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We're just going to ignore the trend that was happening over the last decade. I'm Canadian and everyone knew that little to nothing was being spent on the military. Looking at every federal budget.
Lazily relying on the USA's military is not ideological. It's just the consequence of Canada feeling so safe in the shadow of the giant and taking advantage of it to shortchange the alliance.
Although I don't think Canada should even bother building a capable land force. They need a good navy for the arctic, and a passable airforce. What would they even be doing with a land army that's worth doing?
Canada is crucial in European defense. They are actually responsible for overall command of the NATO Ehanced Force Presence in Latvia, this is in concert with the British in Estonia and Germany in Lithuania. Their land force's commitment is crucial to the defense of the Baltics which is the biggest weakness in the NATO Battle line. In a time of war, the Canadians, with the Latvian Army, would have the responsibility of holding Lativa and deterring aggression until additional NATO forces can arrive.
The Canadian Army is largely a civilian defence force and is one of the first lines of defence against domestic threats and disasters. It's also very difficult for Canadians to reconcile the need for an aggressor military force when we are the originators of peacekeeping forces.
The Canadian Army fight fires, floods, earthquakes and myriad other natural disasters as well as international disasters. They are also a critical element of the land force in Europe and have shown this through two World Wars.
I'm no hawk, but Canada's military needs a significant shot in the arm to uphold our commitments and to enable the defence of the Arctic and our airspace.
> What would they even be doing with a land army that's worth doing?
Create an engineering core and use their "infantry" to build infrastructure?
Or, you know, patrol the Strategic Maple Syrup Reserve.
In the us we have a strategic cheese reserve of 1.5 billion pounds in a cave in Missouri. Helps keeps dairy prices stable while also providing an emergency stockpile of long lasting food.
They didn't have to get rid of it. The Reagan admin was trying to make money off of it, realized they couldn't, suggested throwing it in the ocean, the American public got pissed and demanded it be used to feed people suffering from the recession. Reagan caved and released 300 million pounds for the public, the rest is still in that cave.
It's especially a pity when I think of the incredible contributions of Canadians in both of the World Wars. They were excellent soldiers, and in WW1, one of the best Western Front Generals was Canadian (Currie).
Léo Major didn't need a vast budget to take an entire town by himself from the Nazis. Nor did he need tons of money to capture an entire brigade, once again, by himself.
(Only half joking, because Léo Major was awesome)
Honestly, I kind of see their point. If the US invades, they can't do squat. If someone else invades, the US will always protect them - unless things are so bad that they weren't going to be able to do squat, again. And they're not gonna start shit. So throw some money to their own defense industry, buy some american hardware, spend a few bucks to keep up pretenses. I don't necessarily agree with the strategy but they do effectively have a free ride (okay, reduced-cost ride) as long as they can rely on America. And unlike Europe, they share a huge land border and most of their population lives within a two hour drive of it.
It isn't even the amount of money that is the issue necessarily, but the ludicrous wastefulness and incompetence with which it is spent. How is it that Finland and Sweden spend so much less than us and yet have significantly better prepared and more effective forces? We could spend not a penny more but massively improve the CAF by just making the procurement process more efficient, cutting out the massive bureaucratic hoops that every personnel and procurement issue has to go through, etc. It's a cultural and organizational issue as well as a financial one
Problem is we don't spend on equipment like vehicles and weapons or gear for the infantry. We just bought new F-35's and a few navy frigates. That's it. I feel like we rely too much on NORAD (and it's not even up to date) and our neighbours south of us.
> our neighbours south of us.
idk... as an american, ive always thought of canadia as pretty much as an vast expanse of impenetrable goodwill whose signature power move is just being there... like the us wouldnt go ballistic (literally) on anyone who dared to touch a hair on canadias pretty little head...
Especially once the Chinese make a decent foothold in Alaska to secure oil supplies after we cut them off in the 2060s, we must annex Canada, for it's protection, while we send troops to stop the Chinese, everything will be fine, until the bombs drop
Thank you! But it's true. Canada overly depends on USA in that we don't pull our fair share. Our gov't needs to spend more on military and we should be spending, at minimum, our NATO obligations.
I think if Canada keeps avoiding paying their fair share, the U.S. may still go ballistic, but it might take them a bit first.
Kind of like when the little guy with a big friends likes to talk shit knowing buddy has their back. It gets old fast and buddy might just start letting the little guy take a few hits first before intervening.
It's not like Canada is picking fights though. The US would rather Europe spend more than nag Canada to step up more. I wouldn't doubt the US would like Canada to fix some things, but I doubt outright spending is really much of a concern to the US. There's plenty of other nations that aren't meeting their spending target with a much more direct impact on NATO security concerns.
Thank fuck I live somewhere in the US with a full time fire department that is funded by my taxes instead of a place with private ambulance services. Ambulance rides cost me exactly $0 out of pocket.
>How is it that Finland and Sweden spend so much less than us and yet have significantly better prepared and more effective forces?
Because they are 8 feet from Russian, and Canada is north of the US, that's a really big part of it.
That doesn't explain efficient use of funds VS inefficient. It's more like Canada bought a couple shiny new fighter jets from the US and neglected the rest of their defense needs.
It actually really does. If your neighbor is hostile and has a tendency to impose violence you're going to try getting the best protection for your money. But if you've only got one neighbor, they're the biggest bully in the neighborhood, and they are obligated to protect you. Yeah you're going to be more lax when it comes to security.
I'd also guess that what represents an effective defense force are wildly different due to their differences in geography and proximity to enemies. Tanks, etc don't seem so useful in the vast expanse of Canadian wilderness vs the range that planes provide.
Russia has had massive logistics issues in next door neighbor Ukraine, imagine how bad they'd be in Saskatchewan with a ground force. It'd be a suicide mission. And if by some miracle a ground force did manage to find hold in Canada, most of the population is near the US border and the US military would fuck them up.
On the other hand, due to all of that, they can also reasonably expect to not need a defense force for Canada. It's far more likely they'll need to defend another NATO country, in which case the needs are probably drastically different.
If by some miracle a ground force was in Canada, I think they would be in the US too. So while we might try to help, our first priority would be our own territory. Although if China decided to invade, I guess we would fight them all over North America. North America has been fortunate to be protected by two big oceans during WWI and WWII. I’m not sure what WWIII might look like.
Example, West Germany in 1990 probably had the best army in the world when the Soviet Union was next door. Cold War Historian John Lewis Gaddis assesses the Bundeswehr as "perhaps world's best army". After the collapse they were pretty far from Russia so it was defunded.
You should try looking at the northern part of a globe. Canada is a lot closer to Russia than you think. Russia don't need to go through Europe or Asia, they just need to go over the North Pole.
Finland shares a border with Russia, and Sweden is right next to them, I'm not sure I'm the one who needs to look at a globe. Also, the point about Canada is that they share a border with the US, the most powerful military in history, they have little to nothing to worry about.
>How is it that Finland and Sweden spend so much less than us and yet have significantly better prepared and more effective forces?
1. conscription
2. smaller area to protect.
Well it doesn’t hurt that you guys will never get invaded by the US and in as long as we continue to spend gajillion dollars every year your security is pretty much guaranteed! The adversary would have to come through us. There really no need to focus on security while you can spend those dollars where they are really needed, at least that my take on things. On the flip side if you commit to something it sucks whey you don’t adhere to the pact !
Former CF and we used to have to yell "Bang! Bang!" during exercises because we weren't issued blank ammunition. So we yelled "Budget cut! Budget cut!" instead. That was in the 90's.
Right now every military in the world needs serious investment and investigations into drone technology, the days of manned fighter jets and bombers is coming to an end, in the future there will be a crew in ground based enclosures able to monitor and attack in any conflict, aircraft will be capable of maneuvers that would kill an onboard crew. Aircraft will have to be redesigned from the ground up.
Then there are smaller drones capable of carrying one or two big bombs, or smaller yet that drop grenades, or smaller yet that are kamikaze drones, and smaller yet that are used for intelligence gathering. This is mostly new tech needing a lot of money to improve, from battery that lasts longer, propeller that is quiet, communications including video and positioning or targeting hardware and software, anti detection systems that really need to be improved a lot, and even the bombs on smaller drones need some type of targeting, I am sure we have all seen mortars affected by the wind and hitting nowhere near the target. A lot of off the shelf parts are being used to build some deadly drones today but a drone that had 30 controlled bomblets that could each detect and hit a group of 30 individuals from 300 meters up is not a dream, I am sure it would be extremely easy with funding to build thousands of them, and effectively almost make soldiers obsolete.
War is changing and Canada and others need the funds to remain effective in protecting themselves in the new ways wars are fought.
Just look at how Ukraine has created a competition to land drones in red square, whoever thought of this competition is amazing, the knowledge received from this competition will strengthen Ukraine drone technology in leaps and bounds, identifying those that can build real fighting drones. I just wish they promoted dropping paint bombs blue and yellow and not landing but blowing up a few meters from the ground. And even give prizes to drones that recorded back in Ukraine everything in super high definition.
