My TakeCanada will not pay up for Nato, and it can only be a good thing
- Justin Trudeau is following public opinion that favours butter over bullets with Ottawa unable to meet GDP target on military spending
A Nato free-rider or a peace-loving nation? That has been a long-standing question about Canada’s security commitment and military spending. But the war in Ukraine, the supposed “threat” from an increasingly militant China, and a classified Pentagon assessment that was part of a massive leak on the Discord social media platform of top US military and intelligence secrets – have all renewed the question with urgency.
According to the leaked assessment, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told Nato officials in private that his country would never be able to meet their defence-spending target for each member state, which is roughly 2 per cent of gross domestic product as set out in Nato guidelines back in 2014. Americans are not happy, nor are Nato officials.
The spending shortfall is glaring. Canada’s most recent military budget is roughly equivalent to 1.3 per cent of GDP. In the last quarter of a century, it averaged around 1.4 per cent. This has led, at least according to the US assessment, to the Canadian military being unready and unprepared in all sorts of ways. The most recent embarrassment was the shooting down in February of an unidentified balloon in Canadian air space with the assistance of the US Air Force.
It came after the US shot down one that was allegedly used for Chinese spying. Both Canadian and American fighter jets were deployed. Ottawa said it was a smooth “textbook” operation jointly run by the Norad defence command over North America. But the leaked US document said the Canadian CF-18 fighter jets were “delayed by 1 hour, necessitating US assistance” and cited it as an example of unpreparedness.
After more than seven years in power, Trudeau has become rather unpopular. But Canadian voters may at least rejoice in this instance that their leader’s stance on military underspending is broadly in line with public opinion. When it comes to choosing butter over bullets, Canada’s attitude has been much closer to European countries and their social democratic tradition than its English-speaking cousins in America, Britain and Australia. Canada is hardly alone in underspending on its military within Nato.