Ottawa Citizen

NATO MULLS COMPENSATI­ON FOR DEPLOYMENT­S.

- LEE BERTHIAUME

OTTAWA• The head of NATO is proposing member states be compensate­d for contributi­ng troops to some alliance missions, saying it is unfair that countries like Canada must bear all the costs when participat­ing in operations that benefit the entire organizati­on.

Yet NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenber­g also expects all members, including Canada, to make good on their commitment­s to spend more on their militaries in the face of growing instabilit­y throughout the world.

Stoltenber­g made the comments at a virtual news conference from Brussels on Monday, ahead of a meeting of NATO defence ministers where his plan to compensate countries that send troops abroad will be one of several topics debated.

Defence ministers are also expected to discuss the futures of Afghanista­n and Iraq, where Canada has been slowly withdrawin­g troops after nearly seven years fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, as well as the threat posed by China and Russia.

It will be the first such meeting since U.S. President Joe Biden's inaugurati­on, which has resulted in high hopes for smoother relations between the transatlan­tic alliance and the White House after four bruising years under Donald Trump.

Canada stands to benefit from any move to compensate members for what the alliance describes as “core deterrence and defence activities” on alliance territory, namely for the deployment of hundreds of troops to Latvia. Stoltenber­g noted Canada's contributi­ons to Latvia, where the Canadian military is leading a NATO alliance battlegrou­p whose mission is to deter Russian aggression in the region.

“I strongly believe that it will be fair if the country that deployed troops does not cover all the costs, but that NATO, that we pay together, that we fund together, more of the costs,” Stoltenber­g said.

“We should increase funding for deterrence and defence activities like the Canadian-led battlegrou­p in Latvia with our NATO budgets, because now we have a system where those countries that provide the troops also cover all the costs.”

The NATO leader also suggested his proposal would strengthen the bonds among NATO's 28 member states by having them all put skin in the game when it comes to missions, and be another way to measure how members contribute to the alliance.

Stoltenber­g's proposal would not apply to Canadian deployment­s outside of NATO's borders, including its contributi­on of troops to help train the Iraqi military.

NATO in recent years has largely assessed whether countries are contributi­ng to the alliance's strength by measuring them against a promise all members made in 2014 to spend two per cent of their gross domestic product on defence.

Yet while Canada joined other members in agreeing to that target, it has consistent­ly spent less than 1.5 per cent of GDP on the military and has no plan to meet the two per cent threshold. Instead, it has argued for other ways to measure contributi­ons.

That includes assessing the degree to which it and other members contribute to NATO missions. Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan's office was noncommitt­al when asked about the proposal.

“With respect to the use of common funding to support NATO deployment­s, we look forward to discussing secretary-general Stoltenber­g's NATO2030 vision at the NATO defence ministeria­l later this week,” Sajjan spokespers­on Todd Lane said in an email.

Yet NATO Associatio­n of Canada president Robert Baines said Stoltenber­g's proposal appears to reflect Ottawa's argument that the two per cent target alone isn't a good way to measure how countries are contributi­ng to the alliance.

“And I'm sure Canada will welcome it tremendous­ly,” Baines said.

NATO figures published in October predicted that Canada would spend 1.45 per cent of its GDP on the military in 2020, the highest share of the national economy in at least a decade.

Yet while that is partly a reflection of recent increases in defence spending, it was also because of the economic damage wrought by COVID-19, while the Liberal government has no plan to meet the two per cent target in the coming decades.

 ??  ?? Harjit Sajjan
Harjit Sajjan

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