Prime Minister Justin Trudeau persists in defending his government’s military investments and insisting that Canada is making its fair contribution to global security and that of its allies.
However, it is becoming more and more embarrassing to hear him pleading his cause, impassive, while said friendly countries are becoming less and less discreetly impatient. Canada is not respecting its military budgetary commitments to them and must refrain from taking part in certain deployments. Now the CBC network has revealed that half of Canada’s military personnel are obsolete. The growing exasperation of partner countries is better explained.
The nonchalance of the liberals, a little less.
The finding drawn up in an internal document obtained by the CBC is alarming: 55% of the Royal Canadian Air Force’s aircraft are “unusable”, 54% of the navy’s equipment is in the same condition, as are 46% of that land forces. And since military procurement stretches over many years, to which are added the inevitable delays in political decision-making, righting the ship is no easy task.
The obsolescence of the Canadian military arsenal is such that only 58% of the troops would be able to respond to an urgent call from NATO allies. The very people who have been struggling to repel the Russian invasion of Ukraine for more than two years. “We’re going to need more,” said Angus Lapsley, a NATO undersecretary general, without much surprise, at an annual military conference in Ottawa last week.
Remonstrances usually reserved for meetings behind closed doors, but which are now done at open microphones. Even from emissaries like the French ambassador to Canada, Michel Miraillet, who deplored the “navel-gazing” of a Canada that was “a little too comfortable”, to the point of neglecting its defense capabilities. The discontent is no longer just American.
The Canadian response – financial, and not just diplomatic – is slow to be expressed. Impatience, however, seems to have won over Defense Minister Bill Blair, who allowed himself, during the same conference, a speech that was much less conciliatory than tradition dictates, and sometimes even biting.
The urgency of correcting the situation and investing more has been hammered home several times. To support Ukraine, but also to slow down the strategic aims of Russia and China in the waters bordering the Arctic, which are increasingly navigable due to climate change. However, the Canadian army was already not able to adequately monitor them in 2022, warned the Auditor General, Karen Hogan. In the absence of a real dissuasive presence, the signal sent is that of the capitulation of territorial sovereignty.
Minister Blair’s gloomy portrait of the state of the Canadian Forces — and especially their current inability to respond to global instability — seemed to be addressed as much to the audience of military personnel, experts and members of industry as to to his own government. In view of next month’s budget, perhaps. Otherwise the new version of Canada’s defense policy, promised for two years and expected “soon”. Mr. Blair’s predecessor, Anita Anand, had tried in vain to extract major investments from the Trudeau government. The new minister, although less greedy, has obviously not capitulated.
His wishes, however, risk coming up against the fiscal responsibility to which Justin Trudeau and his Minister of Finance, Chrystia Freeland, must adhere. For the purposes of a necessary budgetary recovery, but also for their own survival, if they do not want to sabotage their chances of re-election.
Frugality in military spending, relative to the scale of pressing needs, is not unique to liberal governments. That of former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper himself ended up slowing down his investments at the end of his mandate. And it, too, had not come close to the spending target of 2% of gross domestic product set by NATO (oscillating around 1% for 10 years, today at 1.38%).
The electoral cycle inevitably tempers the spending impulses of governments in favor of domestic and more electoral priorities. And even when inflated, National Defense budgets are spread over decades, only to be delayed (or even reduced) over the years.
The unpredictability of Russian President Vladimir Putin, exacerbated by his collusion with Donald Trump, who is again running for the American presidency, no longer allows for the same complacency. Canada no longer has to worry only about reassuring its allies. Beyond achieving a diplomatic and symbolic investment target, Canada’s very real territorial sovereignty is at stake.