Justin Trudeau hints at boosting Canada’s military spending

I'll believe it when I see it.

 

[torg003]

That's better!

 

[OldSolduer]

Lol, factoring inflation I stand corrected, my 2 loonies worth!

Oh my you're a big spender

 

[Rd651]

Oh my you're a big spender

That's all I got the government took the rest!!

 

[Retired AF Guy]

Trudeau's not embarrassed.

Unfortunately, there are lots of other Canadians out there that are just as misinformed as he is. From todays Toronto Star:

Cyberattacks. Forest fires. Decaying infrastructure. Maybe Canada has better things to spend money on than G7 and NATO​

NATO missions occur only with U.S. approval and are led by the U.S., writes David Olive. That finds Canadian taxpayers subsidizing America’s military ambitions abroad.

By David Olive Star Business Columnist Tuesday, August 1, 2023

The Wall Street Journal recently devoted an editorial to Canada’s “pathetic” level of defence spending and suggested that we should be booted from the G7 because of it.

Among NATO members, the G7 countries must lead in raising their defence outlays to an amount equal to two per cent of GDP, said the Journal. That target was agreed to by NATO members including Canada in 2014 as an aspirational goal.

Canada’s current defence spending equals 1.38 per cent of GDP.

“And if Canada doesn’t want to play that role,” the Journal said, “then the G7 should consider a replacement. Poland, which now spends 3.9 per cent of GDP on defence, would be a candidate.”

Ideally, that Journal broadside would spur a long-overdue rethink of Canadian foreign and defence policy.

Does Canada even want to remain in the G7 and NATO?

And should we spend less on defence and more on fighting cyberattacks and protecting ourselves from forest fires and other climate crisis harms?

The G7 is an annual summit dating from the 1970s for the leaders of some of the world’s richest jurisdictions — the U.S., Japan, Germany, France, the U.K., Italy and Canada. The head of the European Union (EU) has observer status.


The G7 is just another “talking shop,” like Davos without the celebrities. And the G7, like almost everything of which America is a member, is dominated by the U.S.

In projecting its own values worldwide, Canada would be better served in building up the Commonwealth and La Francophonie, where Canada and other member countries aren’t sidelined by the U.S.

In fact, Canada’s membership in the G7 and NATO invites resentment for the wealth and perceived alignment with the U.S. that each institution represents.

NATO, it should be clear, exists to project American power abroad. Its missions occur only with U.S. approval and are led by the U.S.

That finds Canadian taxpayers subsidizing America’s military ambitions and surrendering some of Canada’s foreign policy sovereignty.

At the dawn of the nuclear era, Canada swore off becoming a nuclear-weapons power. But as a member of NATO, Canada is partnered in a military alliance equipped with thousands of nuclear warheads.

Canada spends a lot of money on defence, more than would be expected of a country with no enemies.

In 2021, Canada spent about $35 billion on defence, ranking sixth among NATO’s 31 members. (Poland spent $17.7 billion that year.)

Canadian defence spending has jumped by 40 per cent since 2014. It will surge by another 46 per cent, to $51 billion per year, by fiscal 2026-27, according to the Parliamentary Budget Office.

As it happens, G7 members Germany and Italy also have not met the two per cent target. (G7 member Japan is not a NATO partner.)

NATO members that meet the two per cent target often have lingering foreign policy interests in former colonies in Africa, the Middle East and Asia Pacific.

Or they are in dangerous neighbourhoods like the Russian frontier (Poland and the Baltic States) and the Balkans (Croatia).

You don’t have to be a pacifist to be skeptical about defence spending.

The capability of the “hard power” represented by costly military hardware and large standing armies has severe limitations.

The French learned that lesson from their military setbacks in Vietnam and Algeria.
And the Americans made a botch of their armed interventions in Southeast Asia, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, NATO’s dubious expansionism, following a spell in which the alliance looked irrelevant in the post-Soviet era, is a primary just cause cited by Russia in its invasion of Ukraine.
With considerable lobbying in Washington and Eastern European capitals by Lockheed Martin Corp. and other large defence contractors, NATO has added 16 new members over the past three decades.

NATO was trying to coax still more former Soviet states, Ukraine and Georgia, into the alliance when Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.

NATO’s encroachment on Russia does not justify Putin’s atrocities in Ukraine, but the Russian president has been plain-spoken about the NATO-fed paranoia that prompts his war crimes.
NATO and other forms of hard power have not dissuaded North Korea and Iran from nuclear-power ambitions. They have not curbed the proliferation of failed states, Syria, Iraq, Somalia and South Africa, among them.

And hard power hasn’t protected Canada from the daily ransomware attacks, thought to mostly originate in Russia, that routinely disable Canadian hospitals and businesses.

Real threats we have, from cyberattacks; forest fires and other harms caused by climate crisis; an inability to adequately house ourselves; an underfunded health-care system; and an ancient power grid and other aging infrastructure.

Pumping ever more money into defence, as Canada has done — the Journal article notwithstanding — has not made Canadians safer.

We need to reassess what truly threatens us, and then commit our limited resources to better protecting ourselves from those threats. It’s time to stop padding the profits of the military-industrial complex.

