National Post (National Edition)
Ex-defence minister responds
Re: Government has shown NATO that Canada can be counted on, Harjit J. Sajjan, July 25 It was disappointing to read the misrepresentations of Canada’s military spending by the current Minister of Defence, a respected veteran of the Afghanistan conflict. He is a soldier who served in Kandahar and would have seen the significant new investments of the previous Conservative government, a result of new spending that took us to 1.4 per cent of GDP on defence spending in the year 2009, higher than it is today.
The Conservative government had defence spending on an upward trajectory upon taking office in 2006 as an attempt to correct the true decade of darkness, a phrase coined by the military itself. When combat operations were at their highest tempo, a soldier in-theatre must have witnessed the arrival of new heavy-lift planes and helicopters, welcomed the new main battle tanks and Canadian-made LAV2s, celebrated the procurement of life-saving mine-clearing equipment and UAVs, not to mention the heavy artillery to put the Taliban on their heels.
Of course the historic investment in shipbuilding and in the bases and ports should also be mentioned, and most importantly, the support and benefits that were increased for serving members of the CAF and their families and veterans nationwide.
It is surprising that Minister Sajjan would overlook all this positive improvement to the military and members he served with and choose to play partisan politics on such important matters as collective security.
Yes, the years 2009 onward were regrettably notable for spending reductions everywhere due to a worldwide recession. Not a small consideration in the discussion.
Quoting selectively and providing negative commentary based on scant evidence of Canada’s overall NATO history is, his PM said recently, “a limited tool for measuring our defence commitment to NATO;” this was on the heels of being called “weak and dishonest” and being called out by U.S. President Trump along with other countries for being laggards on defence spending.
One who wished to be honest could easily research the various eras for comparison from the 1970s, when the forces experienced amalgamation and severe downsizing, to the early 1990s, when NATO spending was at its highest point of 1.8 per cent, and examine who was in power.
While boasting of the “new historic investments” of his government (with promises of new money that begin years from now) he contradicts the findings of the annual NATO report that finds that Canada will actually spend less (1.23 per cent) on defence in 2018 than the previous year (1.36 per cent), even when using the current government’s new calculus that gives credit for items never included before. Similarly, the Canadian Global Affairs Institute has firmly stated that Canada will come nowhere near the elevated two-percent NATO commitment for 2024, made in Wales in 2014.
Even a superficial review of the facts and cursory research negates much of the fiction of this article, which I suspect was penned by a junior PMO staffer and to which Minister Sajjan attached his name.
Clearly, we don’t need to convince NATO that we can be counted on, it’s our friends south of the border who are looking for reassurance. Removing our CF-18s from the fight against ISIL and playing games with the replacement of those same jets does little to answer their concerns. Focusing on facts and true military support rather than propaganda would be a start.