But depending on who you ask, the spending commitments made by Treasury Secretary Chrystia Freeland on Thursday are either unfortunately too few or fortunately smaller than they could be, keeping funding for other areas of the budget. The key element is a plan to boost defense spending by $ 8 billion over five years, bringing the country’s defense spending for 2026-27 to 1.5 percent of Gross Domestic Product, from 1.39 percent which is today. Of that $ 8 billion, $ 6.1 billion is planned to be used to modernize NORAD, the defense partnership between Canada and the United States, and $ 500 million is intended to help Ukraine. There will also be another amount available to meet Canada’s commitments to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. But retired Lt. Gen. Andrew Leslie was critical of the government’s plan. “It simply came to our notice then [the Department of] “Defending is doing more with less,” said Leslie, a former Liberal MP for the Orleans suburb of Ottawa, noting that when the Liberals came to power in 2015, they pledged $ 12 billion in defense spending, much more which says they have not spent. He noted that funding also falls short of NATO’s request to member countries. “They have been asking us to go to two percent for years – our GDP is the same as in Russia. And that brings us from 1.3 percent to about 1.5, but only at the end of five years, if “It’s so much worse than I could have feared.” Retired Lt. Gen. Andrew Leslie says the government is asking the Department of Defense to do more with less, based on funding available in the federal budget this week. (Chris Wattie / Reuters)
“Our Government’s defense policy – Strong, Secure, Involved – increases defense spending by more than 70 percent between 2017 and 2026 and puts Canada’s defense spending, in real dollars, in sixth place among the 30 NATO members. in 2020-2021 “, said Daniel Miden, spokesman for the Minister of National Defense Anita Anand, said in an email to Cross Country Checkup. “In the short term, Secretary Anand will present a strong package to modernize NORAD and to secure our sovereignty in the Arctic. Secretary Anand is in frequent contact with US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin on this issue,” he wrote.

“The system can not manage more money”

Peggy Mason, president of the Rideau Institute, an independent think tank on foreign policy and defense, and a former Canadian ambassador to the United Nations, said Canada was not lagging behind in defense spending. However, the war in Ukraine may have led some to expect more money for defense in the budget. “I’m very relieved that it’s $ 8 billion in five years, and I’m even more relieved that … six billion of that is focused on modernizing NORAD,” Mason said. He added that he hoped funding for NORAD would improve Canada’s ability to monitor the Arctic, “which is fundamental to sovereignty and security,” he said. “At the same time, I would like to point out that we still have the fundamental problem that the system can not handle more money – that it is not able to spend what we have already committed,” he said. Mason cited figures from the Parliamentary Budget Office, which show that the Department of Defense is under-spending about $ 2 billion a year due to delays in equipment supplies. Mason said that in order for the country’s defense spending to reach 2% of GDP, Canada would have to spend an additional $ 16 billion on defense. “I mean, it’s ridiculous. Honestly, it’s absurd to do that,” he said. But for Leslie, he sees it as part of what he calls “Canada’s declining role on the international stage.” “I am very concerned that this relentless focus on social programs to please the electorate is to the detriment of national security and international security, because we are no longer really contributing to missions of peace and stability,” he said.

Defense is based on diplomacy, on soft skills

Branka Marijan, a senior fellow at Project Plowshares, a peace and disarmament think tank that is part of the Canadian Council of Churches, agrees that Canada has not focused on peacekeeping missions. “I think in general the public support was for peacekeeping and peace support operations,” he said. “But that has not been the case for a long time, right? Canada is really no longer concerned with peacekeeping.” Branka Marijan, a senior researcher at Project Plowshares, says she wanted to see more funding in the federal budget for diplomatic efforts and other soft skills that are also critical to defense and international relations. (Submitted by Branka Marijan)
Marijan said there was a “disconnect” between the public perception of Canada as a peacekeeping country and what the military is doing. “There is still a lot of perception that we are … peacekeepers,” he said. “This does not reflect where we are.” She also said that the level of defense spending in the federal budget did not surprise her based on what was implied before it was submitted. “What is frustrating is that we do not see the same kind of investment and the same kind of commitment to, you know, peacebuilding and diplomacy and the humanitarian aspects,” he said. Marijan pointed out that they need such soft skills, for example, in responding to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – from building consensus with other countries to helping refugees if they want to come to Canada. “This is something that will be relevant beyond this conflict,” he said. Written by Andrea Bellemare with archives from CBC News. The interviews were produced by Steve Howard and Abby Plener.