Global Courant
Britain’s Defense Secretary on Thursday politely but sharply recalled NATO’s expectations of its member states – including Canada – when it comes to defense spending.
And Ben Wallace did it in front of his Canadian counterpart, Defense Minister Anita Anand.
The two met in London as part of Anand’s visit to the UK this week ahead of the July 11-12 NATO leaders’ summit in Vilnius, where the issue of defense investment is expected to be a key talking point .
The Western military alliance agreed in 2014 that all members must have a plan to spend as much as two percent of their gross domestic product on their militaries.
“I will say to my friends in Canada, and in France, and in Germany, and in Denmark, and in all these other countries that don’t have two percent, you have to try to get there,” Wallace told reporters. “Of course we want all NATO countries to be above two percent.”
Wallace noted that Canada’s 2017 defense policy committed the Liberal government to increasing defense spending by 70 percent. But that was before Russia completely invaded Ukraine and turned the security climate in Europe upside down.
“It’s up to individual countries to decide when they’re going to reach that goal and that’s up to them,” Wallace said. “But at the end of the day the key here is, if we all spent our two percent, we would be better able to deter Russia and all other adversaries.”
The Allies have been pressuring Canada behind closed doors to meet the two percent target. According to the parliamentary budget official, the federal government would have to invest an additional $ 18 billion annually to meet that goal.
Canada spent 1.29 percent of its GDP on defense in 2022. According to NATO, that was about what it spent on defense in the late 1990s.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visit Cambridge Bay, Nunavut on Thursday, August 25, 2022. (Jason Franson/The Canadian Press)
The Washington Post reported in the spring that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had secretly indicated to NATO allies that Canada would not meet the standard. The report was based on leaked intelligence reports.
The defense spending benchmark is likely to be a source of tension at the NATO summit in Vilnius. Most NATO allies fall short of the target and Canada is in the bottom third of NATO countries in terms of the percentage of GDP spent on defense credits. In dollar terms, however, Canada has the sixth largest defense budget in the alliance.
NATO leaders are expected to discuss whether the two percent target should be the floor or the ceiling.
“Only seven allies are currently meeting those spending commitments, though that is expected to increase to about 20 allies next year,” said Sean Monaghan, a visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
He described the upcoming meeting as “the start of a discussion about what this new spending target will look like”.
Monaghan said he suspects allies will settle for something on the order of three percent, given that Eastern European countries such as Poland and the Baltics have indicated they are going there.
“So Vilnius will start that conversation,” he said.
