(Ottawa) The Trudeau government is set to announce a plan Thursday to meet the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) 2% target on the final day of the summit marking the 75the anniversary of this alliance in Washington. Canada was criticized by its allies earlier this week for its insufficient military spending in this period of geopolitical instability.
The news was first reported by CTV on Wednesday. Defence Minister Bill Blair had suggested Monday that the government had come to the NATO summit with a detailed plan like the one demanded by its allies, including a bipartisan group of 23 U.S. senators.
“I hope that in the coming days I can share this credible and verifiable plan with our allies to provide them with assurance that Canada understands its responsibility and that we will live up to our responsibilities,” he said at the Foreign Policy and Security Forum in Washington on Monday.
He had said he expected spending to rise to at least 1.75% by 2029, with additional spending on a new submarine fleet and integrated air defense and missile systems that could push it beyond 2%.
The pressure is on the Canadian government to increase its military spending as the 32 NATO member countries gather in the U.S. capital. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell’s welcome message to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was unequivocal.
“Shared values and close economic ties have always been the strength of the U.S.-Canada relationship. But it is time for our northern ally to seriously invest in the hard power needed to help preserve prosperity and security,” he posted on the social network X.
Prime Minister Trudeau announced billions in new investments in April as part of the defence policy review, but Canada still missed the NATO target. The government had set a goal of increasing the defence budget from 1.33% to 1.76% of GDP by 2029-30.
He then planned to inject around 8.1 billion over five years and 73 billion over the next 20 years and indicated that this would put him “on track” to eventually exceed the 2% target set by NATO for major equipment spending.
These efforts were recognized in the joint statement of member countries issued Wednesday. They emphasize the fact that “defense spending by European Allies and Canada increased by 18% in 2024, which represents the strongest increase in decades.”
But they also point out that more than two-thirds of allies spend at least 2% of their GDP on defense and call on member countries to go beyond that.
“We reaffirm that, in many cases, it will be necessary to devote more than 2% of GDP to defence expenditure to remedy current shortfalls and meet the needs that have emerged, in all areas, from the rise of contestation of the security order,” they recalled.
They consider that Russia “remains the most significant and direct threat to the security of the Allies” and are concerned about its tightening relations with China. The summit was an opportunity to “intensify” NATO support for Ukraine “in the long term so that it can win its fight for freedom”. Ukrainian President Voldymyr Zelensky was also present.
Ukraine is not a member of NATO, but several of its neighbors are members, including Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania. Finland, which shares a border with Russia, joined the alliance in 2023, the year after Russia invaded Ukraine.
Under Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, NATO’s founding text, NATO member countries “undertake to protect each other” if one of them is attacked.
With Mélanie Marquis, La Presse, and The Canadian Press