Morning Update: Canada's military spending levels up

Globe and Mail

a day ago

Good morning. Canada is about to shell out a lot more on defence, army personnel and U.S.-made fighter jets – more on that below, along with a G7 invite for MBS and FEMA's upcoming phase-out. But first:
Donald Trump hasn't been subtle about his feelings that Canada is a military loafer. At a Mar-a-Lago press conference in January, two weeks before his inauguration, he insisted 'the problem with Canada' is that 'we're spending hundreds of billions a year to protect it.' The next month, sitting in the Oval Office, Trump sniffed: 'Canada has a very low military cost. They think we're going to protect them with our military, which is unfair.' By May, he pledged that Canada could shelter under his Golden Dome defence system for free – just as long as we became the 51st state.
The border isn't going anywhere, but this week still brought promising news for the U.S. President: As of next March, Canada will no longer lag in our NATO commitment. Prime Minister Mark Carney announced a major boost in military spending over the fiscal year, shelling out an added $9.3-billion on new equipment, submarine repairs and pay raises for Armed Forces personnel. Shuffle over $14-billion from security spending in other departments, factor in the existing $40-billion federal defence budget, and voila – $62.7-billion in expenditures, or 2 per cent of the GDP, a full half-decade ahead of Carney's proposed timeline on the campaign trail.
The prime minister positioned those dollars as a bulwark against reliance on a tempestuous ally. 'The United States is beginning to monetize its hegemony: charging for access to its markets and reducing its relative contributions to our collective security,' Carney declared. Ottawa will now look to Europe and producers at home to buy goods for our military. 'The long-held view that Canada's geographic location will protect us is becoming increasingly archaic,' he said.
No argument from Trump there. And if he was stung at all by the potential loss of our defence capital spending, another billion-dollar figure might make amends. According to yesterday's report from Auditor-General Karen Hogan, Canada will pay $27.7-billion to acquire F-35 fighter jets from the United States, which is nearly 50 per cent more than Ottawa estimated at the end of 2022. Inflation, foreign currency fluctuations and a red-hot munitions market all drove up the cost of the fighters, Hogan said, amounting to an extra $8.7-billion payout to Lockheed Martin, aircraft-engine company Pratt & Whitney and the U.S. government.
The price tag will only fuel calls for Canada to turn elsewhere to replace our aging warplanes. Carney has already been mulling whether to scale back Ottawa's order for the F-35s – although we're on the hook for 16 of those 88 fighters, Canada could source the rest of the jets from European companies instead. A review of the order will be finished this summer, and yesterday, Defence Minister David McGuinty declined to offer any indication that the government might change its mind. Still, this isn't exactly a one-time purchase: The U.S. controls all F-35 software upgrades and owns the entire supply of spare parts. For every hour of flying time, the aircraft needs more than four hours of maintenance.
But maybe Canada just sticks with the whole fleet of 88 fighters. After all, that 2-per-cent target is so 2024 – at the NATO summit in The Hague later this month, Secretary-General Mark Rutte is widely expected to raise the defence benchmark to 5 per cent of a country's GDP. That money will have to come from somewhere. And coughing up billions of extra dollars on U.S.-made jets could go some distance in juicing our military spend.
Squamish, B.C., declared a state of emergency yesterday, heavy smoke prompted more than 570 air quality warnings across four provinces and federal research scientists predicted that the summer will be even hotter and drier than usual in Canada. Read more here for the latest on the wildfires.
Abroad: Israeli forces killed at least 36 people and wounded more than 200 yesterday after troops once again opened fire on Palestinians trying to get desperately needed aid.
At home: Ontario police seized 43.5 kilograms of fentanyl, enough for 435,000 street doses, in the biggest bust in the force's history.
At the G7: What's in Kananaskis, aside from all the politicians – including, potentially, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman? Here's a primer to the region in the Rockies' foothills.
On the ground: Donald Trump said he plans to 'phase out' FEMA at the end of the hurricane season and give states less federal aid to respond to natural disasters.
Outside: Writer Robert Macfarlane wonders whether a river – and all of nature – should be treated as though it's alive.