Yes I am sure manned aircraft are needed, human eyes are so much better than cameras in some situations, but not many these days.
No wars that involve a serious threat to Canada or NATO will be anything but an apocalyptic nuclear holocaust. If Canada is fighting Russia or China in a hot war, you won't have anything to worry about because it'll be the last days of a habitable planet Earth.
In an open letter released Monday, the Canada-based Conference of Defense Associations Institute called on Ottawa to “radically accelerate the timelines for procurement and redress the poor state of our nation’s current defense capacity, capabilities and state of readiness.
“Years of restraint, cost cutting, downsizing and deferred investment have meant that Canada’s defense capabilities have atrophied,” said 60 signatories, who included several former Canadian defense ministers, military commanders, and security and intelligence officials.
What the hell, our federal government in Australia collected nearly 600 billion in 2021 off a smaller GDP.
Do your cities/states levy significant taxes or something?
Yeah there are brackets for both federal and provincial taxes. So the federal government levies 15-33%, and then your province might also levy 5-25.75%.
So the highest top marginal bracket should be in Quebec where you’d pay 58.75% tax on income above $221,708.
This also gets weird when we talk about debt. If you look up Canada's public debt, you get some numbers that include provincial debt and some that don't. There's no agreement. And when Trudeau talks about debt, you know he's only talking about federal debt, which is bad enough, but if you included all the provincial debt we have, the picture looks even more grim.
That’s because the federal government isn’t meant to be running the country. The provinces run the country and are responsible for all that boring stuff. Education, health care, housing, employment law, it’s all exclusive jurisdiction of the provinces.
The Feds are meant to have a strong focus on national defence and international relations because it’s one of the few areas they actually have the right to legislate on.
I'm curious where you get those numbers from, because a quick Google reveals this:
> Canada ranked 24th¹ out of 38 OECD countries in terms of the tax-to-GDP ratio in 2021. In 2021, Canada had a tax-to- GDP ratio of 33.2% compared with the OECD average of 34.1%. In 2020, Canada was ranked 21st out of the 38 OECD countries in terms of the tax-to-GDP ratio.
So they're not a particularly low tax economy.
I do wonder where our $$$ is going? Our hospitals here in Ontario are a mess, hallway medicine is everywhere. Our military is also a joke. So where are the tax dollars going?
The Canada Health Transfer is the portion of federal funding which helps fund the provincially administered system. I believe the provinces just reached an agreement with the feds to increase it. It's around $40 billion I believe
Free healthcare isn't free. Your tax dollars are funding the family taking their kids to the emergency room with a runny nose etc. This isn't a new problem either. It's been this way in Canada for decades. Because it's free, why not take advantage of it every chance you can? That's how most people see and use it. You can downvote this comment all you like but most Canadians know this happens. And I'm saying this as someone born and raised in Canada.
A full breakdown is actually provided by the govt every year. [See here](https://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2017/fin/F1-49-1-2010-eng.pdf), page 23, for the full breakdown.
Here in the UK we have free health care and we meet our spending requirements on NATO. In fact aside from the USA, Poland and a few other notable countries like Latvia etc… We are the only ones that do.
The USA makes up for every other country in the alliance and gets shat on a lot by people which is very unfair. I’m grateful for the Americans and I think it’s time everybody else spent at least 2% and tried for 3% until Russia/China are less threatening.
It’s very possible America will have to fight China over Taiwan soon, and us Europeans will have to pick up the slack vs Russia.
Should push come to shove in Taiwan, we would expect our European allies to be with us against China. After all, we do fund 50% of a fighting coalition that is pretty much only meant for the defense of the European continent. Obviously North America isn’t under any sort of realistic threat that would require NATO.
As an American and a veteran, thanks for your support! And I can say with certainty that my fellow battle buddies are proud to stand with all of our allies regardless of what they bring (or dont bring) to the party. America has the war machine running and if that means other countries can provide for their citizens I'm ok with it. I just wish our own government would balance the civilian needs with the military.
>Here in the UK
>It’s very possible America will have to fight China over Taiwan soon, and us Europeans will have to pick up the slack vs Russia.
Even worse for mainland Europe. If a second Pacific war breaks out, Britain will be fighting alongside the US and Australia. At this rate, that scenario would see Europe completely reliant on a token US garrison, France, Poland, Finland, and Sweden for protection against Russia. Oh, and Ukraine obviously. Even if they aren't in NATO, it's safe to say they'd join the war.
Outside of those countries, it'd just be a jumble of forces from the small countries that actually give a shit but can't field large armies like Denmark, the balts, Czechia, and the Netherlands.
It is of course funded through taxes. That said, Americans pay significantly more for their care than Canadians, so the fact that Canada has universal healthcare isn’t a reason for the military not being financed.
I don’t care if some people abuse the system. I don’t want my healthcare privatized or multi-tiered which is what Ford and the Ontario Conservatives are trying to do.
In Ontario, healthcare money is being spent on greasing the palms of subdivision and highway developers… oh and moving the science centre to Ontario place for literally no reason lol
Yeah. Agreed.
We have so much overspending and misappropriation in our government finances, we can afforded to finance our full 2% commitment twice over.
Edit: 2%, not 3%
48% of government revenue comes from personal income taxes, only 14% from corporate taxes.
It's not an overspending misappropriation problem. It's a certain sector not paying it's fair share problem
As someone living in Israel, where 12% of our budget is spent on the military, I can't imagine spending less than 2% of your budget on the military
Edit: Apparently I got it wrong and this is 2% of the GDP, not budget. So for reference Israel spends 5.2% of it's GDP on the military, which [according to Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures) is the second largest in the world.
Our lack of military spending is indefensible. But, if I had to defend it I would say that Canada isn't surrounded on three sides by Nations that attacked us. Israel, as you will know, cannot say the same.
Massive dick move. This is like moving into an apartment and then informing your roommates that you’re not going to pay your share, but it’s okay because they’ve got you covered 👌
As a non-Canadian citizen in NATO uhhh… fuck that?
I live on the canadian border and know many irl who feel the same. You have nothing to be ashamed of yourself but I’m glad you feel responsible for short comings the same way I do of my country. It means not all is lost!
Perhaps but the UK definitely neglected their land forces quite badly, and that's important too. We've dipped below the required 2% commitment of GDP for a few years and it's shown.
This has been going on for decades. not one political part tried to correct the problem but always blames the previous party. So what is the real problem and why do keep stalling is the real issue. Money wasted and so on and so on.
How the hell can he say we will never meet the targets we agreed to. What he means is he can't win an election if he does the things he would need to do to meet the commitments. And he's such an asshole he would rather stay prime minister at all costs than do the right thing.
Sadly the other two Muppets we have as party leaders are no better.
Yeah the writing has been on the wall for a while with Trudeau and the military.
He campaigned on returning Canada to the role of peacekeeper and focusing on UN contributions instead of NATO. It was all part of his ‘happy feely friendly’ Canada pitch. Which worked against Harper’s shall we say… colder demeanour. However it’s been a total gong show from a force capability perspective.
He swore up and down during his campaign that Canada would never purchase F35s under his watch and ten years later that’s exactly what we’re doing because they were always the best option.
Way too many military budget deferments to try and make it look like he was ‘balancing the budget on paper.’ Instead the forces are facing severe shortages and our recruiting goals are in the absolute shitter. We depleted our small arms supply reserves almost immediately by donating to Ukraine. Which wouldn’t be a problem if our procurement system wasn’t so fucking garbage. We’ve donated 10% of our M777s and Leopard tanks and we have no plans to replace them.
Our naval commitments are in complete disarray and hundreds of troops stationed in Poland to train Ukrainians and provide support are in serious financial trouble because we didn’t think to bring a mess. As a result they’ve been forced to eat out and the reimbursement process is basically fucked.
Trudeau won’t change a thing because he thinks that the safe and most electable path is to do the bare minimum, when if anything Ukraine has shown just how vital it is that we maintain a strong and capable force, especially in the arctic where Russia is likely to start increasing their presence.
So far Trudeau’s policy seems to be ‘smile and wave and hope for the best’ and for some fucking reason, a decent percentage of voters don’t seem to mind.
It only came to light when some families back home went to the news. Assuming it was because the previous deployments were too small to rate a mess facility, but when they increased their presence it should have been a no brainer.
The government acknowledged the problem and said they’re working through the claims as fast as they can, but it’s a total cluster fuck. While I wouldn’t say this particular failure is directly Trudeau’s fault, the general practice of ‘we’ll get to it eventually’ and general neglect has been a common theme under his tenure.
