Trudeau reaffirms Canada’s NATO ties
President Donald Trump’s NATO allies will have little time for his pro-Russian musings when he meets the alliance’s leaders at their annual summit in Brussels starting Wednesday, says Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Trudeau delivered that message during a day-long visit to Latvia ahead of the 29-country military summit, and just hours after Trump moved to disrupt the meeting by casting Russia in a positive light.
Trudeau made it clear that he will join his fellow NATO allies in the defending an alliance originally built to counter the former Soviet Union, following the Second World War.
“The meeting tomorrow will be an opportunity for all of our countries to rededicate ourselves to NATO, to demonstrate that it’s actually important, that it actually does important things, and that the collection of values and rules that it was brought in to defend 75-plus years ago are just as relevant today as they ever were,” Trudeau said.
“I look forward to having words with President Trump.”
Asked whether he was concerned about the TrumpPutin summit, Trudeau said: “There is a strong consensus around the NATO table that Russia has been creating significant problems in the world and we need continue to demonstrate a strong response, including with sanctions.”
Trudeau also played down the weight given to an agreement made by all NATO allies, including Canada, in 2014 to spend two per cent of GDP on defence within the next decade, saying it was just one way to measure a country’s commitment to the military alliance.
The two per cent target, he said, is “an easy shorthand” but also a “limited tool” to measure a country’s commitment to the alliance.
Trump tweeted Tuesday, “Many countries in NATO, which we are expected to defend, are not only short of their current commitment of 2% (which is low), but are also delinquent for many years in payments that have not been made. Will they reimburse the U.S.?”
While the target was initially billed as aspirational, Trump and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg have seized on it as an important way to measure each member’s commitment to the alliance. Indeed, four NATO countries have adopted laws or political agreements requiring the target be met.
A new report released by NATO ahead of the summit predicted Canada would spend 1.23 per cent of its GDP on defence this year, a small increase from last year but still putting it 18th out of the alliance’s 29 members.
And while the Liberal government has promised to increase defence spending by 70 per cent over the next decade, its own figures project those investments will only raise total spending to 1.4 per cent of GDP by 2024.