Federal ministers appear to remain optimistic about Ottawa’s defence spending in the wake of President Donald Trump’s proposal to raise NATO targets from 2% to 5%.
Trump speaking via video conference at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland on Thursday said the United States has for too long been carrying the weight for its ally nations.
Canadian political leaders have reacted to Donald Trump’s tariff threat with a stubborn lack of understanding about why the U.S. president-elect keeps targeting his country’s friendly neighbour.
They still seem genuinely perplexed by Mr. Trump’s seemingly anachronistic concept of international trade, which they see as rooted in 19th-century mercantilism.
This helps explain why most of them are still expounding on the win-win virtues of Canada-U.S. free trade, despite Mr. Trump’s endless protestations to the contrary. They still seem to think that he is simply misinformed or has a shaky grasp of economics.
Europe must stop relying on America for defence and rebuild its own capabilities, a senior executive at aerospace giant Airbus has warned.
Ben Bridge, chairman of the company’s defence and space business in the UK, said Donald Trump’s demands that the Continent pay more towards its own security were both reasonable and “the right thing to do”.
The US president-elect is reportedly pushing for Nato’s defence spending target, which covers the alliance of countries across Europe and North America, to be increased from 2pc of GDP to as much as 5pc when he returns to the White House in January.
Donald Trump could demand Nato allies increase defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP, more than doubling the current target.
The president-elect’s team told European officials they will be expected to increase military budgets after he takes office on Jan 20, as he passes the burden of the war in Ukraine on to Europe.
Only 23 of the 32 Nato members meet the alliance’s spending target of 2 per cent, including the UK.
This is going to sound like sarcasm, but I mean with all sincerity: Does Jagmeet Singh understand the assignment?
The federal NDP leader has spent this week furrowing his brow and occasionally shaking his first about the outrage he has witnessed on Parliament Hill: That is, Liberal infighting.
It’s too much, Singh says. The Liberals should be focused on more important things. And that’s why he’s calling on Justin Trudeau to resign.
Canada is on a “clear path” to hit NATO’s defence spending target over the coming years, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said, as pressure ramps up on Ottawa in the wake of the U.S. election.
Addressing the annual NATO Parliamentary Assembly in Montreal on Monday, Trudeau said Canada has so far made sure that its investments in targeted NATO spending “are as concrete as possible,” but added that more needs to be done.
On the day that Vladimir Putin said NATO members are now directly involved in the war in Ukraine because they have supplied missiles being used to bomb Russia, Justin Trudeau was announcing a yuletide $6.3-billion GST holiday on Christmas trees, beer and popcorn.
Canada, remember, is the country that can’t afford to hit its NATO spending target of two per cent of GDP for another eight years.
Unfortunately there really isn’t anything that we citizens can do to force Trudeau out short of violence.
I would suggest a general strike but that would just give our Captains of industry cause to replace everyone with Justin’s 3rd World replacement Canadians.
Our Tranny forces aren’t much use to anyone any how.
A bipartisan pair of U.S. senators say they expect Canada and the U.S. to work collaboratively on shared issues of defence and the border, but suggested Ottawa’s policies on military spending need to change to speed up progress.
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia (AP) — A U.S. senator and supporter of Donald Trump said Friday the president-elect would laugh at Canada’s current military spending plans and said the country must do more.
Idaho Republican Sen. Jim Risch, ranking member of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, made the remarks at the start of the annual Halifax International Security Forum which attracts defense and security officials from Western democracies.
According to NATO figures, Canada was estimated to be spending 1.33% of GDP on its military budget in 2023, below the 2% target that NATO countries have set for themselves.
More …
Republican Rep. Mike Turner, chairman of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee, claims Justin Trudeau – not Donald Trump – is the "greatest threat to NATO."
You can watch Rep. Turner's exclusive Canadian broadcast interview on CTV's Question Period, Sunday at 11:00 a.m. ET. pic.twitter.com/TEqgpvseTI
— CTV Question Period (@ctvqp) November 23, 2024
h/t Mauser
The European way of life is in danger from Nato’s adversaries, the head of the German army warned as his French counterpart said that poorer countries were beginning to acquire destructive technologies that could overtake the West.
Military leaders have issued a series of warnings recently about Europe’s ability to defend itself as Ukraine loses ground to Russia in the east and Donald Trump’s imminent return to the White House piles pressure on America’s allies.
General Alfons Mais, the German army chief, said the time had come to be frank with the public about the price that would have to be paid to ensure their future safety, in the form of considerably higher defence spending.
A U.S. Republican congressman is calling Prime Minister Justin Trudeau a “threat” to NATO’s stability and success, saying Canada’s defence spending and military contributions aren’t enough.
U.S. Rep. Mike Turner made the comments in an op-ed in Newsweek suggesting “Trudeau, not (Donald) Trump, is a threat to the stability and success of NATO” because of the country’s long-standing lag on a plan to hit the agreed upon target for members to spend two per cent of their GDP on defence.
NATO says it wants its members to develop national plans to bolster the capacity of their individual defence industry sectors, a concept Canada has struggled with — or avoided outright — for decades.
At the NATO leaders summit in Washington in July, alliance members agreed to come up with strategies to boost their domestic defence materiel sectors, and to share those strategies with each other. Almost entirely overshadowed at the time by debates about members’ defence spending and support for Ukraine, the new policy got little attention.
The Trudeau government is trying to assure NATO allies it’s moving in the direction of spending two per cent of Canada’s GDP on defence. Meanwhile, billions of dollars committed to new military equipment is being handed back, lapsed, re-profiled or simply not requested by the Department of National Defence.
Canada and other countries that are laggards when it comes to military spending should hit the NATO-imposed target of spending two per cent of GDP “as rapidly as humanly possible,” U.S. President Joe Biden’s national security adviser told reporters on the sidelines of the Liberal cabinet retreat in Halifax on Sunday.
Asked by CBC News if he’s satisfied with Canada’s recently announced plan to hit that spending target in eight years’ time, Jake Sullivan said the Biden administration has pushed NATO countries to meet the spending threshold, and while some have complied, “there is still a set of countries that hasn’t — Canada is one of them.”
Although the Liberal government has placed an annual price tag of $60-billion on its commitment to spend two per cent of Canada’s GDP on defence by 2032, unless a boost is on the way, it will still likely fall short when the goalposts funds needed to reach the NATO-sanctioned metric shift.
Canada is unlikely to meet the spending standard first agreed to in 2014 based on its own projections as it is relying on international forecasts for its GDP to guide its defence-spending commitment.
