A new report from the Parliamentary Budget Office explodes the myth that we are well on the way to meeting our NATO spending commitment
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Donald Trump, with his fondness for made up facts, may find it amusing. For about a nanosecond.
It turns out the defence spending numbers that Canada has been feeding its NATO allies — already criticized for being far too low — have been wildly inflated by the Department of Defence, deliberately, or more likely, by mistake.
When it comes to defence, Canada is the parachute of nations, always letting its allies down gently.
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Trump has warned about the consequences for countries that don’t meet NATO’s two-per-cent military spending target, if he is re-elected.
“No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage (the Russians) to do whatever the hell they want,” he said he told the leader of a “delinquent” nation.
The point has been reiterated by his vice-presidential pick, JD Vance, who said “there will be no more free rides for nations that betray the generosity of American taxpayers.” And by the former ambassador to Ottawa during the first Trump administration, Kelly Craft, who said on CTV’s Question Period this weekend that Canada’s timeline of hitting the two per cent target by 2032 is not good enough.
Knowing all this, the Department of Defence has somehow fluffed the numbers to make Canada’s relative lack of spending look less egregious.
Last April, Ottawa released its five-year defence plan, Our North, Strong and Free, that committed to spend an extra $8.1 billion on increased capability to protect the homeland.
By DND’s calculations, this (and already planned increases) would push defence spending from $41 billion this fiscal year to $57.8 billion, or 1.76 per cent of GDP by 2029/30.
At the NATO summit in Washington in July, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau committed to Canada hitting the two-per-cent target by 2032, without offering a clear plan on exactly how this would be achieved.
The bottom line is that Canada has a problem whoever wins the White House on Tuesday
But a new........