Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks during a press conference on Canada's new defence policy at CFB Trenton in Trenton, Ont. on Monday, April 8, 2024.
There was an unscripted moment during a panel debate in Toronto last month that could go a long way toward explaining Canada's long-term reluctance to publicly and wholeheartedly embrace NATO's guideline for members' defence spending.Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks during a press conference on Canada's new defence policy at CFB Trenton in Trenton, Ont. on Monday, April 8, 2024.
The suggestion that hard power is somehow an affront to the "international rules based order" — that jargony mouthful governments like to invoke — speaks volumes. The federal government was looking for a way — any way — to avoid making the Canadian military the county's calling card in a region where allies were clamouring for a more visible defence commitment, defence and foreign affairs sources told CBC News.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told a think-tank in Berlin in March of 2022 that he believed Moscow's war machine could be brought to its knees solely through the use of sanctions — as though soft power could somehow stop a Russian tank. In Washington on Monday, speaking before a foreign policy audience in advance of this week's NATO summit, Blair was slightly more bullish. He repeated his claim that uncosted, unannounced additional equipment purchases, such as an investment in new submarines, will push the country toward or over the two per cent mark.
She said that while diplomacy is the first line of defence for any civilized nation, successive federal governments over the past two decades have not invested in foreign affairs to any great degree.
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