Mr Lang, who has deep Liberal ties, having been chief of staff to Bill Graham, Herb Grey and John McCallum in the Chrétien era, is quite right. Both parties got us into this mess and it now looks like it will be up to Pierre Poilievre, however reluctantly, to get us our of it, even as he axes the carbon tax and so on.

Lets pretend PP actually pulls through and makes the changes needed to fix defence and foreign policy.

Lets pretend he's actually going to make the cuts to hand outs and social spending that will, likely, be required to take us there. Making him wildly unpopular.

Does this article mean the author expects to the LPC to fall in behind the CPC and go "their right Canada, we need defence more than publicly funded daycare" ? And when the CPC lose the follow election, the LPC will continue with CPC defence and foreign policy program ?

Because none of that will happen. Its all pipe dreams. The CPC really can't fix defence or foreign policy because the country is addicted social programs, and taking them away or lessening them will be political suicide, because Canadians are aloof, fat and dumb. These leftists can blame the CPC or claim them to be equal players when in reality the field and momentum has been controlled by the LPC since at least WW1, by way of establishing policies that make it politically unsound to undo them.

 

[PrairieFella]

Having spent several years in Iraq I would disagree.
However much like Afghanistan, once cannot simply invade a country without thinking through the consequences of ones actions. Part of that is to have a stability/transition plan in place.

Allowing Saddam's Chemical weapons to be moved to Syria was a massive blunder and has cost a lot more lives that it would to have interdicted them when we had eyes on during their movement.

Not having enough Troops to garrison the Country when the Baath party was dissolved was another colossal screw up -- as was not thinking through what was going to happen with all the out of work Baathists - and OFC the sectarian violence between Shia and Sunni while the power vacuum was being attempted to be absorbed.

91 in defence of Kuwait, justified. 2003 with dubious casus belli, unjustified.

Having spent several years in Iraq I would disagree.
However much like Afghanistan, once cannot simply invade a country without thinking through the consequences of ones actions. Part of that is to have a stability/transition plan in place.

Allowing Saddam's Chemical weapons to be moved to Syria was a massive blunder and has cost a lot more lives that it would to have interdicted them when we had eyes on during their movement.

Not having enough Troops to garrison the Country when the Baath party was dissolved was another colossal screw up -- as was not thinking through what was going to happen with all the out of work Baathists - and OFC the sectarian violence between Shia and Sunni while the power vacuum was being attempted to be absorbed.

The American government doesn't get free passes for their mistakes, they fucked up with an illegal war, no plan and rampant war crimes and counter factuals don't change that.

At the risk of sounding Machiavellian, getting rid of Saddam was probably a mistake in the view of Western interest. I'm not denying he was an asshole, but the invasion and getting rid of Saddam directly left to the rise of ISIL and the turmoil they continue to unleash across the world. The power vacuum created by Saddam's ouster also let Iran full that void uncontested, and you know how that played out. From the get-go WMDs set the tone for what was to be an illegal, bloody, costly campaign that is still reverberating across the region today.

 

[KevinB]

The American government doesn't get free passes for their mistakes, they fucked up with an illegal war, no plan and rampant war crimes and counter factuals don't change that.

Spare me your sanctimonious Bullshit.
I was on TF McCall, so I am fairly aware of the WMD issues, what was recovered, and what was watched ride off over the borders.
The UN had required Saddam to turn it over and open his sites for inspection -- there was legal justification for the invasion, no one really likes to admit that - but go check out the UN Resolutions on Iraq.

No plan? Well there was a plan, it was just shit, but I'd suggest it was a lot better than the GoC's knee jerking to expand Afghanistan to avoid Iraq.

Rampant War Crimes? I don't think you want to open that genie, as Canada might not look to favorable with some actions that have been long buried from Afghanistan.

At the risk of sounding Machiavellian, getting rid of Saddam was probably a mistake in the view of Western interest. I'm not denying he was an asshole, but the invasion and getting rid of Saddam directly left to the rise of ISIL and the turmoil they continue to unleash across the world. The power vacuum created by Saddam's ouster also let Iran full that void uncontested, and you know how that played out. From the get-go WMDs set the tone for what was to be an illegal, bloody, costly campaign that is still reverberating across the region today.

Since we are playing revisionist history - how is Afghanistan faring back under Taliban control?

I don't think going into Iraq at the time was a good idea - simply because it took the eye off the ball in Afghanistan.

