Freeland, Gould promise to meet NATO defence target by 2027

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OTTAWA — Liberal leadership candidates Chrystia Freeland and Karina Gould are promising higher wages to members of the Canadian Armed Forces and to fix Canada’s procurement system to meet NATO’s defence spending commitment by 2027.

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Ruby Dhalla is also promising to meet the target by 2027 if elected leader. Mark Carney and Frank Baylis, on the other hand, said they are hoping to achieve the NATO target by the end of this decade — in 2030.

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Freeland fleshed out her plan in a detailed press release on Thursday. She said she intends to grow the Canadian Armed Forces to a total of 125,000 members by offering 50 per cent higher wages for regular force members, better social services such as medical care, housing, schools and childcare for their families, but also faster services for veterans.

Freeland also promises to implement a “Buy Canadian” military procurement strategy, a new Canadian Defence Industrial Agency to invest in technologies like AI and quantum computing, and to buy new submarines, drones and short and long-range missile defence.

In doing so, Freeland, who was until recently deputy prime minister and minister of finance, is once again pushing back against government timelines that she was defending only weeks ago. Her plan is not only more hawkish but has a more aggressive timeline.

“The world has changed. We need defence spending now — not in the next decade,” she said.

Canada agreed in 2014 to work towards meeting the NATO target — which calls for all allies to spend two per cent of their GDP on defence — and has since been criticized for consistently falling short of that goal. The federal government announced at the NATO Summit in Washington last summer it would get to that target by 2032.

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But Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux said last fall the government’s forecasts were based on erroneous GDP projections. To meet the NATO commitment, he said the government’s military expenditures would have to nearly double to rise to $81.9 billion by 2032-2033.

None of the Liberal leadership contenders have explained exactly how they will be paying for that massive increase in defence spending on their accelerated timeline.

During a press conference in Toronto on Thursday, Gould said she is “absolutely” committed to meeting the NATO target and says she thinks she could hit it by 2027.

Gould said she would achieve that by increasing the salaries of CAF personnel which she said are always there to serve Canadians whether it is abroad or at home.

“During COVID, in this city, when long-term care facilities were strained and were unable to contain their outbreaks, who went in? Our CAF personnel. When there are natural disasters around this country, who is on the front lines? Our CAF personnel,” she said.

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“We do not pay them sufficiently for the incredible service and work that they do, protecting us and being there for us in our time of greatest need,” she said.

Gould said she would also fix the country’s broken procurement system by appointing a “procurement czar” — similar to the “fentanyl czar” that the federal government will be appointing to appease U.S. President Donald Trump’s concerns at the border.

“We have so much military procurement equipment that is on the docket that we’re not getting fast enough,” said Gould.

Dhalla sent a statement in which she said that Canada’s military has been “neglected for too long” and the country’s military needs to be strengthened “at home and abroad.”

“I will also work to ensure that Canada has a strong and respected voice with our NATO allies to ensure global security. Our defence spending should be guided by strategic priorities, not just deadlines,” she said.

“I believe that our national security and the protection of Canadians cannot wait.”

Speaking in Windsor earlier this week, Carney said his government “would work to reach” the two per cent goal by 2030. He said “it’s not just about setting a target between now and the end of the decade, but it’s also about spending that money wisely and effectively.”

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Carney said that 80 per cent of Canada’s capital spent on defence is in the United States, and that needs to change. Most of the increase should be money spent in Canada, he said.

Baylis, who was in Ottawa for a press conference on Thursday, said he was glad to see Carney “parroting” his idea of meeting the two per cent target by 2030. He said he explained his reasoning in an opinion piece in the National Post just last summer.

“I don’t see how we can sign an international agreement and then come back to Canada and start debating (if) should we follow what we signed,” he said. “So, I think that goes without saying, if we sign these agreements, we should meet them.”

Baylis said he is proposing to use “intelligent procurement” to achieve the NATO target.

“What we’re not doing here is reinvesting in ourselves,” he said. “There’s phenomenal opportunity to use that spending to build our own industries. That’s what a lot of the other G7 countries are doing… it’s part of my economic plan, which I’ll be laying out later on.”

Even if Canada gets to two per cent of defence spending, that goalpost could change soon. Since he took office, Trump has been saying that NATO allies should instead spend a whopping five per cent of their GDP on defence — more than double the current target.

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Baylis said that, for Canada, even getting to two per cent by 2030 is a steep ask.

“Even that’s quite tight.”

National Post
calevesque@postmedia.com

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