Canada Eyes New Era Of Defence Spending With Boost To Norad And North

A day after last week’s announcement that Canada would buy US-made F-35 fighter jets, Defense Secretary Anita Anand was on the phone with the Pentagon, telling officials there that the $ 19 billion commission would be the most significant investment in the Canadian Air Force over the past 30 years. Ms Anand told her US counterpart, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, that the replacement of the Canadian Cold-CF-18 fighter jets would ensure that Canada was “well equipped to defend North America in the future and that “Canada can continue to live up to its commitments.” to NORAD and NATO, according to its office. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the biggest global security crisis in decades, has prompted Western countries to increase defense spending – especially Germany, which has moved away from pacifism since reunification and has allocated $ 113 billion in additional military expenditure on Bundeswehr. Canada has so far not pledged to increase spending similarly to Germany. But the country’s role in the world will be a key issue in the 2022 federal budget to be presented on Thursday, which the government has widely suggested would include a boost to military spending. Mrs Anand’s office promises action soon. “In the short term, Secretary Anand will present a strong package to modernize NORAD and secure our sovereignty in the Arctic for years to come,” spokeswoman Daniel Minden said in a statement. However, any such action promises will have to be weighed against Ottawa’s history of military procrastination, as well as the five-year accounting changes that go beyond Canada’s progress in meeting its North American’s spending commitments. The government of Prime Minister Justin Trindade had previously made explosive announcements about defense spending that turned out to be less impressive than it first seemed. In 2017, the government presented a plan to boost spending to $ 32.7 billion in 2026-27 from $ 18.9 billion in 2016-17. However, procurement delays meant that some of this money was not spent and had to be carried over to subsequent years. Despite the 2017 plan, Canada has not yet met NATO’s military spending target for alliance members. NATO estimates that Canada spent 1.36 percent of its gross domestic product on defense spending in 2021. This is significantly lower than the 2 percent commitment made by all NATO allies – a common goal for the richest and poorest members of the alliance. David Perry, president of the Canadian Institute of World Affairs, said Canada had not spent 2% of GDP on its military since 1990, when the Cold War ended. Canada would have to spend an additional $ 17 billion a year to meet its 2 percent commitment, Perry said. This would mean that defense spending for 2021-2022 would have to increase to $ 41.3 billion instead of the actual budget, which is $ 24.3 billion. How much will Canada’s military spending change this week? During a visit to Europe last month, Mr Trinto said he would consider spending more on defense. Ms Anand told the CBC in mid-March that she had presented to the cabinet options that could result in Canada exceeding the 2% of GDP threshold. At first glance, it seems that Canada is well on its way to achieving this goal. In 2015, this country spent the equivalent of 1.01 percent of GDP on defense, just half of NATO’s official target. By 2016, this percentage had increased to 1.16%. In 2017 it jumped to 1.44%. According to data released on Thursday, Canada continues to move around this limit. Defense spending stood at 1.44 percent of GDP in 2020 and 1.36 percent in 2021. But Canada’s path to the NATO goal is not as impressive as it seems. In 2017, the federal government expanded its definition of what counts as defense spending. All of Canada now includes spending on things like military pensions and other defense-related expenses that are outside of the Department of Defense budget. This accounting change is in line with NATO rules. Were it not for the change in calculation method, according to government figures, Canada’s defense spending would have remained virtually stable. According to figures in a military strategy document of 2017, defense spending by the old measure was projected to reach 1.01 percent of GDP by the fiscal year 2019-20. Official NATO figures do not cite spending on services other than defense, but the federal government’s own forecasts for 2017 indicate that spending outside the ministry was expected to be one-fifth of total defense spending that year. This percentage was projected to decrease over time as basic defense spending increased. However, spending outside the Department of Defense was still projected to be one-eighth of Canada’s official NATO number by 2024. Canada also lags behind in another of NATO’s key military effectiveness measures: the percentage of a country’s defense budget spent on equipment rather than personnel or infrastructure. The alliance sets a 20 per cent guideline on armaments spending, a goal Mr Perry said was aimed at discouraging NATO members from deploying troops on the ground without modern combat capabilities. Canada has been firmly below this threshold since 2014, without breaking much of the upper half of NATO members. Rising spending since 2017 has pushed the percentage of defense dollars spent on equipment somewhat higher, but this increase was much slower than projected in the 2017 defense plan. This is partly explained by supply problems, which have repeatedly delayed equipment purchases. NATO calculates defense spending only when real cash is paid, not when big spending ambitions are set out in an annual budget. Canada’s estimates of its defense spending as a percentage of GDP often end up declining when the facts are available. Mr Perry said this was a result of these procurement problems, which are pushing cash spending into the coming years. Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Zirou said Ottawa’s history of persistent procurement delays casts doubt on the expediency of a rapid build-up in response to the Russia-Ukraine war. A recent report from the PBO found that, from 2017-18 to 2020-21, there was a cumulative deficit of nearly $ 10 billion between the Department of Defense’s planned capital expenditures and those actually spent. The Globe and Mail reported last week that plans to set up a military supply facility in Canada’s High Arctic, which have already been repeatedly delayed, have been delayed once again. The Ministry of Defense said that the Nanisivik Naval Facility will not be operational until 2023 – 16 years after its first announcement. The Liberals now seem ready to make a number of belated spending decisions, including the move to buy the F-35 – which is the result of a procurement process that can be traced back to 2010. Another big announcement that may be rolled out in the next budget is a series of spending measures to replace the obsolete North Warning System, a chain of US and Canadian radar stations that includes dozens of locations from the Yukon to Labrador. His job is to detect air threats – initially large-scale bombers. These threats have multiplied now that Canada’s opponents have supersonic missiles that can fly at five times the speed of sound and change course during flight. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trindade and Defense Minister Anita Anand talk to Canadian troops deployed for Operation Assurance during a visit to the Adazi military base in Latvia. Adrian Wyld / The Canadian Press However, even as Canada seeks to boost investment, defense analysts say the country is not efficient in spending its existing military budget. Part of the problem is the military’s desire to “Canadianize” big tickets. Because Canada cannot afford to buy different types of equipment to serve different purposes, the military is pushing to add multiple functions to whatever it buys. For example, a 2006 plan to spend $ 2 billion on 15 Chinook battlefield helicopters amounted to nearly $ 5 billion by 2009, in an agreement that was criticized at the time by the Auditor General of Canada. Mr Perry said Canada was still recovering from a “dark decade”, from 1989 to the mid-2000s, when military budgets were virtually stable or declining. This coincided with the end of the Cold War and the massive deficit reduction measures that began in the 1990s under then-Finance Minister Paul Martin. Now, he said, the government is overwhelmed by the volume of large tickets it has to replace, including warships and fighter jets. “If you do not do any maintenance on your house for 15 years and then start doing maintenance, you need to do a ton of things right away,” he added. Any effort to increase military spending will need to overcome not only logistical but also political obstacles. The Liberals now seem ready to make a number of far-reaching spending decisions, such as modern fighter jets to replace the CF-18s, as seen at the CFB Bagotville, QC in 2018. Andrew Vaughan / The Canadian Press James Ferguson, deputy director of the Center for Defense and Security Studies at the University of Manitoba, said he believed governments were not gaining any political benefit from the increase in defense spending and had no political impact of spending cuts. There is an underlying feeling of isolation in Canada, he said, and security threats are abstract to most people in the “quite benign part of the world.” THE…