Canada is heading for humiliation at the coming NATO summit

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Every government minister has a role to play. As Minister of National Defence, Bill Blair’s role seems to be to find new and more creative ways to imply that Canada will live up to its NATO commitments without ever actually committing to do so. Or certainly that it would, if only he were Defence Minister.

I was first impressed by his ingenuity in this regard at last year’s Halifax International Security Forum, a gathering of hawkish defence and foreign policy types from across the democratic world. Mr. Blair had the unenviable task of hosting them, three months into the job, at a time when Canada’s feeble contribution to the collective defence is no longer politely overlooked, but increasingly the subject of pointed criticism.

In his speech to the conference, the minister ran through all the usual hymns to the “international rules-based order” and boasted about all the good things his government has been doing to support it. But then, perhaps sensing the mood of the room, he added: “Let me say and reassure you all, Canada knows it must do more.”

Not: Canada will do more. Just that we know we must. So when we don’t, be assured, we will feel really guilty about it.

Since that time the minister has performed various inversions on this theme. After the release in April of the government’s long-awaited defence policy update, which once again made no commitment to meeting NATO’s 2-per-cent-of-GDP target for military spending, Mr. Blair was still at it, assuring a conference on NORAD modernization that while he had been unable to persuade cabinet to meet that “spreadsheet target,” Canada would nevertheless get there some day thanks to spending plans that had not yet been costed.

Notably, the minister has suggested that the planned purchase of new submarines for the Royal Canadian Navy would get us over the hump. The government, note, has not yet decided what kind of subs to buy, or how many, or from whom, or at what expense, but golly, that’s got to be enough, surely.

Here are the actual facts. The government will spend $41-billion on defence this fiscal year, through National Defence or other departments, equal to 1.39 per cent of GDP. By fiscal 2030, five years from now, the defence-policy update projects spending will have risen to $57.8-billion, or 1.76 per cent of GDP. That figure is already in some jeopardy, however, as GDP projections have been updated.

Canada is one of only a handful of NATO members who have still not reached the target, a decade after the original pledge to “move towards” 2 per cent: As of this year, NATO reports, 23 of its 32 members will have done so. More to the point, we are the only one that has offered no plan to meet the target in future. Indeed, the Prime Minister is reported to have privately told NATO officials Canada would “never” get there.

It was one thing for Canada to rank among the NATO laggards when most of the alliance was similarly derelict. But since then the alliance has done much to pull up its socks, especially after Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Canada is now publicly singled out for criticism: In a letter to the Prime Minister from a bipartisan group of 23 U.S. senators (”we are concerned and profoundly disappointed … Canada will fail to meet its obligations to the Alliance, to the detriment of all NATO Allies and the free world, without immediate and meaningful action to increase defense spending”), and in statements by the U.S. ambassador, the NATO secretary-general, and others.

The Business Council of Canada has lately added its voice to the chorus, warning in its own letter to the Prime Minister that Canada faced “diplomatic isolation” at next month’s NATO summit in Washington if the government does not unveil a plan to get to 2 per cent before then. “If we, as a country, fail to make this benchmark level of investment in defence, as successive Canadian governments including yours have promised,” the letter prophesied, “we will put lives and livelihoods at risk.”

Two per cent of GDP, it is true, is an arbitrary target. Countries do not suddenly become vulnerable to attack if they spend less than that amount, nor are they rendered invincible by spending more. The point is rather that it is the figure we agreed upon with our allies.

Canada’s defence has never been a matter purely for Canadians – we could not possibly defend our vast terrain by ourselves – nor are Canada’s security interests limited to the defence of the homeland. We have always relied on our allies, but we have not always been a responsible ally in return.

That was always discreditable; in the present security environment, it is impossible. Two per cent of GDP is no longer regarded in NATO circles as an aspirational goal, but as a bare minimum. Already there are calls to lift it to 2.5 per cent or 3 per cent.

Mainly it means: more. We need, as an alliance, to spend more to meet the heightened threat from what is fast becoming an alliance of the world’s dictatorships, led by Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.

In Canada’s case, we need to spend more, not just to meet new challenges, but simply to restore our military to basic functionality. Defence experts are agreed: Canada has too few troops, with too little equipment in good working order, to make more than the most modest contribution to the collective defence.

Of course, part of the problem is that much of what we do spend is squandered: from ships to fighter jets to submarines, the list of procurement disasters – projects that drag on years behind schedule, costing tens of billions of dollars over their initial estimate – is a long one.

Much of this has to do with government insistence on securing “regional benefits” – jobs in politically important locations – from these purchases, or even building domestically, where it would be cheaper and faster to buy them from another country. As much as we need to spend more, then, it’s even more important to spend smarter.

It’s also true, as the Treasury Board Minister has lately reminded us, that the government would have a hard time getting the money out the door in a timely fashion, even if it did commit to 2 per cent. It simply hasn’t the number of staff required to put through all the procurement that would be involved.

But this is hardly a defence. If the government lacks sufficient procurement personnel to make decisions on military spending, that is simply another way in which it has allowed the defence of the country to atrophy.

This is not a criticism only of this government. The decline of the Canadian military has been a bipartisan project, sustained over several decades. It was under Stephen Harper, after all, that defence spending fell to below 1 per cent of GDP. Even today, the Conservatives have made no firmer commitment to the 2-per-cent target than the Liberals.

It’s not hard to see why. Meeting our NATO targets isn’t just a matter of spending another $15- to $20-billion annually on defence, but of finding the money to fund it. A tax increase of that size isn’t in the cards: The public would not stand for it (since, to generate enough revenue, the public at large, rather than the usual “corporations” or “the rich,” would have to pay it).

Neither would there be much public support for shifting that much spending to defence from other, more tangible priorities, more obviously connected to people’s everyday lives than conflicts in faraway countries “of whom we know nothing.” So either the necessary increase in defence spending would have to be financed with borrowed money – at a time when population aging is already straining the country’s finances – or it would be left to the next government to take on. And the next, and the next, and the next.

If Canada is to become a responsible ally again – if we are to cleanse ourselves of our growing reputation as a freeloader – it will have to start by educating the public to certain realities: that the world is a far more dangerous place than it was even a decade ago; that Canada can no longer pretend that it is immune to these threats, by virtue of our three oceans; that even the Americans can no longer be relied upon to defend us, and in any case, that it is a base and shameful thing to expect others to defend us without being ready to defend them in our turn.

That will take leadership. If the public is to make defence a priority, political leaders will have to, for once, get out in front of them. It’s one thing to let transportation or tourism slip into disrepair: they can always be fixed later. But defence, especially in the nuclear age, is existential. If Europe is lost, it may never be returned to the democratic fold. If military conquest becomes the means by which nations settle their differences, a middle power like Canada will have no place to hide.

There is still time: time for the government to revise its spending targets; time for the parties to agree to take the politics out of defence; time to reform our procurement processes, based on “bang for the buck” and not “jobs for the boys.“ Otherwise I fear we are headed for national humiliation, or worse.