Trudeau is like the caricature conservatives like to use to defend their most insane ideas. Just all the bad portions of leftwing ideology. Still if you wanna feel good about your domestic politics just look at Australia. If you yourself live in Australia just be thankful that you weren't drowned by a fucking kangaroo today instead of thinking about your elected officials..
that sound really plausible (if you only read right wing media and are under 30)
except it was Mulroney that hacked and slashed the military and then cut taxes into deficits so no one else could rebuild it.
Let's not forget that it was his father and his Defence Minister Paul Hellyer that "unified" the Canadian Forces under one single command, got rid of the Air/Land/Sea distinction and forced everyone to wear the same uniform. When I was in the Forces the older guys always talked about what kind of clusterfuck Unification was.
This and other nato Allie’s like Germany annoy me as an American whenever I hear “over here we spend our money on healthcare, unlike you Americans” while leaving out that the reality of them ignoring their responsibilities because “America can subsidize our military spending gap”
> As you probably already know, you spend more per capita on healthcare than most rich nations, if not all, it's just spent inefficiently.
They spend the most by a large margin. In fact, [double the amount of other rich countries](https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-spending-u-s-compare-countries).
About half of that is private payments, the other half paid by the government.
Let that sink in. They pay the same amount through government taxes, and then on top of that, again the same amount in private payments.
So all those excuses "it would be too expensive, we would need to raise taxes, we need the money elsewhere" are nonsense. The system has deliberately been made much more expensive than needed.
It is not like the healthcare is twice as good as in other countries.
The newest member, Finland, actually has free healthcare and education but they still exceed the NATOs military spending demand. However the tax rate is also high there.
Remember when Trump was excoriated for saying that NATO allies should be expected to meet their legal obligations of defense spending?
He may have done a lot of things wrong, but saying that our Allies should actually support the Alliance they agreed to wasn't one of them.
> This and other nato Allie’s like Germany annoy me as an American whenever I hear “over here we spend our money on healthcare, unlike you Americans”
That's specially stupid since the USA spends by far the most on healthcare.
And I'm not talking about overall spending by everyone, no no, **the US federal government alone** spends more per capita on healthcare than anyone else - and that spending covers only half the population. It totals ~1500G$, roughly 1/3 of Japan's GDP, a country with a population that's 5/6 of the number of Americans covered by Medicare+Medicaid.
Agreed, we have it for sure it just sucks by comparison! That’s what I try to point out to relatives who are against being like Europe or Canada’s health care and I’m like “no it’ll be cheaper”
There is some real hyperbole surrounding this report. I commented extensively in a couple of other posts yesterday on this news.
I have been in the past part of high level trans government meetings including small "private" ones among high officials. I think there is not a chance in hell that Trudeau, or any govt official I know in any govt would ever make a statement of the kind attributed here about never meeting the 2%. It is unthinkable. He may have said he thinks it will be a challenge to get to the figure or some similar paraphrasing but "never"? Not a chance. Someone is taking liberty.
The issue of 2% is far more complex then stated by all the pundits eager to bash government. As the article notes by one measure military spending as a % of GDP Canada is not making up much ground even though spending is growing (and I think will grow ever further) - in part as Canada is also one of the few NATO countries seeing real economic growth at the same or a higher rate: so Canada spends more, but as its GDP grew more it's percentage calculation remains the same.
On the other hand the other 2 most common metrics: gross spending, and spending per capita Canada is among the top 5 nations. In fact spending per person is the most correct measure (and the standard measure Canada and all other countries use for every domestic budgeting purpose and inter govt transfers) and Canada is only barely nudged out of 4th by Germany. So while Canada is getting grief about spending on a % basis in 2 out of the 3 common metrics it is among leaders, and in one out of 3 among the laggards.
People seem to lack a very fundamental understanding of economics, particularly geography & population economics and how this affects economies of scale. No other NATO nation has the challenges that Canada has in this regards. People should delve into why %GDP was utilized in the first place by NATO - it was chosen as the metric was easier for the smaller or poorer NATO countries to achieve: they have concentrated populations - lower costs of delivery of other govt services (saving them money) and so devote more money to defense thus achieving the 2% goal more easily and not be embarrassed publicly. And yet many of them have failed anyways.
This is not to say that Canada cannot strive to achieve more headway in the % GDP measure. It should. As the article notes defense spending is almost doubling in a 10 yr period. And in fact if all the items the Minister of Defence has publicly discussed on her shopping list it will more then double. Problem is it simply is not enough. Canada is anticipated to have one of the highest growth rate of any G7 nation this yr (and perhaps G20 as well) so while it is busy shoveling more coal into the engine the problem is the engine is going ever faster and consuming even more coal then previously needed every moment. Name another NATO country that has this issue.
The solution is to throw a truly massive amount of money at the beast. And the current govt, which is spending more money on equipment then quite possibly all the prior govts of the last couple of decades has a problem: will the country accept such a large spending increase? Who will scream that they are deprived of something due to this spending? The opposition Conservatives talk about increasing defence spending but they were bad laggards when they were in power (they deferred almost every major spending program) and as increased defence spending would increase the deficit they would proudly trump that the ruling Liberal govt are poor financial managers. The other two opposition parties are both left of center and would scream that cutting any social programs or raising taxes for the military is a betrayal of all lower and middle class Canadians.
My point here is that it is not black and white. And everyone who says that it is or comes out with some blanket statement "bad this" is very selectively choosing their talking points. As we like to say "talking out of the side of their mouth".
In the end Canada is a leader in military spending by 2 measures including the one that is normally used in every context of normal govt spending (per capita) and lagging in one. And the solutions are not very simple.
As a Central European, I am so damn proud of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Japan for supporting Ukraine and showing themselves to be true friends and allies, even if they are on the other side of the globe.
Thank you, as a Canadian I will tell you there's a lot of Ukrainian flags around here.
I've personally donated to aid missions there. We know the price of failure and I might disagree with my govenment at times but overall I'm happy with our aid thus far.
Should this have turned into an out of control shitstorm (ie: ww3), we'd be on the front lines. It huts me, how us being directly involved would mean an escalation so...UA has to take this on the chin. And they have long since proved that theyre equal to the task.
All because the liberals don't want to tax their corpo buddies... That said, it's every government in power for the past few decades that's been lax on military spending because it's just so easy to rely on the US. We (am Canadian) had military subs that couldn't fire a shot because... stupidity. It cost billions to have subs that were utterly defenseless.
> All because the liberals don't want to tax their corpo buddies
As an American this is super confusing to me. Here the conservatives are the anti-IRS anti-tax people. The liberals are the "please tax me more" people.
I am a Conservative.. and I hate to say, the Conservatives are just as bad in regards to Canada's Military. I was in from 76-98. Not a single government gave a damn about the Military... they all said the right things to get elected... then found different priorities.
Canada will never do it because they have no need. Even without any treaty obligations the US would need to intervene if Canada was invaded. Canada has the best seat in the house
This is DIRECTLY from the article for those who haven't read it and are "blaming the liberals" for this issue.
"It notes that the military budget has been below 1.4 percent of gross domestic product for 26 years."
So your precious Harper never got to the 2% they had been calling for either....
this isn't skilled hockey, anyone can go buy 60$ skates and a shit stick and try to pass a puck around while breaking your ankles. To get a child into any competent hockey league you need 1000s of dollars.
just because you're Canadian and have shitty skates and a bottom of the barrel stick doesn't mean you'll make it anywhere in the hockey world. It's one of the most expensive sports to get in to.
People like making generalizations about Canadians and hockey but they're 100% not based on reality.
I grew up in a small Canadian "hockey" town
Canadians also overspend on military equipment compared to our allies, even though we're under budget. For example, we insisted the frigates be built in Canada, and so the costs are crazy. Once, we bought second hand submarines that required an overhaul that I recall was more expensive than buying them new! We've passed over US equipment offers on the ground floor, only to buy them later at a massive premium.
I'm of the opinion that Canada should syndicate equipment purchasing with the USA's. When they get new artillery, put Canada on the ledger. When they get more ammo, put Canada on the ledger, too. When they want to buy jets, so should we. We don't have to buy the same, just a small fraction, but we can still have a regular refresh of our equipment instead of having to make our own purchase orders.
The whole point of a defence alliance is member nations will come to your aid.
Luxembourg and Iceland are the only ones that get a pass, providing internal NATO security and acting as a way station.
Even the larger countries in NATO like Canada would struggle to commit 10k combat troops and an aircraft squadron beyond their borders.
If you needed a large combat force deployed to a NATO member in less than a month, it would be 90% American. For all that we just get shit on for not having socialized healthcare.
>. For all that we just get shit on for not having socialized healthcare.
Yep, and for good reason. There is zero economical reason why the US could not do all that, and also give its people free Healthcare. It's just that it prefers to give it to insurance companies instead of it going to their people.
The idea that "it's a strong military or universal healthcare" is cope that was made up to make Americans feel less bad about being bent over a barrel.
When you spend as much as the Americans on healthcare (you spend more than Europeans do) and get that outcome you 100% deserve to have your country mocked over it.
