Canada’s calculated move

Alternate numbers being deployed as secret weapon in fight over NATO defence-spending

OTTAWA — The federal government has been using a secret weapon to fight back against pressure from NATO and some allies like the United States to increase Canadian defence spending. The weapon? New math. The Department of National Defence has compiled new figures to illustrate more directly how different countries calculate their defence spending compared to Canada.

The point, say government sources familiar with the endeavour, is to illustrate how much higher Canadian defence spending would be than it is now if it included the same things other NATO allies put in their calculations.

Earlier this year, Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan said officials were looking at how Canada calculates military spending compared to other NATO members in order to better ensure a more accurate “apples to apples” comparison. Items that other countries consider defence spending — but Canada does not — include the coast guard, some veterans’ benefits, federal police forces and border guards.

“There are lots of things that we spend on that other countries count, but we don’t,” one senior official told The Canadian Press, speaking on condition of anonymity in order to discuss the matter in advance of this week’s NATO meetings in Brussels.

“And the NATO calculation formula is also so cryptic and backwards.”

A spirited debate about the defence spending levels of individual allies is expected to feature prominently Thursday when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sits down with other NATO leaders, including Donald Trump.

The U.S. president has been pressing NATO members to increase the amount they spend on their militaries after allies agreed in 2014 to work toward an agreed-upon defence spending target of two per cent of GDP.

Only five have reached that goal, and Canada is not one of them; it currently spends about one per cent of GDP on defence, ranking it in the bottom half of allies.

But the Liberal government has largely dismissed the two per cent target, saying there are more important ways to measure whether individual NATO members are supporting the alliance.

Part of the government’s message, which Trudeau is expected to repeat in Brussels, is that Canada is contributing in many other ways, such as deploying 450 troops to lead a NATO force in Latvia starting in a few weeks.

But Canadian diplomats and military officers are also presenting the alternate figures to counterparts at NATO and other allied capitals, officials said, to underscore the problems with the spending metric.