Government has levers it can pull in times of urgency. By anyone's measure, $150 billion a year is an eye-watering amount of money to spend on anything — let alone defence. While it pales in comparison to the inflation-adjusted appropriations of the Second World War, it is potentially, for this generation, the very definition of beating ploughshares into swords. Or is it?
Last week, Prime Minister Mark Carney and our North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies agreed to a new defence investment pledge — investing 5 per cent of annual gross domestic product (GDP) by 2035. That figure includes 3.5 per cent on core military capabilities and 1.5 per cent on defence and security-related infrastructure, such as ports and emergency preparedness systems.
Former prime minister Stephen Harper says the best way to build much-needed infrastructure in the Arctic is through military spending. Speaking at an Arctic security conference in Iqaluit on Friday, Harper said leveraging military spending can build roads and runways to create supply chains and lower the cost of living. Canada has committed to NATO's new military spending target of...
Well that was easy. Canada has just officially signed on to NATO’s latest target for military spending: 5 per cent of GDP, to be achieved by 2035. All it took was a stroke of the prime ministerial pen. If only most things in life were so simple. We only just announced, as you’ll recall, that we’d meet NATO’s former target...
Prime Minister Mark Carney says Canada and its NATO allies have agreed to substantially hike their defence spending target to five per cent of annual GDP by 2035. At a press conference outside the NATO summit in The Hague Wednesday morning, Carney said Canada can no longer rely on geography to protect it as new weapons and threats emerge. He...
Prime Minister Mark Carney is committing that Canada – along with other NATO allies – will invest five per cent of GDP on defence by 2035, a pledge that will mean billions more in spending per year. All 32 NATO members made the new commitment at the alliance’s annual leaders’ meeting in The Hague on Wednesday. The five per cent...
Canada will reach an even higher NATO spending target in part by developing its critical minerals and the infrastructure needed to get them to market, Prime Minister Mark Carney said as the annual leaders' summit of alliance members got underway in the Netherlands. Carney is in The Hague for the NATO leaders' summit, and made the comments in a pre-summit...
Signing on to NATO's new defence spending target could cost the federal treasury up to $150 billion a year, Prime Minister Mark Carney said Tuesday in advance of the Western military alliance's annual summit. The prime minister made the comments in an interview with CNN International. "It is a lot of money," Carney said.
Canada is committed to increasing its defence spending but has questions about the "timeline" for hitting a new, higher NATO spending target, Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand said Tuesday. NATO leaders are expected to decide at the summit in the Netherlands this week whether to raise the spending target from two per cent to five per cent of GDP. When...
Prime Minister Mark Carney begins a two-day stop Tuesday in the Netherlands, where NATO alliance members are prepared to decide whether to more than double the defence spending target. The main talks in The Hague won't happen until Wednesday, with Carney first set to take part in several bilateral meetings. Carney will meet with the President of Latvia Edgars Rinkēvičs...
Carney has been open to more spending — but hasn’t committed to 5%. Short and sweet is not usually a phrase associated with the annual NATO leaders' summit, but arguably that's what many member nations are hoping for as U.S. President Donald Trump returns to the table. The gathering of allied leaders will be the first for Prime Minister Mark...
Canada’s top soldier says the military should keep buying at least some additional F-35 fighter jets from the United States, which she said will remain a key partner as Prime Minister Mark Carney pursues deeper defence ties with the European Union. Gen. Jennie Carignan, the chief of the defence staff, said Monday that the F-35 jet comes with many advantages...
With America engaged in retaliatory strikes with Iran in the Middle East, this year’s NATO Summit, which begins Tuesday in The Hague, has acquired a fresh layer of context. Back in 2019, two weeks before the NATO 70th anniversary summit in Watford, UK, French President Emmanuel Macron delivered a shot across the existential bow of the transatlantic military alliance. No...
American President Donald Trump left the G-7 meeting in Kananaskis one day early this week, but not before firing a parting shot at Prime Minister Carney over Canada’s role in the Golden Dome missile defence system, which will put weapons in space for the first time.
Bart De Wever says Iran is a sponsor of terrorism and should never be allowed to possess a nuclear weapon. There was little sympathy for Iran and reluctant backing for regime change among some European leaders, following the weekend airstrikes by the United States on Iran's nuclear facilities. On Monday, newly minted conservative Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever described...
Prime Minister Mark Carney began official events for his four-day trip to Europe Monday by visiting a military cemetery in Belgium before a meeting with European counterparts at the EU-Canada summit. Carney said on social media Sunday he was in Brussels to launch "a new era of partnership" between Canada and the European Union to benefit workers, businesses and security...
Interest has spiked in the Canadian military, with recruitment levels hitting their highest point in a decade. But as more people walk in the door, thousands of enrolled members are deciding to walk out.
Prime Minister Mark Carney will depart for Europe on Sunday for back-to-back summits where he is expected to make major commitments for Canada on security and defence. Carney will be joined by Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand, Defence Minister David McGuinty and secretary of state for defence procurement Stephen Fuhr at the EU and NATO summits, where military procurement and...
Defence Minister David McGuinty's office says it's considering a "combination of approaches" to boosting pay for armed service members, including introducing retention bonuses for "stress trades." "This investment represents an almost 20 per cent increase to the overall CAF compensation envelope," McGuinty's spokesperson Laurent de Casanove said in an email statement to The Canadian Press. "The Department of National Defence...
Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux has requested specific details about the funding increase but has so far received little data. Parliament’s spending watchdog can’t get specific information about the recently announced military spending boost to verify whether the Liberal government’s new initiative will meet NATO targets. Article content The office of Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux has requested specific details...
