Sheltering Under the American Umbrella

"As a founding member of NATO, Canada is a valued ally and has long contributed to essential NATO operations around the world."

"However, the transatlantic Alliance now faces one of the most severe threat landscapes in its history. As a consequence, we call on all NATO allies, including Canada, to uphold their commitment to ensure a stronger, sustainable NATO  by accelerating efforts to reach the two percent defence spending target set by the alliance."

"By the end of 2024, 18 NATO countries will meet the alliance's goal to ensure NATO's continued military readiness."

"This is a historic investment in our collective security, led by NATO allies like Poland, a country that has already exceeded three percent of its GDP for defence spending."

Letter to PM Justin Trudeau from U.S. Senators

"The current government are the ones trying to manage this problem, but this problem did not happen in the last eight years -- this has been decades in the making. We don't take defence and security seriously and this is a manifestation of that lack of seriousness."

"That [every dollar not spent on defence in Canada spent on other priorities] may be extremely attractive to the Canadian government and Canadian voters, but we've been funding a lot of our own domestic national priorities thanks to the benevolence, charity and generosity of the United States, who basically have been carrying the vast majority of the defence and security obligations that we should have been contributing more to."

"Our relationship with Washington is absolutely essential, not only to our security but to our economic stability, and it affects more broadly some of the key relationships we have in Europe, Asia and elsewhere."

"We need to get our act together."

Vice-Admiral Mark Norman, former vice-chief of defence staff, head, Royal Canadian Navy

A bipartisan group of U.S. senators has written a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, urging him to meet the NATO spending target Canada first agreed to in 2014. Kevin Cramer, a U.S. senator who co-wrote the letter, says Canada has to ‘step up a little bit’ to help secure freedom.           CBC

Canadians share the top two-thirds of North America with the United States, and the longest contiguous undefended border in the world which seems to endow the Canadian government with the belief that to protect their own national security, the United States must ensure its border is safe and that Canada, its northern neighbour which has always shirked its neighbourly obligation of equal cooperation with the U.S. is secure from any enemy incursion that would invariably affect the U.S. With that assurance, Canadians have always flippantly passed on the expense of mutual protection from enemy aliens to the U.S.

 

That seems to work for the southern border, but Canada boasts its sovereignty 'from Sea to Sea to Sea', so there's the matter of the Canadian Arctic to be defended. Just as much of Europe is working on bringing their defence spending in line with the overall agreed-upon minimum of two percent of the national budget to be spent on national defence -- an emergent priority since Russia's 'special military operation' in Ukraine -- one that threatens the stability and autonomy and borders of Eastern Europe, Canada is rivalled for its Arctic holdings by Russia.

 

The letter made public this week signed by 23 Democratic, Republican and independent American senators spoke to the reality that Canada's laxity in ensuring it is amply prepared to defend itself in compliance with NATO's preparedness guidelines, has irritated its American neighbour for decades. When Donald Trump held the presidency he made no bones about his annoyance over NATO members in general failing to pony up their fair share of defence necessities in their military equipment and troop numbers. All lacking in reaching the required two percent of GDP to defence.

 

With a degree of understatement the American Senators' letter speaks of the dangerous level of the current international geopolitical situation, requiring vital levels of investment by member countries allied through NATO.   Canada's relatively feeble 1.33 percent commitment simply doesn't make the grade, ranking it ahead of Sprain, Belgium and Luxembourg, whereas eleven NATO members -- Poland, the United States, Greece, Estonia, Lithuania, Finland, Latvia, the United Kingdom, Hungary, Slovak Republic and Denmark met or exceeded the two percent benchmark.

"This letter coming after [Defence Minister Bill] Blair's visit [to Washington] is a pretty good indication that they heard what they saw and said 'nah, not good enough'."

"He [Donald Trump likely to return as U.S. President in November] practises grievance-based politics."

"So what's the grievance with Canada right now? Defence."

"If it's a widespread view within the U.S. Senate and House that Canada is a laggard in spending and they're not happy with it, you know that this will become a bilateral issue because Trump will look for a grievance to pick at, and this is an easy one."

Defence analyst Richard Shimooka

Our North, Strong and Free, Canada's new defence strategy, was unveiled earlier in the year, with a pledge of $8.1 billion in new defence spending in a five-year period, projecting defence spending to each 1.76 percent by 2029-2030, which albeit increasing Canada's defence spending, still leaves it below the required 2 percent expenditure expected of all NATO members. And despite the impending change of American leadership come November, Canada is still not taking the situation seriously or recalling Donald Trump's searing criticism in 2019 of Canada's failure in meeting the benchmark of two percent. 

There can be no doubt that the issue highlighted by the letter to Justin Trudeau given that of the letter's 23 signatories, ten were Republican senators, indicated beyond a doubt that Washington's concerns represents a cross-party issue. Since the United States is Canada's largest and most important trade partner, among other issues, Canada can ill afford to alienate the powerful government in Washington regardless of whose administration it is.

"We are very significantly increasing defence spending in Canada. In fact, our defence budget will go up 27 percent next year over this year."

"We recently came up with a defence policy that I think applies a very significant and necessary focus on continental defence, which I would share with the concerned senators."

Canadian Minister of Defence Bill Blair

Defence Minister Bill Blair says Canada is still short of meeting its NATO commitment to spend two per cent of GDP on defence but is making strides towards that goal, and new investments in military infrastructure inevitably will push spending past that target.  CBC