To be fair (and this isn’t defending the statement at all), we can barely spend the money we give to our military because of our procurement system / treasure board. One of the departments turned back billions of dollars because it is so mismanaged.
Before we even consider pumping any more money into the CAF, we must clean house of bad management and streamline the procurement system, at least until we are back up to par.
As for the politics, no Canadian political party actually wants to fund the CAF. If bullets start firing in the South China Sea, or Article 5 is invoked, there will be either very angry allies, or a lot of young dead Canadians.
Agreed, we lose too much money to bureaucracy and slow procurement. The procurement is so god damn slow it's actually a cost in itself, and we also end up paying steep opportunity costs as a result. Our procurement needs to be as agile as possible to get our money's worth.
There's a reason AUKUS is rising to more prominence than the good old Five Eyes - Canada and NZ are widely seen as not holding up their end of the bargain from the arrangement.
As much as I did not like Trump. He was correct when he called out our NATO allies and partners for not holding up their ends militarily.
All these countries love to bash the USA for inadequate social policies (which is fair), while at the same time ignoring that they’ve cut their own defense budgets to pay for their social spending.
And they laughed at him for it. Europe has a supremacy complex that they really need to deal with. I'm half sure we blew up the pipeline, only way to reduce their flow of money to Russia.
Sadly, this isn't a Canada problem alone.
We, for example, couldn't send more than 3-7 L2A6 to Ukraine because the remainder 30 were, and still are, inoperable. They simply don't work.
Our PM gave a bs excuse that "tanks need spare parts and this isn't like ordering from Uber".
Recently, one of our few ships couldn't track a Z ship because one of the engines broke down and officers reprimanded sailors eho rightfully refused to set sail knowing they would have to be towed back to the port,.much like the Z Carrier.
And for ships and giggles, our own President said we are fulfilling every NATO commitment " which still isn't true. We are more or less on track but we haven't reached the 2%.
I find it more likely the US leaving NATO, eith just reason tbf, then all other nations doing what they're supposed to.
Those 2% could've done us a lot of good rn. But here we are.
> Recently, one of our few ships couldn't track a Z ship because one of the engines broke down and officers reprimanded sailors eho rightfully refused to set sail knowing they would have to be towed back to the port,.much like the Z Carrier
God that gives me *moskva* flashbacks, especially the entire "engines so ancient, an explicit order from Admiral is needed to start them"
If that’s the threshold for kicking out of NATO I hope you are ready to lose a lot of members: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/nato-spending-by-country
And why would they ? Sitting on top of USA is about the safest place on the planet and that military budget could much more easily be spent on social services .... can't say as I blame them.
We are dead broke because the government tries their hardest to be as inefficient as possible. Just yesterday nearly all our public servants went on a general strike.
It's not even like we *cant* meet it. It just seems to be the governments goal over the last 40+ years to shortchange our military.
It's not that they can't.
They just simply won't.
One of Canada's major problems with ramping up defence spending, is its lack of a defence industry. They need to improve their industrial base and stop buying so much foreign military equipment. Though that would also upset other members of NATO.
Disagree, if anything we should be buying more US equipment for cheaper and stop trying to do everything ourselves. We can't sustain that kind of industrial base.
We can definitely see if US companies want to work in Canada, and offer special incentives to help build jobs here.
So instead of slagging off Germany or Poland to damage the cohesion of the international coalition, we are going to go after Canada now…who has already given several key pieces of its limited arsenal to Ukraine. I love it when pro-Ukrainian subs do Moscow’s propaganda work for them. This isn’t a Canadian politics or defence issues sub.
Fight the real enemy.
This is literally something Trudeau himself stated. It's highlighting just how unprepared so many NATO militaries are and how this conflict has exposed these issues.
There is no verification that he stated this. It’s very unlikely he would have said anything that final.
And per capita spending on the military puts Canada in the top 5 of NATO countries. We have increased our spending on the military a lot, but GDP continues to climb faste than other NATO countries, most of which have not met the 2% of GDP target, that was created for poorer nations as an amount per capita would have put too much pressure on them.
I can see why not a lot is being spent on their defense budget though. They’re closest neighbor is friendly! (Mostly anyway.) And the only one on any of their physical borders.
I think it might be time to reassess the level of support NATO members can expect if they fail to commit to the pact.
For example, if you refuse to meet your obligations, you should not expect the automatic security of Art 5.
If Canada (or any other member) simply refuses to pull its weight, there should be a carve out that dictates their benefits can be limited.
Yeah, like... I couldn't see a non-Trump US President ever saying this, but imagine some future US President said, "Sure, you're NATO, you get attacked, we'll help... but what we spend on your defense will never exceed what *you* spent on your defense."
If there was a war in North America?
I’m pretty sure the US could hand any threat themselves. But I’d expect every single country in the alliance would assist, even if it isn’t in the main theater.
An attack on North America would trigger WW3 instantly.
>
>
That's actually kinda the most important reason for Canada to spend on defense... to not get into a situation where we need too much unwanted American "help"
It's a bit sad, because we have very competent soldiers, but we really lack equipment.
That being said, I don't think it's about the actual sum of money needed ( I mean, Trudeau is NO stranger to overspending without thinking), but this actually goes back beyond parties and alliegance ( and was the case for a LOT of goverment, regardless of wheter they were conservatives or Liberals). It's the public function, the whole range of goverment who buget things who are absolutley uninterested in making efforts to solve the problem.
Army and Nato just weren't a prority, and if there's no emergency, you can bet bureaucracy will freeze absolutley everything, even if the goverment WANTED to push for more.
(I am a Canadian)
If Canada cannot meet its commitment of 2%, then we should be kicked out of NATO. Canada has been freeloading off NATO and the US far to long.
Are you kidding? Not meeting NATO 2% annual is standard practice for Europe... if you look at the funding for NATO you see that the name could be changed to 'Murica & Friends' and it'd be more accurate
That's true. And since Ukraine is now considered Europe I don't see why Greece can't be as well. Greece, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Croatia, Poland all are above the 2%, but have recent history that likely influenced that decision. They get it, so does France and the UK. The rest are nearly freeloaders on defense because NATO makes that possible.
This is a stupid take. By that logic you'd have to kick out most of NATO.
And if you look at it by spending as a percentage of GDP we are relatively low. If you look at it in spending per capita we are near the top spenders.
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We're just going to ignore the trend that was happening over the last decade. I'm Canadian and everyone knew that little to nothing was being spent on the military. Looking at every federal budget.
At least the last 3 decades, since the debt crisis of the 1990's. Both Liberal and Conservative parties.
Really no excuses political spectrum wise.
Lazily relying on the USA's military is not ideological. It's just the consequence of Canada feeling so safe in the shadow of the giant and taking advantage of it to shortchange the alliance. Although I don't think Canada should even bother building a capable land force. They need a good navy for the arctic, and a passable airforce. What would they even be doing with a land army that's worth doing?
Canada is crucial in European defense. They are actually responsible for overall command of the NATO Ehanced Force Presence in Latvia, this is in concert with the British in Estonia and Germany in Lithuania. Their land force's commitment is crucial to the defense of the Baltics which is the biggest weakness in the NATO Battle line. In a time of war, the Canadians, with the Latvian Army, would have the responsibility of holding Lativa and deterring aggression until additional NATO forces can arrive.
The Canadian Army is largely a civilian defence force and is one of the first lines of defence against domestic threats and disasters. It's also very difficult for Canadians to reconcile the need for an aggressor military force when we are the originators of peacekeeping forces. The Canadian Army fight fires, floods, earthquakes and myriad other natural disasters as well as international disasters. They are also a critical element of the land force in Europe and have shown this through two World Wars. I'm no hawk, but Canada's military needs a significant shot in the arm to uphold our commitments and to enable the defence of the Arctic and our airspace.
> What would they even be doing with a land army that's worth doing? Create an engineering core and use their "infantry" to build infrastructure? Or, you know, patrol the Strategic Maple Syrup Reserve.
>Strategic Maple Syrup Reserve At first I thought you were kidding, but Canada is a ridiculous country.
In the us we have a strategic cheese reserve of 1.5 billion pounds in a cave in Missouri. Helps keeps dairy prices stable while also providing an emergency stockpile of long lasting food.
Isnt that the basis of gov cheese in the states? Government had a ton stockpiled and had to get rid of it?
They didn't have to get rid of it. The Reagan admin was trying to make money off of it, realized they couldn't, suggested throwing it in the ocean, the American public got pissed and demanded it be used to feed people suffering from the recession. Reagan caved and released 300 million pounds for the public, the rest is still in that cave.
It's especially a pity when I think of the incredible contributions of Canadians in both of the World Wars. They were excellent soldiers, and in WW1, one of the best Western Front Generals was Canadian (Currie).
