Canada has come under fire at the NATO summit for its failure to show how it would reach the alliance’s benchmark on defence spending
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Thursday that Canada will meet its promised NATO defence spending target by 2032, even as he dismissed the benchmark as little more than a “crass mathematical calculation” and “some nominal targets.”
Speaking to reporters, he questioned the point of the spending target. If Canada wanted to meet it quickly, he argued, the country could do so through creative accounting, such as by militarizing the Coast Guard in order to count it as a defence expenditure. The Prime Minister said Canada’s work for NATO “isn’t always reflected in the crass mathematical calculation that certain people turn to very quickly” and that his thinking was guided by larger geopolitical concerns, and “not some nominal targets that make for easy headlines and accounting practices.”
David Perry, president of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute think tank, said Mr. Trudeau’s commitment to reach NATO’s 2 per cent target by 2032 lacks the detail necessary to be considered a firm and reliable pledge. Canada’s defence spending is $10-billion to $15-billion annually below what is needed to reach the equivalent of 2 per cent of annual economic output,” Mr. Perry estimated.
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