When Mark Carney stood before Canadians on June 9 to announce a bold leap toward NATO’s defence spending benchmark of two per cent of GDP, the subtext was revolutionary. What could have been framed as an act of geopolitical compliance or national security enhancement was instead narrated as an economic renaissance. “Rebuilding, rearming, and reinvesting” was not just rhetorical symmetry...
Prime Minister Mark Carney outlined $4.3 billion in new support for Ukraine's defence as he met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Alberta on Tuesday. The Prime Minister's Office said that sum includes $2 billion for the purchase and donation of weapons and materiel like drones, ammunition and armoured vehicles — funding that...
In 2018, during his first term as President, Donald Trump famously responded to a question from Lesley Stahl of CBS about tariffs he had slapped on US allies with the quip, “I mean, what’s an ally?” Prime Minister Mark Carney is about to find out. The upcoming NATO Summit in The Hague June 24-25 will be his first. And it...
European Union officials say Canada is likely to sign a defence procurement agreement with the continent when Prime Minister Mark Carney goes to Brussels later this month. Carney is set to visit Brussels on June 23 for the Canada-EU summit, where he will meet with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa.
A union official who represents marine search and rescue crews said Monday the union was surprised and "blindsided" by Ottawa's decision to move the Canadian Coast Guard from the control of the fisheries minister to the defence minister. Teresa Eschuk, Union of Canadian Transportation Employees national president, said the union is still in the dark about what the changes will...
Canada is moving closer to joining Trump’s Golden Dome scheme, despite widespread opposition expressed by the public in a new poll.
Prime minister expected to sign on to defence agreement at Brussels meeting. Prime Minister Mark Carney plans on joining a sweeping European plan in Belgium this month to rearm the continent and provide more military aid to Ukraine, CBC News has learned. Last month, Carney signalled to CBC's Power & Politics that he hopes to sign on to the new...
Nanos conducted an RDD dual frame (land- and cell-lines) hybrid telephone and online random survey of 1,120 Canadians, 18 years of age or older, between June 1st and June 3rd, 2025 as part of an omnibus survey. The margin of error for this survey is ±2.9 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. The statistical tabulations including the unweighted and...
In early 2002, Glenn Cowan touched down in Kandahar province as part of the first wave of regular Canadian Army troops deployed to Afghanistan, serving in a U.S.-led brigade combat team. After joining Canada's elite special operations unit Joint Task Force 2 in 2003, he spent the next 13 years collaborating with American soldiers on raids, rescues and reconnaissance missions...
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s plan to float Canada’s defence spending over its current two per cent of GDP NATO target with the help of the country’s Coast Guard may hit rough waters as it navigates between a resistant public service and service members opposed to becoming what they derisively view as a militarized “junior navy,” defence analysts say...
In the garden of the United Nations headquarters in New York stands a sculpture depicting a man hammering a sword into a plowshare. It is the work of Soviet-era monumentalist Evgeny Vuchetich, creator of The Motherland Calls, the war memorial in Stalingrad (now Volgograd), site of the single deadliest battle in the history of war, and grave of more than...
The auditor general’s report is a reminder that they're part of the solution to air security, but Canada also needs a more practical option
Damn the torpedoes! Canada’s Liberal government is taking aim at defence — and it’s about time. This week, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced that Canada will hit the NATO benchmark of 2 per cent of GDP on defence spending this year, instead of waiting for 2032, deploying an additional $9 billion in 2025-2026. Ever the banker, he’s also deploying some...
The Liberal government is mulling arming the Canadian Coast Guard as it launches a significant reform of the civilian maritime agency to give it a bigger role in the country’s security apparatus. Article content The move is one of many significant changes that the Liberals are planning for the chronically underfunded Canadian Coast Guard (CCG) that Prime Minister Mark Carney...
It’ll cost approximately $20 billion more dollars, but Prime Minister Mark Carney announced Monday that Canada will reach the NATO defence spending target of two per cent of GDP for this fiscal year. That mark has not been hit since 1990. New data from the non-profit Angus Reid Institute finds Canadians largely supportive, two per cent of GDP or more...
Don’t get me wrong, anything that moves Canada closer to its two-per-cent-of-GDP commitment for national defence spending is a good thing. I’m not sure we can instantly achieve the many good things Prime Minister Mark Carney promised Monday in a speech in Toronto. For instance, Carney promised to raise defence spending to two per cent from 1.7 per cent of...
Canada will finally meet its NATO defence spending commitment this year as it confronts an alarming new world of threats, Prime Minister Mark Carney said in Toronto Monday morning. Carney said Canada will rapidly advance its military spending timeline to hit the NATO target of two per cent of national GDP. “Canada will achieve NATO’s two per cent target this...
Prime Minister Mark Carney's office says he will be in Toronto today to make an announcement related to "defence and security priorities." The announcement is slated for 10 a.m., after which he is set to tour a local military facility before holding a news conference at 1 p.m. Defence ministers from NATO countries met in Brussels last week to discuss...
A majority of surveyed Canadians are against joining U.S. President Donald Trump’s “Golden Dome” missile defence system, new polling from Nanos Research shows. Conducted earlier this month for CTV News, the randomized survey of 1,120 Canadian adults found that 63 per cent of respondents said Canada “should not be part of the American Golden Dome,” and should instead prioritize spending...
Ottawa is reviewing its defence spending plans "from top to bottom," Defence Minister David McGuinty said Thursday, as Canada comes under pressure from allies to ramp up spending to levels not seen since the height of the Cold War. McGuinty said the federal government will have more to say "very soon" about its alliance spending commitments and will be "making...
During the election campaign, Prime Minister Mark Carney and the Liberal Party vowed to support institutions like the United Nations that ensure global stability, but the Canadian foreign ministry’s spending plan shows Ottawa’s commitment to peacekeeping continues to flounder. It’s not just personnel that Canada is lacking in its commitment to UN peace operations, but also funding.
