Defence Minister Bill Blair enters the room before appearing at the standing committee on national defence, Nov. 21 in Ottawa.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
Defence Minister Bill Blair is citing China’s massive military buildup as another reason why Canada and like-minded countries need to boost defence spending.
Canada is under pressure from allies, the United States in particular, to hike military spending to at least the NATO target of 2 per cent of annual economic output.
Mr. Blair, who spoke at the Halifax International Security Forum Friday, was asked at a news conference what Canada is doing to prepare for the arrival of Donald Trump’s second presidency. The minister said that Canada’s allies, including the United States, still agree on the “real threats to our security, our safety, our citizens” and then he laid out disturbing trends from his perspective: Russia’s ability to rearm itself despite sanctions tied to its assault on Ukraine and the fact North Korea has deployed troops to help Moscow.
He said Canada and its allies need to talk to industry about accelerating production of military goods. “Production is deterrence,” he said, quoting former NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg.
“Our adversaries are rapidly building up their militaries,” Mr. Blair told reporters in Halifax. “China is actually going through the largest military buildup of any nation in the world since the Second World War.
“And it is deeply concerning,” he said. “We have to keep up – not in order to engage in conflict, but to prevent conflict.”
Mr. Blair said allies have important work to do to build up deterrence. “We sometimes say: Give the porcupine a little more quills.”
Calling China an adversary and one that is reason to beef up Canadian military capabilities builds on what Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Jennie Carignan said in July when she estimated Canada has about five years to prepare to meet new long-range threats to the continent from Russia and China.
Gen. Carignan warned that Canadians live in a more dangerous world than most have seen in their lifetime, and rising threats from authoritarian states will mean “peak threat to the world” could arrive by the end of this decade.
David Perry, president of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, said Mr. Blair has “pretty accurately characterized China from a defence and security perspective.” He added that he’d like to see Mr. Blair’s cabinet colleagues “reflect that view more consistently.”
He said as things stand now, he doesn’t think Canada could contribute much to a conflict in the Taiwan Strait beyond a frigate with anti-submarine warfare capabilities. “Beyond that, Chinese missiles would be a major problem,” Mr. Perry said. “Navy friends have said in the event of actual shooting, Canadian ship missiles, offensive and defensive, would be depleted in minutes.”
Mr. Blair’s comments about China echo what military leaders in the United States have been telling Congress this year.
In March, Admiral John Aquilino, then-head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, warned the House of Representatives armed services committee that the People’s Republic of China’s expansion of its military is taking place on a “scale not seen since World War II” and Beijing is on track to be able to invade Taiwan by 2027.
China claims neighbouring Taiwan as a breakaway province and has not ruled using force to annex it.
He said China’s defence budget has risen more than 16 per cent to US$223.5-billion. And in the last three years, Beijing has added more than 400 fighter aircraft, more than 20 major warships and has more than doubled its inventory of ballistic and cruise missiles.
“Perhaps most concerning has been the rapid pace at which the PRC has bolstered its nuclear arsenal, increasing its warhead inventory by well over 100 per cent since 2020.”
A bipartisan U.S. Commission on the National Defense Strategy recently issued a report warning that “China is outpacing the United States and has largely negated the U.S. military advantage in the Western Pacific through two decades of focused military investment.” It concluded that “without significant change by the United States, the balance of power will continue to shift in China’s favor.”
Mr. Blair was asked about sharp criticism of Canada’s defence spending by the U.S. House intelligence committee chair. Republican Mike Turner told Politico earlier this week that Canada was not paying its fair share for defence. Canada is spending about 1.37 per cent of annual economic output on defence this year – significantly under the 2-per-cent target. “The Trudeau policies are the freeloading policies of a NATO of decay. If everyone had the policies of Trudeau, there would be no NATO,” Mr. Turner said.
Mr. Blair called the American criticism unfair. The federal government recently announced Ottawa would require eight years to reach the 2-per-cent defence-spending target, in 2032. He said this past summer the Liberal government had laid out a “verifiable and credible plan” to boost spending.
“I believe that there are opportunities to accelerate that, and it’s going to involve greater collaboration and co-operation with industry and with our allies in order to get that done.”