IF I was Emperor, I would have finished with Afghanistan - Firstly mining the fuck out of the Pakistani border (and probably wiped out of a lot of the ISI, as they where the Taliban's creator and biggest supporter). Then trapping OBL inside Afghanistan gone through with SOF and Light Infantry supported by air and artillery when needed, followed up by a robust civilian rebuilding effort - assisted by the occasional targeted killing of troublesome pests.
The done the same to Iran and Iraq.

But I don't have a way back machine - and I am not the Emperor of North America (Give me time)

 

[CBH99]

Greg Quinn, who is a former British diplomat who has served around the world, including in Canada, and now runs Aodhan Consultancy says, in 'The Line' that Canada's real problem with defence isn't measured in GDP and Canadians need to be honest, and stop pretending that they are something that they are not ... or at least, that they've recently chosen not to be.​

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Canada isn’t pulling its weight on defence. Is that what Canadians want? Because it isn’t what its allies want. And the allies are more and more willing to say so.

Canada, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, likes to talk about how the country punches above its weight in NATO and global affairs more generally. It’s a cliché many countries have resorted to when put under pressure on one issue or another. (And I’ll confess that this includes my own United Kingdom, which I served as a diplomat for decades before my recent retirement.)

It’s also smoke and mirrors, which in Canada’s case on defence, hides an unhappy truth — Canada doesn’t pay its way.

Trudeau says Canada will meet the target of spending two per cent of GDP on defence in 2032. Some 18 years after NATO committed to it. At the moment Canada spends a paltry 1.37 per cent, or some $33.8 billion a year, on defence, damn near the bottom among the allies, in percentage terms. Ottawa claims this will increase to 1.76 per cent, or $49.5 billion, by 2030. If so, that will move Canada up a whopping two places to 25th.

Mind you, the Parliamentary Budget Office disputes even this, stating that Canada’s defence spending will peak at 1.49 per cent of GDP in 2025-26 before dropping (yes, dropping) to 1.42 per cent in 2029-30. Somebody is being economical with the truth.]

Does this matter? Well, yes, it does to Canada’s allies who want to continue to regard the country as a good friend, a good ally, and a good partner. One that actually plays its part — as opposed to just saying it does. Promising to meet a target in eight years' time (when, incidentally, you probably won’t be in power) isn’t much of a promise at all.

The PM’s response to being pushed on this was as many could have predicted:


Somewhat petulant, one might say, especially since Trudeau freely and publicly signed up to said crass mathematical calculation! A target that Canada has reiterated its commitment to it on several occasions, across several governments. If you don’t plan to meet it then don’t try and get kudos from partners by saying it. Eventually, that will have the opposite effect to the one intended.

Indeed, that is what is starting to happen. Countries that are meeting their commitments will be grumbling behind closed doors. This will cut into whatever leverage and influence Canada may seek in allied capitals. Others will be more openly frustrated. Certainly, a bipartisan group of 23 U.S. Senators don't believe Canada is pulling its weight, as their May 2024 letter to PM Trudeau makes clear:


I suspect that American leaders will also be frustrated at an assumption in Ottawa that the U.S. will always cover its “Northern Flank,” protecting Canada in the process. Personally, I wouldn’t want to bet my own national security on that assumption, especially given the upcoming election and the increasingly obvious trends in U.S. politics. Canadians convinced that the U.S. will always defend them should remember what happened to Ukraine when the U.S., for entirely domestic political reasons, cut off the flow of munitions a few months ago. Canadians confident that they’ll always be at the allied table should remember that when the U.S., Australia and the U.K. announced their new alliance, it wasn’t just that Canada hadn’t been invited. It’s that Canada wasn’t even told there were talks happening. How much more of that does Ottawa want to experience?

There will be those who will respond to me by saying that when the Liberals came to power in 2015 Canada was spending under one per cent of GDP on defence, and this despite the previous Conservative government having announced an “aspirational target” of two per cent in 2014. So, therefore, the Liberals are better. It’s a fair point. It's also irrelevant. The world has changed over the past decade, and all I have said above would equally apply to a Conservative government. But for Canada’s current government and its supporters, saying you are the least bad isn’t a good look. The fact remains that you are still falling well short of what you have pledged to do, and it is not unfair that people judge you accordingly.

These same people will also point to Canada’s plans to spend money on new submarines, new ships, new aircraft, and yes, support to Ukraine. But how long will it take for those things to become operational and what are the chances of cost overruns? Oh, and let’s not forget the stories about problems with 9mm sidearms, basic personal equipment for troops, the provision of meals to forces deployed abroad, and tank, aircraft and vehicle serviceability rates that are alarmingly low.

