Canada’s Defence Minister Bill Blair said he’s confident Canada will eventually exceed NATO’s defence spending target once planned submarine and missile projects are approved.
Speaking after meeting with the German Defence Minister in Ottawa ahead of the July NATO summit, Mr. Blair said he wanted to assure allies that Canada’s defence spending is on the rise. Just last week, however, he said it has been difficult to convince his cabinet colleagues of the merits of increasing it to 2 per cent of Canada’s gross domestic product, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s goal.
The Canadian Global Affairs Institute estimated in April that Canada’s defence spending sits at 1.33 per cent of the country’s GDP. The most recent defence policy shows the government expects that will increase to 1.76 per cent by 2029-30.
Mr. Blair said the country will soon need to replace an aging submarine fleet and improve air defence systems, but these expenses were not included in the defence budget projections released in April.
He added that Canada remains committed to defending the Arctic and the North Atlantic, and being present and effective in the Indo-Pacific.
“All of those things are going to require additional investments,” Mr. Blair said.
In 2014, Canada and other NATO countries committed to spending 2 per cent of their GDP on defence and 20 per cent of their defence budget on equipment. Canada is the only country in the alliance that did not meet either commitment by March 2024, a report by the Canadian Global Affairs Institute shows.
“I want to acknowledge our new defence policy does not quite get us to 2 per cent,” Mr. Blair said, “but it’s a remarkable new investment in defence. Our defence budget next year over this year is going to rise by 27 per cent.”
Germany’s Minister of Defence, Boris Pistorius, said he has “no reason at all” to complain about Canada’s engagement as a military partner.
“We have all the same challenges in our domestic politics. We need to find money. We need to find personnel. We need to increase our production capacities as industries,” he said. “Everyone is working as hard as possible to face the challenges and to solve the problem.”
Germany reached the NATO target this year – the first time Germany has spent 2 per cent of its gross domestic product on defence since the 1990s, Mr. Pistorius said. “I’m absolutely convinced that 2 per cent can only be the floor but not the ceiling.”
Almost two-thirds of Canadians believe the country should increase its defence spending to meet the 2 per cent target, according to a Nanos Research survey commissioned by The Globe and Mail. (The poll is based on phone surveys of more than 1,000 randomly selected Canadians between Feb. 28 and March 2. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.0 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.)