Ken Hansen is an independent defence and security analyst who retired from the Royal Canadian Navy in 2009 in the rank of commander.
At the end of August, U.S. national-security adviser Jake Sullivan made an unexpected visit to the federal Liberals’ cabinet retreat here in Halifax, igniting some serious heat around the subject of Canada’s defence spending. “For every country, we will always be in favour of getting to 2 per cent as rapidly as humanly possible,” he said, in reference to the agreement signed by NATO member countries, including Canada, to invest at least 2 per cent of gross domestic product every year on defence.
Mr. Sullivan’s visit came after Ottawa announced commitments to purchase new fighters and combat ships, and the start of the process to buy a fleet of 12 new non-nuclear-power submarines. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said that he believes the 2-per-cent target recommended by NATO will be reached in eight years. Yet Mr. Sullivan, who certainly knows about Ottawa’s promises, was blunt about his view that Canada is still not contributing enough defence spending, which NATO defines as payments from a national government “specifically to meet the needs of its armed forces, those of Allies or of the Alliance.”
But it would be more productive for us to stop worrying so much about NATO’s goals, and instead view defence spending more holistically. By that measure, we’re not doing so badly – and by changing how we understand defence spending, we could actually improve our standing at home.
Canada’s Main Estimates of government spending, which detail all planned expenditures in clear tabular form, lay out $449.2-billion for 2024-25. The $30.5-billion set out for the Department of National Defence amounts to 1.23 per cent of Canada’s 2023 GDP (the last year for which hard numbers exist), which is below NATO’s target, even if that sum makes DND the single-largest recipient of federal funding, and comprises 6.58 per cent of the total federal budget.
But DND is not the single agency responsible for national defence. The tables list a total of 18 departments, agencies and commissions that have some form of involvement with the sovereignty, security or safety of Canada, our institutions and our citizens, which I view as the three areas of responsibility that the federal government has in terms of defending Canada. Each of them can be interrelated and those relationships can change suddenly and without warning depending on events and shifting priorities. Pandemics, epidemics, wildfires, floods and earthquakes are only some of the things that keep emergency-measures planners awake at night; other threats demanding attention from planners, subject-matter experts and legal advisers include the rise of criminal activity of all sorts, including mass shootings, and murderous crimes meant to terrorize and undermine the people’s faith in the government. And the 18 organizations that hold some form of responsibility for the broader aspects of Canada’s safety, security and sovereignty in the Main Estimates are funded to the total amount of $56.84-billion – which amounts to 2.29 per cent of GDP (using the 2023 number).
Why is this important? Since the end of the Cold War, the increasing complexity of global affairs has been the bane of theorists and professionals who work in the defence arena. The Canadian experience in Afghanistan was particularly instructive. What started out as a fairly simple mission to drive the al-Qaeda terror organization out of that country became, over the course of Canada’s commitment in the Kandahar region, an effort to improve the local standards (if, in fact, there were any at all) of education, public health, agriculture, transportation and democratic governance. It all spiralled outward into a classic case of “mission creep.”
We can say now, in hindsight, that there was very little success in Afghanistan in any of the major efforts made to help the people and stabilize the fractured country. The costs spiralled ever upward, as did the toll of sacrifices paid by Canadians. And today, the Taliban are back in power.
The major lesson from Afghanistan was that no single department of government has the capabilities needed to grapple with the complex problem that is modern conflict. The idea of “whole-of-government” is now recognized as central to designing plans of action, no matter what the problem may be and no matter how grave the crisis.
The government’s budget estimates reveal that there are many agencies in Canada, as is most certainly the case elsewhere, that are funded to be prepared and as capable as possible within their means to respond to threats and emergencies with their best efforts. This is a very positive and somewhat reassuring reality. The problems that confront humanity both in general and in Canada cannot be ignored in the hope that something will happen and everything will be better in the future.
So, back to the Liberal government’s plan to raise funding for DND by about $20-billion in the next eight years. The reality is, it won’t work. DND is currently suffering from such significant shortages of trained and experienced personnel that it can barely manage to meet the most basic of its tasks: manning three to four warships, two to three flights of fighter aircraft and one infantry battle group. Most of this is intended to discourage Russian aggression in the Baltic region of NATO states. Even if $20-billion was added to the defence budget, the military could not spend it all because of their lack of experience in the financial, logistical, engineering and program-management spaces that are increasingly part of any successful mission to ensure public safety. The vast majority of it would likely wind up getting returned, unspent, to Canada’s Receiver-General, as has happened many times with much smaller projects in the past.
You could imagine the indignation and even outrage from the other 17 agencies of Canada involved in national defence if DND was the only recipient of such a windfall. Do their tasks and responsibilities not have any value to the government, or to the overall defence of our country?
A far better option would be to distribute the $20-billion more evenly between the 18 departments that comprise our approach to national defence. That way, there may be some hope of achieving some real results for the people of Canada from the stewards of our sovereignty, security and safety within a reasonably quick time frame.