The bottom line is simple — what does Canada (and the Canadian people) want its role in the world to be? Words are easy but they need to be backed by action. One of the most obvious demonstrations of action is spending on a defence force that is capable of deploying and acting on the global stage. More bluntly, of fighting and defeating a near-peer enemy as part of a coalition of allies.

If Canada doesn’t want to do that and prefers a defence force that is essentially a glorified local militia that focuses on domestic issues, well, fine. But let’s not pretend it is anything else. Let’s not talk about how much of a force for good Canada is in the world and let’s not try and fool Canada’s allies. They’re not as stupid as Canadian politicians want them to be.

And let’s not expect those allies to happily accept the situation and continue on as if nothing has changed. Canada already complains about being left out of AUKUS. Is it any wonder? More of that should be expected. If you don’t play the game and don’t pull your weight, then sadly, you don’t get the benefits of being in the grown-ups' club.

Canadians owe themselves, and frankly owe their allies, an honest discussion about kind of role Canada actually wants to play in the world … and whether they’re willing to actually pay the bills required to play that role. Only after such an honest chat can Canadians, and their allies, calibrate their expectations accordingly.

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Re: the last para and at the risk of repeating myself, I think, actually I'm about 99% certain that a solid majority of Canadians have decided that they do not want to play much of any role in the world and, therefore, they don't need to pay any bills. They bought into this notion over 50 years ago, around 1970 when Pierre Trudeau said:

1. The USA is just as big a threat to world peace as is the USSR (remember, please, that this was at the height (depth) of the Vietnam war) and Canada needs to focus on its own internal, domestic problems, like national unity and the search for a harmonious natural environment, and stop pretending that we matter in the world; and​

2. "The Land Is Strong" and, somehow - he never quite explained. how - "they" will pay for your "entitlements."​

I believe Canadians tell the polling firms who work for the major political parties that they neither see any need nor want to pay for any more defence than they have right now. In fact defence ranks right down there with symphony orchestras and ballet companies at the bottom of the list of most Canadians' spending priorities and many Canadians would support cutting defence even further.

I'm curious as to what all is included when % of GDP is being calculated?

Does it include the big money investments made to get the National Shipbuilding Program off the ground and humming along?

Or the upcoming big money investment on the advanced, fancy radar system?

Or recent procurement announcements such as the P-8 Poseidon?


Or...is the criticism with the annual budget?

Because depending on what one includes when they calculate defense spending, I'm thinking that number of a mere 1.3% could end up being higher?

 

[daftandbarmy]

Having spent several years in Iraq I would disagree.
However much like Afghanistan, once cannot simply invade a country without thinking through the consequences of ones actions. Part of that is to have a stability/transition plan in place.

Allowing Saddam's Chemical weapons to be moved to Syria was a massive blunder and has cost a lot more lives that it would to have interdicted them when we had eyes on during their movement.

Not having enough Troops to garrison the Country when the Baath party was dissolved was another colossal screw up -- as was not thinking through what was going to happen with all the out of work Baathists - and OFC the sectarian violence between Shia and Sunni while the power vacuum was being attempted to be absorbed.

On the upside, alot of good books, some of them true, came out of that war that cemented future careers for dozens of SOF personnel

 

[PrairieFella]

Spare me your sanctimonious Bullshit.
I was on TF McCall, so I am fairly aware of the WMD issues, what was recovered, and what was watched ride off over the borders.
The UN had required Saddam to turn it over and open his sites for inspection -- there was legal justification for the invasion, no one really likes to admit that - but go check out the UN Resolutions on Iraq.

Spare me your revisionism. I'll take the word of your Senate over anecdote thank you very much.

A year later, the United States Senate officially released the Senate Report of Pre-war Intelligence on Iraq which concluded that many of the Bush Administration's pre-war statements about Iraqi WMD were misleading and not supported by the underlying intelligence. United States–led inspections later found that Iraq had earlier ceased active WMD production and stockpiling; the war was called by many, including 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain, a mistake while others have argued the false allegations of weapons were used as a deliberate pretext for war.

No plan? Well there was a plan, it was just shit, but I'd suggest it was a lot better than the GoC's knee jerking to expand Afghanistan to avoid Iraq.

Ah yes, causing the chain of events that cause ISIL and Iran's rise to top regional dog, able to influence the Shia world and is totally better than Canada seeing the writing on the wall and avoiding an illegal war. Got it.
Rampant War Crimes? I don't think you want to open that genie, as Canada might not look to favorable with some actions that have been long buried from Afghanistan.

Since we are playing revisionist history - how is Afghanistan faring back under Taliban control?