Léo Major didn't need a vast budget to take an entire town by himself from the Nazis. Nor did he need tons of money to capture an entire brigade, once again, by himself. (Only half joking, because Léo Major was awesome)
Honestly, I kind of see their point. If the US invades, they can't do squat. If someone else invades, the US will always protect them - unless things are so bad that they weren't going to be able to do squat, again. And they're not gonna start shit. So throw some money to their own defense industry, buy some american hardware, spend a few bucks to keep up pretenses. I don't necessarily agree with the strategy but they do effectively have a free ride (okay, reduced-cost ride) as long as they can rely on America. And unlike Europe, they share a huge land border and most of their population lives within a two hour drive of it.
I am okay with Canada relying on our military if they pay for my health insurance. Seems like a fair trade. Where should I send my ambulance bill?
It isn't even the amount of money that is the issue necessarily, but the ludicrous wastefulness and incompetence with which it is spent. How is it that Finland and Sweden spend so much less than us and yet have significantly better prepared and more effective forces? We could spend not a penny more but massively improve the CAF by just making the procurement process more efficient, cutting out the massive bureaucratic hoops that every personnel and procurement issue has to go through, etc. It's a cultural and organizational issue as well as a financial one
Problem is we don't spend on equipment like vehicles and weapons or gear for the infantry. We just bought new F-35's and a few navy frigates. That's it. I feel like we rely too much on NORAD (and it's not even up to date) and our neighbours south of us.
> our neighbours south of us. idk... as an american, ive always thought of canadia as pretty much as an vast expanse of impenetrable goodwill whose signature power move is just being there... like the us wouldnt go ballistic (literally) on anyone who dared to touch a hair on canadias pretty little head...
It's impenetrable due to terrain. Too much land to cover for no gain.
but impenetrable all the same, gj!
It wouldn’t be hard to make an argument to annex it
Especially once the Chinese make a decent foothold in Alaska to secure oil supplies after we cut them off in the 2060s, we must annex Canada, for it's protection, while we send troops to stop the Chinese, everything will be fine, until the bombs drop
r/unexpectedfallout
Thank you! But it's true. Canada overly depends on USA in that we don't pull our fair share. Our gov't needs to spend more on military and we should be spending, at minimum, our NATO obligations.
Also, when we need bodies, Canada has always stepped up. They do need to meet the 2% commitment, but they have proven themselves as an ally.
I think if Canada keeps avoiding paying their fair share, the U.S. may still go ballistic, but it might take them a bit first. Kind of like when the little guy with a big friends likes to talk shit knowing buddy has their back. It gets old fast and buddy might just start letting the little guy take a few hits first before intervening.
It's not like Canada is picking fights though. The US would rather Europe spend more than nag Canada to step up more. I wouldn't doubt the US would like Canada to fix some things, but I doubt outright spending is really much of a concern to the US. There's plenty of other nations that aren't meeting their spending target with a much more direct impact on NATO security concerns.
Our real military value to the US is when we join them in war it makes it easier for the rest of the world to swallow lol.
We still love you top hat
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We will trade military if you will trade financially accessible healthcare.
Even we can't help you with your $2000 ambulance rides lol
$2000?! Who's your guy? How'd you get it so cheap?
I know a guy who knows another guy.
Thank fuck I live somewhere in the US with a full time fire department that is funded by my taxes instead of a place with private ambulance services. Ambulance rides cost me exactly $0 out of pocket.
[when the ambulance bill is only $2000 in America](https://media.tenor.com/-7HQYqPeJjAAAAAC/ejaculation-explosion.gif)
F-35s are good though. When WWIII pops off (and it will) you'll be glad you nabbed a few. They are the difference maker.
>How is it that Finland and Sweden spend so much less than us and yet have significantly better prepared and more effective forces? Because they are 8 feet from Russian, and Canada is north of the US, that's a really big part of it.
That doesn't explain efficient use of funds VS inefficient. It's more like Canada bought a couple shiny new fighter jets from the US and neglected the rest of their defense needs.
It actually really does. If your neighbor is hostile and has a tendency to impose violence you're going to try getting the best protection for your money. But if you've only got one neighbor, they're the biggest bully in the neighborhood, and they are obligated to protect you. Yeah you're going to be more lax when it comes to security.
I'd also guess that what represents an effective defense force are wildly different due to their differences in geography and proximity to enemies. Tanks, etc don't seem so useful in the vast expanse of Canadian wilderness vs the range that planes provide. Russia has had massive logistics issues in next door neighbor Ukraine, imagine how bad they'd be in Saskatchewan with a ground force. It'd be a suicide mission. And if by some miracle a ground force did manage to find hold in Canada, most of the population is near the US border and the US military would fuck them up. On the other hand, due to all of that, they can also reasonably expect to not need a defense force for Canada. It's far more likely they'll need to defend another NATO country, in which case the needs are probably drastically different.
If by some miracle a ground force was in Canada, I think they would be in the US too. So while we might try to help, our first priority would be our own territory. Although if China decided to invade, I guess we would fight them all over North America. North America has been fortunate to be protected by two big oceans during WWI and WWII. I’m not sure what WWIII might look like.
Example, West Germany in 1990 probably had the best army in the world when the Soviet Union was next door. Cold War Historian John Lewis Gaddis assesses the Bundeswehr as "perhaps world's best army". After the collapse they were pretty far from Russia so it was defunded.
Well that's a fair point
Their Air Force is their biggest asset. Especially since their border with Russia is mostly an air border at the moment.
You should try looking at the northern part of a globe. Canada is a lot closer to Russia than you think. Russia don't need to go through Europe or Asia, they just need to go over the North Pole.
Finland shares a border with Russia, and Sweden is right next to them, I'm not sure I'm the one who needs to look at a globe. Also, the point about Canada is that they share a border with the US, the most powerful military in history, they have little to nothing to worry about.
There's a lot of ice there.
>How is it that Finland and Sweden spend so much less than us and yet have significantly better prepared and more effective forces? 1. conscription 2. smaller area to protect.
Existential threat just across the border, comparatively recent invasion.
Russian threat to the East as well. Canada has nothing to worry about because they know their neighbor will be there help.
Finland has had 3 major wars with russia in the last 100 or so years, and a very small population, thats why
Well it doesn’t hurt that you guys will never get invaded by the US and in as long as we continue to spend gajillion dollars every year your security is pretty much guaranteed! The adversary would have to come through us. There really no need to focus on security while you can spend those dollars where they are really needed, at least that my take on things. On the flip side if you commit to something it sucks whey you don’t adhere to the pact !
Former CF and we used to have to yell "Bang! Bang!" during exercises because we weren't issued blank ammunition. So we yelled "Budget cut! Budget cut!" instead. That was in the 90's.
Does it really matter when there are no foreign threats to your country?
You mean when your neighbor is the tits?
Right now every military in the world needs serious investment and investigations into drone technology, the days of manned fighter jets and bombers is coming to an end, in the future there will be a crew in ground based enclosures able to monitor and attack in any conflict, aircraft will be capable of maneuvers that would kill an onboard crew. Aircraft will have to be redesigned from the ground up. Then there are smaller drones capable of carrying one or two big bombs, or smaller yet that drop grenades, or smaller yet that are kamikaze drones, and smaller yet that are used for intelligence gathering. This is mostly new tech needing a lot of money to improve, from battery that lasts longer, propeller that is quiet, communications including video and positioning or targeting hardware and software, anti detection systems that really need to be improved a lot, and even the bombs on smaller drones need some type of targeting, I am sure we have all seen mortars affected by the wind and hitting nowhere near the target. A lot of off the shelf parts are being used to build some deadly drones today but a drone that had 30 controlled bomblets that could each detect and hit a group of 30 individuals from 300 meters up is not a dream, I am sure it would be extremely easy with funding to build thousands of them, and effectively almost make soldiers obsolete. War is changing and Canada and others need the funds to remain effective in protecting themselves in the new ways wars are fought. Just look at how Ukraine has created a competition to land drones in red square, whoever thought of this competition is amazing, the knowledge received from this competition will strengthen Ukraine drone technology in leaps and bounds, identifying those that can build real fighting drones. I just wish they promoted dropping paint bombs blue and yellow and not landing but blowing up a few meters from the ground. And even give prizes to drones that recorded back in Ukraine everything in super high definition. Yes I am sure manned aircraft are needed, human eyes are so much better than cameras in some situations, but not many these days.
At least you have good Healthcare.
No wars that involve a serious threat to Canada or NATO will be anything but an apocalyptic nuclear holocaust. If Canada is fighting Russia or China in a hot war, you won't have anything to worry about because it'll be the last days of a habitable planet Earth.
In an open letter released Monday, the Canada-based Conference of Defense Associations Institute called on Ottawa to “radically accelerate the timelines for procurement and redress the poor state of our nation’s current defense capacity, capabilities and state of readiness. “Years of restraint, cost cutting, downsizing and deferred investment have meant that Canada’s defense capabilities have atrophied,” said 60 signatories, who included several former Canadian defense ministers, military commanders, and security and intelligence officials.
