Sajjan reveals Ottawa spent $2.3B too little on defence

OTTAWA — The federal government spent $2.3 billion less than originally planned last year on new military gear, Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan revealed Wednesday.

The spending shortage, which will require Canada’s military to continue to use some equipment longer than expected, means the government is already losing ground on the promise it made last year to invest $62 billion in the Forces over the next 20 years.

The news came during the first day of the two-day Cansec gathering in Ottawa, Canada’s largest annual arms show, where officials from the world’s biggest defence companies descend on the national capital to pitch their wares to the government and military.

Sajjan kicked off the event with an update on the Liberal government’s new defence policy — a blueprint that details the specific equipment the military intends to buy over the next five years.

Many companies had been eagerly waiting to see which of the dozens of projects included in the multibillion-dollar defence policy were considered a priority and which were being put on the back burner.

What they heard instead was that the ambitious Liberal plan to ramp up spending got off to a slower start than expected: where Ottawa had planned to spend $6.2 billion last year, figures published with the defence policy show, they only managed to get $3.9 billion out the door.

Sajjan played down the discrepancy, saying a portion of the unspent money represented savings that the government was able to find on some projects, while others were the result of companies not fulfilling their obligations.

But he also admitted later that for some projects, “we weren’t able to get it to the level we wanted. We’re improving on that and things have improved drastically for this. It will improve as time goes on.”

The defence sector currently supports 60,000 jobs in Canada.