Canada Defense Issues

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Ranj Pillai is the Premier of Yukon. Ken Coates is the director of Indigenous affairs at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.

Canada’s Arctic policy has long been founded on delayed and partial responses to American challenges. It started with the Klondike Gold Rush in 1897-98, when the arrival of tens of thousands of American stampeders threatened Canada’s tenuous hold on the Far Northwest.

It hit again in 1942, when the United States launched the construction of the Alaska Highway and other Northwest defence projects in a region almost devoid of effective Canadian governance. The pattern continued after the Second World War, as Canada joined in developing radar defence systems during the Cold War and responded, again half-heartedly, after the American oil tanker SS Manhattan navigated the Northwest Passage in 1969 to test using the seaway to take Alaskan oil eastward.

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https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

It may seem odd to say that Canada, the world’s fourth oldest continuous democracy, needs to start behaving like a grownup, but that is precisely the moment in which the country finds itself.

For too long, when it comes to the two areas of statehood that most require a firm adult hand – national defence and the economy – Canada’s federal and provincial governments have displayed the self-indulgent complacency of a teenager who tries to get away with doing the bare minimum.

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https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

U.S. President Donald Trump announced Thursday that the United States will ask members of the NATO alliance, which includes Canada, to increase military spending to 5 per cent of annual economic output – levels not seen since the Cold War.

He told the World Economic Forum that the United States, which has the world’s largest military, should no longer have to shoulder so much of the responsibility for collective defence under the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, whose membership is almost entirely in Europe.

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https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Germany recently began updating its inventory of Second World War bunkers, and adding other underground sites to the list, as the threat of a foreign military attack moves from the realm of the improbable into that of the increasingly conceivable.

Sweden, which this year ended decades of neutrality to join NATO, is distributing a 32-page booklet to all households with updated, if sobering, instructions on what to do in the case of war. “Military threat levels are increasing,” the document warns. “We must be prepared for the worst-case scenario – an armed attack on Sweden.”

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https://nationalpost.com/

A report by the Business Council of Canada notes Canada’s rivals are investing heavily, while Ottawa has failed to spend on military capabilities. On the day that Vladimir Putin said NATO members are now directly involved in the war in Ukraine because they have supplied missiles being used to bomb Russia, Justin Trudeau was announcing a yuletide $6.3-billion GST holiday on Christmas trees, beer and popcorn.

Canada, remember, is the country that can’t afford to hit its NATO spending target of two per cent of GDP for another eight years. The chief of the defence staff, Jennie Carignan, has warned Canadians they may have as little as five years to prepare for emerging threats from Russia and China.

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https://www.thestar.com/

Gen. Jennie Carignan said the military must be ready to face potential threats to Canadian territory within the next five years.

OTTAWA—The shadow of potential war — and the need to avoid it — was invoked early and often at Thursday’s change-of-command ceremony, where Gen. Jennie Carignan became the first woman to take command of the Canadian Armed Forces.

Addressing reporters at the Canadian War Museum, in a large display room packed with forest-green tanks and other war machines, Carignan said the military must be ready to face potential threats to Canadian territory within the next five years.

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https://nationalpost.com/

Trudeau has lost his power to seduce and Canada’s standing has been lost, as allies far poorer than this country live up to their promises

Justin Trudeau is so schooled in the art of denial that he now tries to deflect inescapable truths. In Washington Thursday, at the conclusion of the NATO summit there, the prime minister unveiled what his defence minister, Bill Blair, called a “credible, verifiable path to two per cent” spending of gross domestic product on defence by 2032.

Let’s leave aside the fact that the plan is neither credible nor verifiable. Trudeau was asked if he was worried that the political problems that have dogged him this week will now hang over this country for the next eight years.

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https://www.thestar.com/

“Mike Johnson, the Republican Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, said this week that it is “shameful” for Canada to keep riding his country’s military coattails.”

WASHINGTON — After enduring criticism over Canada’s level of defence spending during this week’s NATO summit, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau dismissed the alliance’s key metric for military contributions — which several allies have touted as a vital reflection of each country’s agreed fair share — as little more than a “crass mathematical calculation.”

In a heated justification of Canada’s defence policies, Trudeau pushed back against the suggestion that the amount spent on military expenses by his government has been a “political problem” at the summit. He said Canada has “stepped up massively” and committed more than $175 billion to defence — much of it over the next two decades — since he took office in 2015, and expressed skepticism in the relevance of the NATO benchmark that asks all members to spend at least two per cent of their gross domestic product (GDP) on defence.

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https://financialpost.com/

The Canada-U.S.-Mexico trade agreement is up for review in 2026. We need progress on three irritants that unite American politicians

Back in 2022, I wrote on this page that American political leaders from across party lines were increasingly viewing Canada through “3D” glasses. Their perception of Canada was being coloured and distorted by three cross-border disagreements: dairy quota allocation, digital taxes and defence spending. The analogy was intended as a warning.

These same 3D irritants have taken on added urgency in what has become an extremely contentious 2024 U.S. election cycle. At a time when American political divisions are widening, groups of Republicans and Democrats are joining together to voice shared frustration with Canada’s refusal in these areas to align itself with its most important ally.

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