Idk, ask Trump and Biden, they're the ones who abandoned the Afghans. When Canada left Kandahar, we certainly left it neater than when we found it. There certainly were no Abu Graibs and no Nisours or Hadithas.

I don't think going into Iraq at the time was a good idea - simply because it took the eye off the ball in Afghanistan.

On this we agree.

IF I was Emperor, I would have finished with Afghanistan - Firstly mining the fuck out of the Pakistani border (and probably wiped out of a lot of the ISI, as they where the Taliban's creator and biggest supporter). Then trapping OBL inside Afghanistan gone through with SOF and Light Infantry supported by air and artillery when needed, followed up by a robust civilian rebuilding effort - assisted by the occasional targeted killing of troublesome pests.
The done the same to Iran and Iraq.

But I don't have a way back machine - and I am not the Emperor of North America (Give me time)

Ah yes, indiscriminate, unmarked minefields. Might I direct you to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, ratified by the USA.

The USA fucked up. It's ok to admit that. My Country Right or Wrong inevitably leads to jingoism and the descent into autocracy. Which might be a bit more accurate than most of care to admit in the American context these past 10 years.

 

[KevinB]

And added to ignore list.

 

[PrairieFella]

And added to ignore list.

Lmao. Mature.

 

[CountDC]

I'm curious as to what all is included when % of GDP is being calculated?

Does it include the big money investments made to get the National Shipbuilding Program off the ground and humming along?

Or the upcoming big money investment on the advanced, fancy radar system?

Or recent procurement announcements such as the P-8 Poseidon?


Or...is the criticism with the annual budget?

Because depending on what one includes when they calculate defense spending, I'm thinking that number of a mere 1.3% could end up being higher?

To me a key term is "spending". Announcing future procurements does not count as they can be cancelled, nor does saying we are budgeting X dollars but not actually spending them because we are going to stall and block programs. It is really simple, at the end of the FY look at what has actually been spent and compare it to the GDP for the year.

 

[Brad Sallows]

United States–led inspections later found

Nothing known after the fact can be used to judge the decision to re-initiate hostilities in Iraq. It weakens the case against the war, which should be strong enough without adding information not known or dumbing down the definition of WMD or denying the efforts by Hussein to make it look like Iraq had active WMD programs.

avoiding an illegal war. Got it.

Pretty much all wars are illegal on the initiating side. The traditional conditions of jus ad bellum are really, really hard to satisfy. Saying a war is "illegal" doesn't amount to much more than recognizing that the sun rises in the east.

The USA fucked up.

Specifically, the Bush administration and more specifically its contributing contingent of neo-cons f*cked up. They're the backbone of the ex-Republican Never-Trump movement now. It seems the Republican party has to be destroyed if it can't be a party of perpetual foreign military involvement.

Canada's involvement in Afghanistan was an indirect contribution to the US in Iraq. There is no point quibbling about the fact that any contributions to operations in Afghanistan had the practical effect of freeing up US forces to use elsewhere. In the end, we also abandoned Afghanistan. We gave Afghanis a respite from one set of problems, and inflicted on them another. It would be difficult to "prove" which set is the lesser evil. Hussein was one kind of evil; destabilized Iraq in a civil war with Iranian involvement was another. Qaddafi, even in his newly co-operative mode after seeing Hussein's fate was one kind of evil; removing him and destabilizing Libya was another.

I can find some kind of strategic benefit in almost any war that most people think was pointless, but the question of "what if it had not been fought" always beckons. Better to not start wars and to not create conditions that invite others to take up the challenge. The best COA seems to be membershipo in a militarily powerful alliance or approximately permanent coalition. Keeping up our end of "militarily powerful" is where Canada fails. Being a nation of self-indulgent wieners has consequences.

 

[McG]

I'm curious as to what all is included when % of GDP is being calculated?

Does it include the big money investments made to get the National Shipbuilding Program off the ground and humming along?

Yes it does.

the upcoming big money investment on the advanced, fancy radar system?

When that money is spent, it will be included in the calculations.

recent procurement announcements such as the P-8 Poseidon?

That money will also be included in the calculation when it gets spent.

Or...is the criticism with the annual budget?

It is a measure of what we actually spend. There is a forecast for the current year, which will be updated to actual expenditures as nations report them (which is typically many months into the next year).

Because depending on what one includes when they calculate defense spending, I'm thinking that number of a mere 1.3% could end up being higher?

No. We had a bump a few years ago when our government made an effort to identify & include eligible expenses that Canada had not been including. There are no additional expenses that could be attributed to defence that we are leaving out of the calculation.