Carney promised to raise defence spending to two per cent from 1.7 per cent of GDP by the end of the current fiscal year.
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Don’t get me wrong, anything that moves Canada closer to its two-per-cent-of-GDP commitment for national defence spending is a good thing.
I’m not sure we can instantly achieve the many good things Prime Minister Mark Carney promised Monday in a speech in Toronto. For instance, Carney promised to raise defence spending to two per cent from 1.7 per cent of GDP by the end of the current fiscal year, which occurs at the end of March next year.
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At the same time, Carney pledged to create a domestic defence industry to supply some of the planes, ships, personnel carriers and artillery we need. (Has anyone noticed what is going on in Ukraine’s war with Russia? Make sure drones are on the list, too.)
It would be tough enough to buy elsewhere all the extra equipment Carney promised this year. The developed world’s defence industries aren’t so under-busy that they can just flip a switch and deliver Canada another $18 billion to $20 billion in military equipment in the next nine months.
There are no big box stores for tanks.
But it would take two to three years at a minimum (and likely very much longer) to create the kind of domestic manufacturing capacity needed to create made-in-Canada weapons systems of the kind Carney is talking about.
And as with all things Liberal, you have to be dubious about their math, too.
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The national defence budget this year was supposed to be $41 billion. That’s about 1.45 per cent of GDP. To get to two per cent from there would take another $18 to $20 billion.
On Monday, Carney promised another $9 billion this year. That doesn’t get us to two per cent. (Closer to 1.7 per cent.)
So all of a sudden, seemingly out of thin air, the Liberals have started saying the defence budget this year was already going to be $56 billion, so — presto change-o — their added $9 billion gets us to two per cent of GDP in time for Carney to brag about it at the NATO summit in Brussels later this month.
Again, don’t get me wrong, getting our defence spending up from 1.45 per cent of GDP to 1.7 per cent in a single year would be a remarkable, and very welcome, first step. The Liberals’ new-math calculations are probably just political posturing.
Nonetheless, even the very pro-defence Harper government got nowhere near 1.7 per cent of GDP for defence after our combat mission in Afghanistan wrapped up.
So let’s be grateful for what the Liberals are doing, even if it isn’t, technically, 2.0 per cent.
This brings us to the second fundamental problem our Armed Forces have after money — recruitment and retention.
The Liberals had earlier said they wanted to reach troop strength of 71,500 regular forces members and 30,000 reserve members by 2029. That would still leave our army, navy and air force short about 12,000 or 13,000 personnel, but it would be a huge improvement.
The problem is, for the last three years, Canadian military commanders and planners have focused their recruitment efforts on diversification of the forces. More racialized Canadians. More women and LGBTQ soldiers.
Nothing wrong with encouraging the members of any of those groups to volunteer, but diversity cannot become the main purpose of a military. From the outside it seems as if our Forces have made woke propaganda against white privilege and system discrimination a higher priority than military preparedness.
But, first and foremost, under the Liberals we sent our forces on one mission of importance in a decade. (Mali peacekeeping.)
When a mega earthquake hit Turkey and Syria in 2023, we didn’t even send our reconstruction teams or world-class field hospitals.
It is great — absolutely essential — to rearm our Armed Forces, as Carney announced on Monday. Now they also have to be given important work to do.
lgunter@postmedia.com
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