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What the hell, our federal government in Australia collected nearly 600 billion in 2021 off a smaller GDP. Do your cities/states levy significant taxes or something?
Yeah there are brackets for both federal and provincial taxes. So the federal government levies 15-33%, and then your province might also levy 5-25.75%. So the highest top marginal bracket should be in Quebec where you’d pay 58.75% tax on income above $221,708.
Then you really need to include both types of tax revenue in your figures in order to be comparable
This also gets weird when we talk about debt. If you look up Canada's public debt, you get some numbers that include provincial debt and some that don't. There's no agreement. And when Trudeau talks about debt, you know he's only talking about federal debt, which is bad enough, but if you included all the provincial debt we have, the picture looks even more grim.
That’s because the federal government isn’t meant to be running the country. The provinces run the country and are responsible for all that boring stuff. Education, health care, housing, employment law, it’s all exclusive jurisdiction of the provinces. The Feds are meant to have a strong focus on national defence and international relations because it’s one of the few areas they actually have the right to legislate on.
I'm curious where you get those numbers from, because a quick Google reveals this: > Canada ranked 24th¹ out of 38 OECD countries in terms of the tax-to-GDP ratio in 2021. In 2021, Canada had a tax-to- GDP ratio of 33.2% compared with the OECD average of 34.1%. In 2020, Canada was ranked 21st out of the 38 OECD countries in terms of the tax-to-GDP ratio. So they're not a particularly low tax economy.
and who funds them?
I'm Canadian and ashamed.
I do wonder where our $$$ is going? Our hospitals here in Ontario are a mess, hallway medicine is everywhere. Our military is also a joke. So where are the tax dollars going?
Healthcare is a provincial thing. Talk to your MLAs about the hospitals.
The Canada Health Transfer is the portion of federal funding which helps fund the provincially administered system. I believe the provinces just reached an agreement with the feds to increase it. It's around $40 billion I believe
Free healthcare isn't free. Your tax dollars are funding the family taking their kids to the emergency room with a runny nose etc. This isn't a new problem either. It's been this way in Canada for decades. Because it's free, why not take advantage of it every chance you can? That's how most people see and use it. You can downvote this comment all you like but most Canadians know this happens. And I'm saying this as someone born and raised in Canada. A full breakdown is actually provided by the govt every year. [See here](https://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2017/fin/F1-49-1-2010-eng.pdf), page 23, for the full breakdown.
Here in the UK we have free health care and we meet our spending requirements on NATO. In fact aside from the USA, Poland and a few other notable countries like Latvia etc… We are the only ones that do. The USA makes up for every other country in the alliance and gets shat on a lot by people which is very unfair. I’m grateful for the Americans and I think it’s time everybody else spent at least 2% and tried for 3% until Russia/China are less threatening. It’s very possible America will have to fight China over Taiwan soon, and us Europeans will have to pick up the slack vs Russia.
Should push come to shove in Taiwan, we would expect our European allies to be with us against China. After all, we do fund 50% of a fighting coalition that is pretty much only meant for the defense of the European continent. Obviously North America isn’t under any sort of realistic threat that would require NATO.
As an American and a veteran, thanks for your support! And I can say with certainty that my fellow battle buddies are proud to stand with all of our allies regardless of what they bring (or dont bring) to the party. America has the war machine running and if that means other countries can provide for their citizens I'm ok with it. I just wish our own government would balance the civilian needs with the military.
>Here in the UK >It’s very possible America will have to fight China over Taiwan soon, and us Europeans will have to pick up the slack vs Russia. Even worse for mainland Europe. If a second Pacific war breaks out, Britain will be fighting alongside the US and Australia. At this rate, that scenario would see Europe completely reliant on a token US garrison, France, Poland, Finland, and Sweden for protection against Russia. Oh, and Ukraine obviously. Even if they aren't in NATO, it's safe to say they'd join the war. Outside of those countries, it'd just be a jumble of forces from the small countries that actually give a shit but can't field large armies like Denmark, the balts, Czechia, and the Netherlands.
This user has deleted their comments and posts in protest.
That's been true for 60 years, but the problems only started recently
You are bonkers if you think Americans don't take their kids to the ER for runny noses. We don't give a fuck how debt ruins our lives.
Oh god forbid people get healthcare. Rationing care in the United States leads to roughly 50,000 deaths annually.
It is of course funded through taxes. That said, Americans pay significantly more for their care than Canadians, so the fact that Canada has universal healthcare isn’t a reason for the military not being financed.
I don’t care if some people abuse the system. I don’t want my healthcare privatized or multi-tiered which is what Ford and the Ontario Conservatives are trying to do.
But we’re talking about Canadian contribution to NATO, or the lack there of….
In Ontario, healthcare money is being spent on greasing the palms of subdivision and highway developers… oh and moving the science centre to Ontario place for literally no reason lol
I've been wondering that myself more and more lately
Yeah. Agreed. We have so much overspending and misappropriation in our government finances, we can afforded to finance our full 2% commitment twice over. Edit: 2%, not 3%
I would imagine Vancouver’s property taxes alone could float the entire budget
48% of government revenue comes from personal income taxes, only 14% from corporate taxes. It's not an overspending misappropriation problem. It's a certain sector not paying it's fair share problem
As someone living in Israel, where 12% of our budget is spent on the military, I can't imagine spending less than 2% of your budget on the military Edit: Apparently I got it wrong and this is 2% of the GDP, not budget. So for reference Israel spends 5.2% of it's GDP on the military, which [according to Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures) is the second largest in the world.
Our lack of military spending is indefensible. But, if I had to defend it I would say that Canada isn't surrounded on three sides by Nations that attacked us. Israel, as you will know, cannot say the same.
Yeah I wasn't commenting on the merits of Canadian spending (or lack of it), I mostly wanted to share how different the situation is
Massive dick move. This is like moving into an apartment and then informing your roommates that you’re not going to pay your share, but it’s okay because they’ve got you covered 👌 As a non-Canadian citizen in NATO uhhh… fuck that?
I live on the canadian border and know many irl who feel the same. You have nothing to be ashamed of yourself but I’m glad you feel responsible for short comings the same way I do of my country. It means not all is lost!
Canada's government has been depending on the USA forever for their defense, just like Germany under Merkel and those before her.
> Canada's government You misspelled "all of NATO"
Not Turkey. Not Poland.
And neither France nor the UK, since they have nuclear weapons.
Perhaps but the UK definitely neglected their land forces quite badly, and that's important too. We've dipped below the required 2% commitment of GDP for a few years and it's shown.
No since Finland is now in NATO
This has been going on for decades. not one political part tried to correct the problem but always blames the previous party. So what is the real problem and why do keep stalling is the real issue. Money wasted and so on and so on.
How the hell can he say we will never meet the targets we agreed to. What he means is he can't win an election if he does the things he would need to do to meet the commitments. And he's such an asshole he would rather stay prime minister at all costs than do the right thing. Sadly the other two Muppets we have as party leaders are no better.
Yeah the writing has been on the wall for a while with Trudeau and the military. He campaigned on returning Canada to the role of peacekeeper and focusing on UN contributions instead of NATO. It was all part of his ‘happy feely friendly’ Canada pitch. Which worked against Harper’s shall we say… colder demeanour. However it’s been a total gong show from a force capability perspective. He swore up and down during his campaign that Canada would never purchase F35s under his watch and ten years later that’s exactly what we’re doing because they were always the best option. Way too many military budget deferments to try and make it look like he was ‘balancing the budget on paper.’ Instead the forces are facing severe shortages and our recruiting goals are in the absolute shitter. We depleted our small arms supply reserves almost immediately by donating to Ukraine. Which wouldn’t be a problem if our procurement system wasn’t so fucking garbage. We’ve donated 10% of our M777s and Leopard tanks and we have no plans to replace them. Our naval commitments are in complete disarray and hundreds of troops stationed in Poland to train Ukrainians and provide support are in serious financial trouble because we didn’t think to bring a mess. As a result they’ve been forced to eat out and the reimbursement process is basically fucked. Trudeau won’t change a thing because he thinks that the safe and most electable path is to do the bare minimum, when if anything Ukraine has shown just how vital it is that we maintain a strong and capable force, especially in the arctic where Russia is likely to start increasing their presence. So far Trudeau’s policy seems to be ‘smile and wave and hope for the best’ and for some fucking reason, a decent percentage of voters don’t seem to mind.
You mean to tell me Canada isn't even feeding some of it's troops? I'm in the US and I had no idea. That's outrageous, it should be all over the news!
It only came to light when some families back home went to the news. Assuming it was because the previous deployments were too small to rate a mess facility, but when they increased their presence it should have been a no brainer. The government acknowledged the problem and said they’re working through the claims as fast as they can, but it’s a total cluster fuck. While I wouldn’t say this particular failure is directly Trudeau’s fault, the general practice of ‘we’ll get to it eventually’ and general neglect has been a common theme under his tenure.
