Minister of Foreign Affairs Melanie Joly and National Defence Minister Bill Blair look on as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks during a news conference at the NATO Summit on July 11 in Washington.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Thursday that Canada would meet its promised NATO defence-spending target by 2032, even as he dismissed the benchmark as little more than a “crass mathematical calculation” and did not lay out a plan for how Canada would reach it.
Mr. Trudeau made the pledge in the final hours of a North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit in Washington, at which Canada came under fire for failing to spend 2 per cent of its gross domestic product on defence, a threshold 23 of NATO’s 32 members have achieved.
He did not provide further details on how Ottawa would meet the target. He said those would be outlined four years from now in a planned 2028 Defence Policy Update.
Mr. Trudeau criticized the decade-old 2-per-cent benchmark, arguing that if Canada wanted to meet it quickly the country could do so through creative accounting, or by militarizing the Coast Guard and counting it as a defence expenditure.
“We’ve always questioned the 2 per cent as the be-all and end-all of evaluating contributions to NATO,” he told reporters. “So, yes, there may be ways where we could shift some accounting or make a little tweak here or give every Coast Guard member a handgun and say, ‘Okay, we’ve done our job.’ Would that make Canada safer? Would that make Canadians better off?”
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Mr. Trudeau said Canada’s work for NATO “isn’t always reflected in the crass mathematical calculation that certain people turn to very quickly,” and that his thinking is guided by geopolitical concerns, and “not some nominal targets that make for easy headlines and accounting practices but don’t actually make us automatically safer.”
The new 2032 commitment comes just three months after Defence Minister Bill Blair released a defence policy update that faced criticism for stopping short of the 2-per-cent goal, instead mapping out a plan to reach 1.76 per cent by 2030. Canada currently spends 1.37 per cent.
For several days at the summit, Ottawa teased that something beyond Mr. Blair’s previous policy would soon be announced. By waiting until the end to unveil it, Mr. Trudeau avoided scrutiny by allies of the lack of detail.
Former U.S. president Donald Trump, who is in a close race for the White House with President Joe Biden, threatened earlier this year not to defend NATO countries from Russian invasion unless they spend more money on defence.
Jens Stoltenberg, the alliance’s outgoing secretary-general, touted Mr. Trudeau’s commitment as he tried to assuage fears that a return of Mr. Trump would result in the U.S. leaving NATO.
“All those allies who are not yet at 2 per cent will be at 2 per cent,” he told reporters. “I expect the U.S., and all allies, to remain committed to NATO.”
Earlier on Thursday, Mr. Trudeau announced a plan to work with the U.S. and Finland on building icebreaker ships for use in the Arctic. Earlier in the week he announced $500-million more in military aid for Ukraine, and that Canada would start exploring the possibility of buying up to 12 submarines.
Canadian politicians have long complained that the 2-per-cent figure is arbitrary. When all NATO members pledged to adhere to it in 2014, Stephen Harper, who was prime minister at the time, said Canada had “contributed disproportionately” to the alliance, even though at the time the country’s spending was at roughly 1 per cent of GDP.
David Perry, president of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute think tank, said Mr. Trudeau’s commitment to reach NATO’s target by 2032 lacks the detail necessary to be considered a firm and reliable pledge.
“If all he’s going to say is, ‘We’ll get there eight years from now, and we’ll give you the plan and the detail four years from now,’ I don’t think that that’s a very credible statement at all,” Mr. Perry said. He estimated that Canada’s current defence spending is $10-billion to $15-billion below what would be necessary to reach 2 per cent of annual economic output.
The 2032 timeline, he said, means it will likely be up to another government to meet the target. “This government is unlikely to be in office eight years from now,” Mr. Perry added. Mr. Trudeau’s Liberals are trailing the Conservative Party in national polls.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s party released a statement criticizing Mr. Trudeau’s defence spending record but made no hard pledge to hit the 2-per-cent target.
Conservative defence critic James Bezan said his party would “work towards meeting our NATO spending commitments.”
David Cohen, the U.S. ambassador to Canada, applauded Mr. Trudeau’s timeline. Canada, he said, “has further solidified its status as a valued NATO and U.S. partner.”
Meanwhile, Goldy Hyder, chief executive of the Business Council of Canada, criticized the lack of specifics from Mr. Trudeau. The announcement “fails to include any details on how that target will be achieved” and “does not clarify how any new defence investments will be fiscally sustainable,” he said in a statement.
In the separate icebreaker announcement, Canada, the United States and Finland said they would pool knowledge and economies of scale in hopes of becoming the supplier of choice of the ships to NATO members and other allies.
The initiative, called the Icebreaker Collaboration Effort (ICE), seeks to send a message to China and Russia that the West intends to project power into the polar regions with the new ships.
Davie, the Canada-based shipbuilding company, said on Thursday that it plans to be among the first private-sector contributors to the ICE pact. It said its Finnish business, Helsinki Shipyard, has built more than 50 per cent of the global icebreaker fleet. Davie is also building icebreakers for the Canadian government in Quebec.