OTTAWA — Canada will raise military spending by more than $8 billion over the next five years under a revamped military strategy that still won’t hit NATO targets, but that the Trudeau government is pitching as a road map to ensure the military meets a “complex generational challenge.”
The plan pledges to ramp up annual spending until the additional injection reaches about $1.9 billion in the fifth year. It commits $73 billion over two decades to the Canadian Armed Forces for new gear and to boost recruitment, to allow it to confront security challenges posed by climate change in the Arctic and more aggressive authoritarian regimes abroad.
Officials said the plan raises Canada’s annual defence budget from $30 billion now to $49.5 billion by 2029-30.
That would still not bring Canada to the NATO military spending target of two per cent of gross domestic product, a goal Canada committed to in 2023.
But the government projects it would bring Canada to 1.76 per cent of GDP in 2029-30, and would put the country “on track to exceed” NATO’s target of requiring allies to ensure 20 per cent of defence expenditures are on military equipment.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in a statement to the Star said the increase is “a step in the right direction,” but added all allies have committed to meeting the NATO annual spending targets “and I expect all Allies to meet their commitments.” Two-thirds already have and “most have plans to achieve 2 per cent by 2030. I count on Canada to reach this target as soon as possible — both for its own security, and for the Alliance’s,” he said.
The Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his ministers of defence, finance and foreign affairs unveiled the policy Monday, saying the plan ”will ensure a ready, resilient and relevant Canadian Armed Forces.”
New spending of $8 billion over five years does not include previously announced spending for Norad modernization or purchases of military equipment, including 88 F-35 fighter jets. Much of it is not scheduled to flow until after the next federal election.
Canada will buy a new fleet of “airborne early warning” aircraft that provide high altitude radar surveillance and new tactical helicopters to replace the aging Griffon fleet, which hits its best-before date by 2032. Ottawa will also explore replacing and expanding a fleet of four submarines which Canada purchased, used, from the U.K. in the 1990s and has been plagued by problems ever since.
Defence analyst David Perry, head of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, said in an interview the plan offers “significant” and “generationally ambitious” spending promises that are greater than he expected from the Liberals. It includes substantive commitments to acquire equipment and “a lot of important but not super sexy investments” for infrastructure and new maintenance money “for the air forces overall and for the Navy’s frigates in particular.”
Because so much spending is loaded onto later years, Perry said, “the bulk of this will be up to whoever wins the next election to actually implement.”
The federal Conservatives on Monday criticized the plan as inadequate to address “years of neglect.” Defence critic James Bezan said a government led by Pierre Poilievre would “restore our proud military and ensure they have the equipment and resources they need to do their job,” without detailing specific spending.
At a news conference at CFB Trenton, Trudeau acknowledged that buying military equipment “has always been a challenge because there are two sometimes competing pressures on procurement. We obviously want to get the best possible equipment for our Canadian Armed Forces at the best possible price to taxpayers, but we also often want to build up our own production capacities in Canada to make sure there are good jobs for Canadians.”
U.S. Ambassador to Canada David Cohen welcomed the plan, saying in a statement the policy “appears to articulate a substantial down payment toward Canada’s pledge to meet its NATO commitment to spend at least two per cent of its GDP on defence.”
The strategy document titled Our North, Strong and Free is full of photos and descriptions of the threats to be met, but is short on details of specific commitments.
The policy update comes seven years after a 2017 defence strategy that was written before the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the rise of what the government says are increasing efforts to undercut the international rules-based order. It has been two years in the works.
The 36-page document outlines commitments to:
* Boost recruitment and retention of members to the CAF to rebuild the military back to the target authorized size of 71,500 regular members and 30,000 reservists by 2032. The CAF is currently about 15,000 people short of levels required for military readiness.
* Accelerate maintenance and upgrades for all vehicles, ships and aircraft, and renew aging military infrastructure.
* Reform defence procurement , which has been notoriously slow .
* Increase the production of NATO-standard artillery ammunition.
* Expand a network of northern operational support hubs, buy a fleet of airborne early warning aircraft, and deploy sensors along coasts and underwater and a satellite ground station in the High Arctic, enhance foreign intelligence capabilities, and buy tactical helicopters.
* Create a new CAF cyber command and with the Communications Security Establishment create a joint Canadian cyber operations capability.
* Institute a regular cycle of defence policy reviews and updates every four years.
Ottawa will look at buying a new fleet of conventionally powered submarines capable of operating under ice, said Defence Minister Bill Blair. Trudeau said Canada will consider nuclear-powered subs too.
The plan also commits Ottawa to “further explore Canada’s integrated air and missile defence capabilities” with the United States. A senior official who briefed reporters said that does not make any change to Canada’s current policy.
The advent of advanced cruise missiles that fly undetected by radar has changed how Canada and the U.S. think about integrated missile defence systems.
Canada is working with the U.S. on better detection capabilities, and an official said the traditional notion of a ballistic missile defence system “is becoming increasingly irrelevant in the context of the vast array of modern missile threats and hence the move towards integrated air missile defence as a broader capability.”
Wesley Wark, a national security expert and fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation, said the new pledge to boost Canada’s ability to detect and counter cybersecurity threats by $917 million over five years is significant.
“The real capacity gain involves a boatload of money that will go to (the Communications Security Establishment) to enhance its foreign intelligence capabilities, including its powers for active and defensive cyber operations … against targets outside Canada,” Wark said in a statement to the Star. The new funding “signals a real intent to cement CSE as Canada’s main contribution to the Five-Eyes alliance” but requires strong external review by Parliament and the agency’s arms-length watchdog, NSIRA, he said.
Under fire for repeatedly failing to meet NATO’s military spending targets, the Liberal government says previous governments did not prioritize defence budgets so that by 2013, Canada’s spending had fallen to one per cent of GDP.
While the plan unveiled Monday puts Canada on a path to spending 1.76 per cent of GDP by 2029-30, an official said a lot could change to affect the NATO calculation — not just how Canada’s economy performs and what GDP levels will be by then, but how the calculation of defence expenditures is made.
The calculation for NATO includes spending from other departments as well — so if that spending is counted, Canada’s overall expenditures would be “in the zone of $57.8 billion” in 2029-30, she said.
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