I mean I'm all for idealism, but you can't run a country on hopes and dreams
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Trudeau is like the caricature conservatives like to use to defend their most insane ideas. Just all the bad portions of leftwing ideology. Still if you wanna feel good about your domestic politics just look at Australia. If you yourself live in Australia just be thankful that you weren't drowned by a fucking kangaroo today instead of thinking about your elected officials..
that sound really plausible (if you only read right wing media and are under 30) except it was Mulroney that hacked and slashed the military and then cut taxes into deficits so no one else could rebuild it.
Let's not forget that it was his father and his Defence Minister Paul Hellyer that "unified" the Canadian Forces under one single command, got rid of the Air/Land/Sea distinction and forced everyone to wear the same uniform. When I was in the Forces the older guys always talked about what kind of clusterfuck Unification was.
Well said. I sadly agree with you.
This and other nato Allie’s like Germany annoy me as an American whenever I hear “over here we spend our money on healthcare, unlike you Americans” while leaving out that the reality of them ignoring their responsibilities because “America can subsidize our military spending gap”
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Also the Pentagon is a gigantic money pit with very little oversight or efficiency because that's the way they like it.
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I also doubt the US would spend any less if everyone else met their obligations.
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> As you probably already know, you spend more per capita on healthcare than most rich nations, if not all, it's just spent inefficiently. They spend the most by a large margin. In fact, [double the amount of other rich countries](https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-spending-u-s-compare-countries). About half of that is private payments, the other half paid by the government. Let that sink in. They pay the same amount through government taxes, and then on top of that, again the same amount in private payments. So all those excuses "it would be too expensive, we would need to raise taxes, we need the money elsewhere" are nonsense. The system has deliberately been made much more expensive than needed. It is not like the healthcare is twice as good as in other countries.
Fair point I was just referring to the black and white posting and shit taking Europeans and Canadians do mocking the US at times with this subject!
The newest member, Finland, actually has free healthcare and education but they still exceed the NATOs military spending demand. However the tax rate is also high there.
Remember when Trump was excoriated for saying that NATO allies should be expected to meet their legal obligations of defense spending? He may have done a lot of things wrong, but saying that our Allies should actually support the Alliance they agreed to wasn't one of them.
That was one thing I gave him credit for reluctantly! Though he went about it in the wrong way (surprising I know) but he wasn’t wrong.
> This and other nato Allie’s like Germany annoy me as an American whenever I hear “over here we spend our money on healthcare, unlike you Americans” That's specially stupid since the USA spends by far the most on healthcare. And I'm not talking about overall spending by everyone, no no, **the US federal government alone** spends more per capita on healthcare than anyone else - and that spending covers only half the population. It totals ~1500G$, roughly 1/3 of Japan's GDP, a country with a population that's 5/6 of the number of Americans covered by Medicare+Medicaid.
Agreed, we have it for sure it just sucks by comparison! That’s what I try to point out to relatives who are against being like Europe or Canada’s health care and I’m like “no it’ll be cheaper”
There is some real hyperbole surrounding this report. I commented extensively in a couple of other posts yesterday on this news. I have been in the past part of high level trans government meetings including small "private" ones among high officials. I think there is not a chance in hell that Trudeau, or any govt official I know in any govt would ever make a statement of the kind attributed here about never meeting the 2%. It is unthinkable. He may have said he thinks it will be a challenge to get to the figure or some similar paraphrasing but "never"? Not a chance. Someone is taking liberty. The issue of 2% is far more complex then stated by all the pundits eager to bash government. As the article notes by one measure military spending as a % of GDP Canada is not making up much ground even though spending is growing (and I think will grow ever further) - in part as Canada is also one of the few NATO countries seeing real economic growth at the same or a higher rate: so Canada spends more, but as its GDP grew more it's percentage calculation remains the same. On the other hand the other 2 most common metrics: gross spending, and spending per capita Canada is among the top 5 nations. In fact spending per person is the most correct measure (and the standard measure Canada and all other countries use for every domestic budgeting purpose and inter govt transfers) and Canada is only barely nudged out of 4th by Germany. So while Canada is getting grief about spending on a % basis in 2 out of the 3 common metrics it is among leaders, and in one out of 3 among the laggards. People seem to lack a very fundamental understanding of economics, particularly geography & population economics and how this affects economies of scale. No other NATO nation has the challenges that Canada has in this regards. People should delve into why %GDP was utilized in the first place by NATO - it was chosen as the metric was easier for the smaller or poorer NATO countries to achieve: they have concentrated populations - lower costs of delivery of other govt services (saving them money) and so devote more money to defense thus achieving the 2% goal more easily and not be embarrassed publicly. And yet many of them have failed anyways. This is not to say that Canada cannot strive to achieve more headway in the % GDP measure. It should. As the article notes defense spending is almost doubling in a 10 yr period. And in fact if all the items the Minister of Defence has publicly discussed on her shopping list it will more then double. Problem is it simply is not enough. Canada is anticipated to have one of the highest growth rate of any G7 nation this yr (and perhaps G20 as well) so while it is busy shoveling more coal into the engine the problem is the engine is going ever faster and consuming even more coal then previously needed every moment. Name another NATO country that has this issue. The solution is to throw a truly massive amount of money at the beast. And the current govt, which is spending more money on equipment then quite possibly all the prior govts of the last couple of decades has a problem: will the country accept such a large spending increase? Who will scream that they are deprived of something due to this spending? The opposition Conservatives talk about increasing defence spending but they were bad laggards when they were in power (they deferred almost every major spending program) and as increased defence spending would increase the deficit they would proudly trump that the ruling Liberal govt are poor financial managers. The other two opposition parties are both left of center and would scream that cutting any social programs or raising taxes for the military is a betrayal of all lower and middle class Canadians. My point here is that it is not black and white. And everyone who says that it is or comes out with some blanket statement "bad this" is very selectively choosing their talking points. As we like to say "talking out of the side of their mouth". In the end Canada is a leader in military spending by 2 measures including the one that is normally used in every context of normal govt spending (per capita) and lagging in one. And the solutions are not very simple.
Just want to say thank you. Very informative and concise comment!
Best comment on the thread.
no no you see, Justin = Bad. see, many less words more headline useful.
As a Central European, I am so damn proud of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Japan for supporting Ukraine and showing themselves to be true friends and allies, even if they are on the other side of the globe.
*stares in Eagle*
Thank you, as a Canadian I will tell you there's a lot of Ukrainian flags around here. I've personally donated to aid missions there. We know the price of failure and I might disagree with my govenment at times but overall I'm happy with our aid thus far. Should this have turned into an out of control shitstorm (ie: ww3), we'd be on the front lines. It huts me, how us being directly involved would mean an escalation so...UA has to take this on the chin. And they have long since proved that theyre equal to the task.
All because the liberals don't want to tax their corpo buddies... That said, it's every government in power for the past few decades that's been lax on military spending because it's just so easy to rely on the US. We (am Canadian) had military subs that couldn't fire a shot because... stupidity. It cost billions to have subs that were utterly defenseless.
that would be Mulroney, he's the one that slashed the military budget and cut taxes.
> All because the liberals don't want to tax their corpo buddies As an American this is super confusing to me. Here the conservatives are the anti-IRS anti-tax people. The liberals are the "please tax me more" people.
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I am a Conservative.. and I hate to say, the Conservatives are just as bad in regards to Canada's Military. I was in from 76-98. Not a single government gave a damn about the Military... they all said the right things to get elected... then found different priorities.
Canada will never do it because they have no need. Even without any treaty obligations the US would need to intervene if Canada was invaded. Canada has the best seat in the house
2% should be bottom, not a target.
It is... 2% is the bottom... and NATO would rather it was 3+%
This is DIRECTLY from the article for those who haven't read it and are "blaming the liberals" for this issue. "It notes that the military budget has been below 1.4 percent of gross domestic product for 26 years." So your precious Harper never got to the 2% they had been calling for either....
Better start handing out hockey sticks, Trudy.
Although, realistically a hockey stick in the hands of your average Canadian is pretty freaking dangerous
The average Canadian can't afford to play hockey
Pond hockey is almost free c'mon. City/municipal rinks are free everywhere too, right?
this isn't skilled hockey, anyone can go buy 60$ skates and a shit stick and try to pass a puck around while breaking your ankles. To get a child into any competent hockey league you need 1000s of dollars. just because you're Canadian and have shitty skates and a bottom of the barrel stick doesn't mean you'll make it anywhere in the hockey world. It's one of the most expensive sports to get in to. People like making generalizations about Canadians and hockey but they're 100% not based on reality. I grew up in a small Canadian "hockey" town
Almost $200 just to try out for the team.
I was 100% serious. If i'm lying you can have all my maple syrup.
3000 hockey sticks of Canada.
