Conservative party leader Pierre Poirievre has said he will not commit to meeting NATO’s 2% defense spending target if he becomes prime minister.
“I make promises that I can keep, but right now we, our country, are bankrupt,” Poirierbre said. “As far as the budget goes, I’m kind of inheriting a dumpster fire.”
“Any time I make a financial commitment I always take out my calculator and do the math. People are tired of politicians just announcing they’re going to spend money but don’t think about how they’re going to pay for it.”
Poirievre made the remarks in Montreal after being asked why the country has not yet committed to NATO’s target of spending 2 percent of annual GDP on the military.
Asked about meeting NATO’s goal of spending 2 percent of Canada’s GDP on defense, Conservative Leader Pierre Poirierbre said the Trudeau government is bankrupting Canada and that “people are tired of politicians just announcing they’re going to spend money and not thinking about how to pay for it.” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said his government is on track to meet its spending target by 2032.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, facing criticism for lagging behind allies, pledged at a NATO summit in Washington DC on Thursday to meet the target by 2032.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell met with Trudeau in Washington on Tuesday. After the meeting, McConnell posted on Twitter, “It’s time for our allies to the north to seriously invest in the hard power needed to keep NATO prosperous and secure across the board.”
In May, a group of U.S. senators from both major parties wrote to Prime Minister Trudeau urging the Liberal government to increase defense spending to meet NATO targets.
“It is clear that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has become a complete laughing stock on the world stage,” Poirierbre said, responding to allies’ criticism of Canada’s defence spending.
Poirievre said Thursday that his plan to increase defense spending depended on cutting funding to “dictators, terrorists and multinational bureaucracies.”
“We will crack down on corruption, back-office bureaucracy and procurement failures, and use the savings to strengthen our military,” he said.
Poirierbre said a future Conservative government would “purchase equipment on the basis of best value to make better use of funds” and would boost recruitment by “replacing a woke culture with a warrior culture” in the military.
“You didn’t hear these criticisms under the previous Conservative government. Why? Because we were getting results – not because we were spending more, but because we were getting results,” he said.
Indeed, between 2012 and 2015, the Conservative government faced significant criticism for cutting the Ministry of Defence budget by $2.7 billion each year in order to achieve a balanced budget.
And after the Afghanistan war, then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government canceled or postponed decisions on several high-profile defense projects.
For budgetary reasons, the administration has shelved a decision to buy an advanced close combat vehicle for the Army, delayed plans to buy an alternative anti-aircraft system for the Army, and delayed the purchase of F-35 stealth fighter jets after the Accounting General and Congressional Budget Office accused the administration of not doing enough research on the purchase.
Canada spends about 1.37 percent of GDP on its military, and the federal government has said it plans to reach 1.76 percent by the end of the decade.
Since coming to power in 2015, the Trudeau government’s military spending as a percentage of GDP has ranged from a low of 1.16% in 2016 to a high of 1.44% in 2017. According to NATO figures.
NATO Under the previous Conservative government, Canada’s military spending from 2008 to 2014 ranged from 0.99 per cent of GDP in 2013 to 1.39 per cent in 2009, he said.
The alliance began tracking member states’ defense spending as a percentage of GDP in 1974.
In 1974, Canada spent an estimated 2.4 percent of its GDP on its military, more than Luxembourg and second-lowest after the Netherlands among NATO’s 14 member nations.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, these figures plummeted: defense budgets were cut and Canada was spending about 1.2% of its GDP on defense, roughly the same as its defense budget today.