Canadian Defence working 'very hard' to reach NATO's 2%

Photo: Sean Kilpatrick The Canadian Press National Defence Minister Bill Blair arrives for a cabinet meeting on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Tuesday, Nov. 5, the day of the U.S. presidential election.

Michel Saba – The Canadian Press in Ottawa

Published yesterday at 3:10 p.m.

• Canada

The Canadian government said Friday it is trying to accelerate the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO) military spending target, but denied it was linked to Donald Trump's upcoming return to the White House.

“The prime minister has presented a plan to NATO and a commitment to reach 2 per cent (of GDP) by 2032. We are all working very hard to accelerate that process. But this is not in response to external pressure. This is internal pressure,” said National Defence Minister Bill Blair.

Mr. Blair was asked as he arrived at the first meeting of the cabinet committee on Canada-U.S. relations, a group that was just resurrected following the Republican billionaire’s election, how much room Ottawa has to manoeuvre if Mr. Trump demands an accelerated timetable.

Donald Trump has said in the past that if he were president again, the United States would not offer protection to NATO allies that did not do their part. Collective defence is a founding principle of the Atlantic alliance.

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The 32 NATO allies have agreed to spend at least 2 per cent of their gross domestic product on defence, but Canada is one of the few countries that has not presented a plan to meet that target. Twenty-three members have already met the target or have said they will do so by the end of the year. In Canada, in 2024-25, military spending reaches 1.35% of GDP.

At the NATO leaders’ summit in Washington last June, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — under increasing pressure from allies — pledged that Canada would meet the 2% target by 2032.

Minister Blair explained that the Canadian Armed Forces need a host of equipment to meet their obligations not only to NATO, but also to NORAD – the North American Aerospace Defense Command – and to continental defence.

He outlined a massive shopping list: surveillance submarines, integrated air and missile defence, new fighter jets, new tanks and artillery, equipment and munitions for the armed forces.

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“Win-win”

A few minutes later, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly did not repeat her colleague's comments when questioned on the same subject.

She did, however, insist that Canada will “triple” its defence budget, which will represent “the biggest investment in decades”.

“It will create jobs on our side of the border. It will also create, of course, a lot of jobs on the other side of the border, on the American side. Why? Because there is a lot of military equipment that we will buy that is manufactured in the United States,” she insisted.

In a press scrum after the meeting, Ms. Joly explained that Canada considers that the Canadian approach to defence is “a win-win position” with the United States.

Moreover, when designing the new defence policy, “we had in mind that there could potentially be two candidates for the White House,” she added, without however specifying her thoughts.

At her side, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland added that the defence policy is an “industrial strategy, […] an economic strategy and policy.”

Ms. Freeland notably argued that Canada has already significantly increased its defence spending, which amounted to “0.9% […] under the Conservative government,” that it is “a leader” in NATO missions, such as the one in Latvia, and that it offers major support to Ukraine with Operation Unifier.

With information from Émilie Bergeron