David Olive is a Toronto-based business columnist for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @TheGrtRecession

Link

 

[dimsum]

Unfortunately, there are lots of other Canadians out there that are just as misinformed as he is. From todays Toronto Star:



Link

Aside from the obvious bias, the fact that he doesn't think cybersecurity is a part of defence is facepalm-worthy.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

No he is not, and that's the sad part....my grandkids are totally.....Fuc*** because of this country's total fail, to actually give a fuc* about the future including Defense, the US at some point will take Canada's resources, so China doesn't get it! Economy is in the toilet with all the Liberal projects, housing / inflation shitshow, this Current government does not give a shit whatsoever!! How many damn NATO countries have to say we are a freeloader!! We have the resources to unfuck this, but won't happen because Greta Says so!! My 2 cents!

Redistribution of wealth, destruction of natural resource sectors, runaway inflation, loss of the middle class. Demonization of our European heritage. Divisiveness at every turn, attacking and destroying anyone who dares try counter the trudeau narrative. I could go on. I've said from the beginning, he is not here for Canadians or Canada as soveriegn, but to fulfill a globalist agenda of "You will own nothing, and you will be happy." He told us before he was done that he was going to make us the world's first Post National State and everyone laughed. Not laughing now, are they. Out of work, $200 from bankruptcy, living in tents while illegal aliens bring in thousands in benefits and live in 4 star hotels. Many without job, language and education skills. For the life of me, I can't understand how Canadians can be so willfully blind as to what is happening to this country. Like the old adage, they won't care until it comes for them and then it'll be too late. For this guy though, I will not go gentle into this good night.

 

[OldSolduer]

And maybe I'll finally get that shit at a one night stand with Scarlett Johansson... we all can have our hopes and dreams I guess.


Edit: God damn you Auto Correct . Then again, if those were the terms...

Please. Scarlet Johanson ha!!


Kate Beckinsale

 

[Eye In The Sky]

Damn, so the Trudeau gov has the option of cancelling MMA and just carrying on with CP140! That is a COA if IRC.

Yup. They can just shut down LRP if they do that…

 

[Halifax Tar]

Unfortunately, there are lots of other Canadians out there that are just as misinformed as he is. From todays Toronto Star:



Link

Maybe the author is right, and maybe we don't deserve to be in NATO.

 

[FSTO]

Yup. They can just shut down LRP if they do that…

Colour me not surprised if little Billy Blair recommended that COA.

 

[Brad Sallows]

Please. Scarlet Johanson ha!!


Kate Beckinsale

Scarlett Johansson AND Kate Beckinsale.

 

[Kirkhill]

Oh my you're a big spender

1966 - arrived in Canada - Coke 7 cents
2023 - currently - Coke $2.59 (admittedly the bottle is bigger)

The toonie kind of feels like 2 cents some days.

 

[KevinB]

1966 - arrived in Canada - Coke 7 cents
2023 - currently - Coke $2.59 (admittedly the bottle is bigger)

The toonie kind of feels like 2 cents some days.

/entirely off topic post
While younger than you, I can remember in the summer at my parents cottage near Petawawa biking in the 70’s into Killaloe to get a soda, it was $0.10, this summer I drove to Barry’s Bay got a 4 pack of Mexi-Coke (cane sugar as opposed to the crap in normal Canadian and American Coke) for $6.42 Cdn)
Which even before the exchange rate was a little cheaper than one can get Mexi-Coke down here.

Even greater tangent, a BeaverTail this year was ~$6.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

.25 would buy me a bottle of grape Crush and full size chocolate bar. For pop there was place where we pick up a flat of pop in stubbie bottles and when done return the bottles to the same place, where they were cleaned and refilled.

 

[Brad Sallows]

What I find interesting is that bottle deposit on a $0.10 soda was $0.02. 20% of the cost. That period (start of '70s) was also when the run-up in comic book prices started ... $0.12, $0.15, $0.20, $0.25...

Bastards.

 

[tomydoom]

/entirely off topic post
While younger than you, I can remember in the summer at my parents cottage near Petawawa biking in the 70’s into Killaloe to get a soda, it was $0.10, this summer I drove to Barry’s Bay got a 4 pack of Mexi-Coke (cane sugar as opposed to the crap in normal Canadian and American Coke) for $6.42 Cdn)
Which even before the exchange rate was a little cheaper than one can get Mexi-Coke down here.

Even greater tangent, a BeaverTail this year was ~$6.

Even more off topic, Barry's Bay must have the only Tim Horton's in the world that closes at 3pm.

 

[dapaterson]

 

[GK .Dundas]

What I find interesting is that bottle deposit on a $0.10 soda was $0.02. 20% of the cost. That period (start of '70s) was also when the run-up in comic book prices started ... $0.12, $0.15, $0.20, $0.25...

Bastards.

Nothing quite like having one's childhood ruined by inflation...

 

[KevinB]

Even more off topic, Barry's Bay must have the only Tim Horton's in the world that closes at 3pm.

They are having major work force issues. They haven’t even opened up the inside space. Everything is still drive through only.

 

[tomydoom]

They are having major work force issues. They haven’t even opened up the inside space. Everything is still drive through only.

Last summer, I found that out the hard way.. I was driving from Mississauga to Petawawa via Huntsville (dropping the kids off at summer camp for the week) and was in desperate need of a caffeine break. Unfortunately it was 4pm.