(Ottawa) NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg urges Canada to meet the alliance’s military spending target, while acknowledging it was difficult for politicians to prioritize defense over ‘to social services.
He said reaching the 2% target is important for the collective security of members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in a more dangerous world due to war in the Middle East and Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The NATO Secretary General is visiting Ottawa on Wednesday. In the afternoon, he gave a speech at an event organized by the Canadian NATO Association. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau should then receive him for dinner.
Mr. Stoltenberg admitted that it was not easy for politicians to achieve this goal, but he argues that it is important for all allies to increase their spending now.
Figures released this week by NATO show that Canada is expected to spend 1.37% of its gross domestic product (GDP) on defense this year.
Minister Blair was careful to point out that the federal Liberals were doing better than their Conservative predecessors. He argued that in 2014, Canada’s military spending fell below 1% for the only time in history and that the slope was difficult to recover afterward.
The military alliance’s member countries agreed last year to spend at least 2% of their GDP on defense, reflecting concerns over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
A handful of protesters gathered Wednesday in Ottawa in front of a building on Parliament Hill where Mr. Stoltenberg was scheduled to speak. Written in chalk on the sidewalk were the messages “Canada is lagging behind our NATO allies,” “Trudeau and Blair are the laughingstocks of the world,” and “Canadians don’t find this funny.”
During a speech at the White House, he said that military spending by European allies and Canada has increased by nearly 18% this year alone – the largest increase in decades.
Minister Blair recently argued that Canada’s military spending would reach at least 1.75% of its GDP by 2029.
He even said Wednesday that additional spending on a new submarine fleet and integrated air defense and missile systems would likely push that figure beyond the 2 percent target.
The minister added that allies were “very encouraged” by the update to Canada’s Defense Policy released earlier this year. This update “results in a historic, upward trajectory for Canada’s defense spending.”
Mr. Blair and Treasury Board President Anita Anand acknowledged this week that the spending was being delayed due to a shortage of procurement staff.
“We have the capacity to accelerate spending: it requires an investment in human resources to do the job,” Blair said.
The Liberal government has set aside $1.8 billion over 20 years to increase personnel assigned to acquisitions, recruitment, training new soldiers and modernizing infrastructure.
It would be simplistic to talk about the 2% target without examining how that money will be spent in the short and long term, said Anand, herself a former defense minister who now holds the purse strings in Ottawa .
“If you understand that acquisition processes take time and require expertise, you will recognize that we need more civil servants who are able to work on these acquisitions – and on several at the same time – to make them happen, to spend this money,” she explained Tuesday.
Mr. Stoltenberg’s last visit to Canada was in August 2022, when Mr. Trudeau took him to the Arctic.
This region is the focal point of Canada’s new Defense Policy. The Arctic is seen as being of growing importance to NATO since Sweden and Finland joined the military and political alliance.
Increasing financial support for Ukraine will be at the top of the agenda, since Stoltenberg proposed that all NATO allies contribute 40 billion euros per year (around 59 billion CAN), Mr. Blair reported.
At the White House, Stoltenberg said he expected next month’s meeting to see allies agree to “step up their financial and military support for Ukraine” and reduce the burden on the United States. United in their contribution to NATO.