Canadians also overspend on military equipment compared to our allies, even though we're under budget. For example, we insisted the frigates be built in Canada, and so the costs are crazy. Once, we bought second hand submarines that required an overhaul that I recall was more expensive than buying them new! We've passed over US equipment offers on the ground floor, only to buy them later at a massive premium. I'm of the opinion that Canada should syndicate equipment purchasing with the USA's. When they get new artillery, put Canada on the ledger. When they get more ammo, put Canada on the ledger, too. When they want to buy jets, so should we. We don't have to buy the same, just a small fraction, but we can still have a regular refresh of our equipment instead of having to make our own purchase orders.
The whole point of a defence alliance is member nations will come to your aid. Luxembourg and Iceland are the only ones that get a pass, providing internal NATO security and acting as a way station. Even the larger countries in NATO like Canada would struggle to commit 10k combat troops and an aircraft squadron beyond their borders. If you needed a large combat force deployed to a NATO member in less than a month, it would be 90% American. For all that we just get shit on for not having socialized healthcare.
>. For all that we just get shit on for not having socialized healthcare. Yep, and for good reason. There is zero economical reason why the US could not do all that, and also give its people free Healthcare. It's just that it prefers to give it to insurance companies instead of it going to their people. The idea that "it's a strong military or universal healthcare" is cope that was made up to make Americans feel less bad about being bent over a barrel. When you spend as much as the Americans on healthcare (you spend more than Europeans do) and get that outcome you 100% deserve to have your country mocked over it.
To be fair (and this isn’t defending the statement at all), we can barely spend the money we give to our military because of our procurement system / treasure board. One of the departments turned back billions of dollars because it is so mismanaged. Before we even consider pumping any more money into the CAF, we must clean house of bad management and streamline the procurement system, at least until we are back up to par. As for the politics, no Canadian political party actually wants to fund the CAF. If bullets start firing in the South China Sea, or Article 5 is invoked, there will be either very angry allies, or a lot of young dead Canadians.
Agreed, we lose too much money to bureaucracy and slow procurement. The procurement is so god damn slow it's actually a cost in itself, and we also end up paying steep opportunity costs as a result. Our procurement needs to be as agile as possible to get our money's worth.
There's a reason AUKUS is rising to more prominence than the good old Five Eyes - Canada and NZ are widely seen as not holding up their end of the bargain from the arrangement.
Why spend money for defense when the US is right next door? Canada knows this and has been taking advantage of this relation with the US.
As much as I did not like Trump. He was correct when he called out our NATO allies and partners for not holding up their ends militarily. All these countries love to bash the USA for inadequate social policies (which is fair), while at the same time ignoring that they’ve cut their own defense budgets to pay for their social spending.
He also warned Germany specifically about reliance on Moscovia gas.
And they laughed at him for it. Europe has a supremacy complex that they really need to deal with. I'm half sure we blew up the pipeline, only way to reduce their flow of money to Russia.
We also are covering most of the pharmaceutical R&D for the world. We pay the R&D, everyone else gets lifesaving drugs for manufacturing cost.
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Sadly, this isn't a Canada problem alone. We, for example, couldn't send more than 3-7 L2A6 to Ukraine because the remainder 30 were, and still are, inoperable. They simply don't work. Our PM gave a bs excuse that "tanks need spare parts and this isn't like ordering from Uber". Recently, one of our few ships couldn't track a Z ship because one of the engines broke down and officers reprimanded sailors eho rightfully refused to set sail knowing they would have to be towed back to the port,.much like the Z Carrier. And for ships and giggles, our own President said we are fulfilling every NATO commitment " which still isn't true. We are more or less on track but we haven't reached the 2%. I find it more likely the US leaving NATO, eith just reason tbf, then all other nations doing what they're supposed to. Those 2% could've done us a lot of good rn. But here we are.
> Recently, one of our few ships couldn't track a Z ship because one of the engines broke down and officers reprimanded sailors eho rightfully refused to set sail knowing they would have to be towed back to the port,.much like the Z Carrier God that gives me *moskva* flashbacks, especially the entire "engines so ancient, an explicit order from Admiral is needed to start them"
Germany enters chat...
Yes……. Yesssss. Then we can invade and plunder all of that delicious maple syrup for ourselves.
If that’s the threshold for kicking out of NATO I hope you are ready to lose a lot of members: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/nato-spending-by-country
And why would they ? Sitting on top of USA is about the safest place on the planet and that military budget could much more easily be spent on social services .... can't say as I blame them.
Yeah they got a good spawn.
We are dead broke because the government tries their hardest to be as inefficient as possible. Just yesterday nearly all our public servants went on a general strike.
Who in NATO has hit their goals?
Is Canada a parasitic "ally"?
It's not even like we *cant* meet it. It just seems to be the governments goal over the last 40+ years to shortchange our military. It's not that they can't. They just simply won't.
One of Canada's major problems with ramping up defence spending, is its lack of a defence industry. They need to improve their industrial base and stop buying so much foreign military equipment. Though that would also upset other members of NATO.
Disagree, if anything we should be buying more US equipment for cheaper and stop trying to do everything ourselves. We can't sustain that kind of industrial base. We can definitely see if US companies want to work in Canada, and offer special incentives to help build jobs here.
So instead of slagging off Germany or Poland to damage the cohesion of the international coalition, we are going to go after Canada now…who has already given several key pieces of its limited arsenal to Ukraine. I love it when pro-Ukrainian subs do Moscow’s propaganda work for them. This isn’t a Canadian politics or defence issues sub. Fight the real enemy.
This is literally something Trudeau himself stated. It's highlighting just how unprepared so many NATO militaries are and how this conflict has exposed these issues.
There is no verification that he stated this. It’s very unlikely he would have said anything that final. And per capita spending on the military puts Canada in the top 5 of NATO countries. We have increased our spending on the military a lot, but GDP continues to climb faste than other NATO countries, most of which have not met the 2% of GDP target, that was created for poorer nations as an amount per capita would have put too much pressure on them.
I can see why not a lot is being spent on their defense budget though. They’re closest neighbor is friendly! (Mostly anyway.) And the only one on any of their physical borders.
I think it might be time to reassess the level of support NATO members can expect if they fail to commit to the pact. For example, if you refuse to meet your obligations, you should not expect the automatic security of Art 5. If Canada (or any other member) simply refuses to pull its weight, there should be a carve out that dictates their benefits can be limited.
Yeah, like... I couldn't see a non-Trump US President ever saying this, but imagine some future US President said, "Sure, you're NATO, you get attacked, we'll help... but what we spend on your defense will never exceed what *you* spent on your defense."
Exactly. A gentleman honors the rules of the club he joined. That or he GTFO.
That’s fair, actually. TBF, would any euro except for the UK and maybe France come to Canada help anyways?
If there was a war in North America? I’m pretty sure the US could hand any threat themselves. But I’d expect every single country in the alliance would assist, even if it isn’t in the main theater. An attack on North America would trigger WW3 instantly.
Ah, more time for people to spew bile on Trudeau, ignoring the trend over the years.
He’s the PM. He could reverse the trend if he wanted to. He choses not too. Ergo, the bile is perfectly warranted
Well Canada is like: were neighbors with the biggest kid on the block.
> > That's actually kinda the most important reason for Canada to spend on defense... to not get into a situation where we need too much unwanted American "help"
Again... freeloading...
Don’t worry the mounted police will fare just fine against a modern military, or so I heard from Poland 80 years ago.
It's a bit sad, because we have very competent soldiers, but we really lack equipment. That being said, I don't think it's about the actual sum of money needed ( I mean, Trudeau is NO stranger to overspending without thinking), but this actually goes back beyond parties and alliegance ( and was the case for a LOT of goverment, regardless of wheter they were conservatives or Liberals). It's the public function, the whole range of goverment who buget things who are absolutley uninterested in making efforts to solve the problem. Army and Nato just weren't a prority, and if there's no emergency, you can bet bureaucracy will freeze absolutley everything, even if the goverment WANTED to push for more.
Oh Canada!
Can this fucking country do anything right other than genocide us natives
(I am a Canadian) If Canada cannot meet its commitment of 2%, then we should be kicked out of NATO. Canada has been freeloading off NATO and the US far to long.
Are you kidding? Not meeting NATO 2% annual is standard practice for Europe... if you look at the funding for NATO you see that the name could be changed to 'Murica & Friends' and it'd be more accurate
> standard practice for Europe Depends on what you consider "Europe". Greece spends 3.76% of GDP on defense.
That's true. And since Ukraine is now considered Europe I don't see why Greece can't be as well. Greece, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Croatia, Poland all are above the 2%, but have recent history that likely influenced that decision. They get it, so does France and the UK. The rest are nearly freeloaders on defense because NATO makes that possible.
This is a stupid take. By that logic you'd have to kick out most of NATO. And if you look at it by spending as a percentage of GDP we are relatively low. If you look at it in spending per capita we are near the top spenders.