According to anyone’s measure, $ 150 billion a year is an amount of money to spend on anything, much less defense.
Although it pales compared to the appropriations adjusted to the inflation of World War II, it is potentially, for this generation, the very definition of Hit the plows on swords.
Or is it?
After all the political sound and the fury and the calm of the top of the NATO last week in The Hague, the question of what the government of Prime Minister Mark Carney wants to achieve with all that money, annually, is focusing even more.
On the surface, the liberals have committed to quickly and efficiently rearm the Canadian army.
“We are protecting the Canadians against new threats. I wish we did not have to do it, but we have to do it and it is our main responsibility as a government,” said Carney at the summit.
“People who have been making sacrifices have been the men and women of the Canadian Armed Forces because they have not been paid to reflect what we are asking to do. They have not been operating with the right team in many cases.
“We are compensating that.”
As Prime Minister Mark Carney undertakes to meet the new NATO spending objective of five percent of GDP by 2035, former vice president of the Guy Thibult defense staff tells Power & Politics that supports Canada’s defense expense, but warns that the government should focus on improving the acquisitions and supporting the Canadian forces.
But the reflection is strong within federal institutions to use military acquisition as an economic development tool. It has been like that for decades.
At the same time, the prime minister is still counted, that we are in extraordinary times and a “national emergency.”
A lot was done, both in the previous period and in the sequels of the NATO Summit, about the signing of a Association of the Security and Defense Industry between Canada and the European Union. Politically, it has been chosen since the choice of past spring as a vehicle, if not the vehicle, to make rear.
There are some steps to go before Canada can unlock the potential to buy military teams in bulk with its allies. But when he observes the association frame, the potential to rearme is eclipsed by the economic opportunity for Canadian defense contractors to sell to Europe under the Roarm Europe Plan of $ 1.25 billion.
The approach seems to be that Canada wants its weapons and butter. Nor, outside the great wars of the last century, it has been mutually exclusive and they don’t have to be.
However, the material state of the Canadian army is such that weapons, to extend the metaphor, were needed yesterday.
While an association with Europeans has a good economic and geopolitical sense in the long term, it does not seem to be a solution for the immediate crisis of the rearma.
“European industrial bases are simply not prepared at this time for prolonged conflict,” said Seth Jones, president of defense and security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies based in Washington.
“If you observe European states, they still lack sufficient capacities in the combat support, in short -range air defense and long -range indirect fires, air elevation.”
Jones also pointed out that there are significant challenges with “ammunition ammunition, with supply chain weaknesses [and] Within the broader workforce of European and American industrial bases. “
If the Canadian government takes seriously over the rearmament beyond an economic development tool, the problem will be reduced to the question of where a hot production line finds and how fast can acquire what the military says they need.
Poland, a member of the European Union since 2004, decided not to put all its eggs in the EU basket. Shortly after the large -scale invasion of Russia in Ukraine in 2022, the government in Warsaw embarked on a rapid rearme plan.
Poland is NATO’s main military speaker, with the aim of directing 4.7 percent of its gross domestic product towards defense.
He has taken advantage of the production lines in both the United States and South Korea.
The Polish Defense Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz told Politico last winter that his government’s strategy was to continue buying in the United States to maintain economic relations.
“It’s a kind of insurance policy,” he said.
The decision was made despite the fact that politically and socially, many in Poland believe that the United States is an unreliable ally and might not be there in a crisis with Russia.
Perhaps it is a lesson for Canada, since the liberal government crosses the treacherous political rope of maintaining a defense relationship with the United States and explaining its decisions to an audience that is still angry at the commercial war and the 51st state of Trump.
The first test will arrive at the end of this summer when a report from the Royal Canadian Air Force and the National Defense Department on continuing with the purchase F-35.
Carney and your team will have to decide whether to turn the plan (accept only a limited number of combat aircraft and complete the rest of the order elsewhere), or continue with what can be a politically indefensible position to continue.
The prime minister said at the NATO summit that he had maintained discussions with European partners for the purchase of combat and submarine aircraft.
Speed vs. shift
Carney has asked Canada’s economic and military dependence on the United States
But how much of that is really possible, if the declared objective is to rearm quickly and if the European Defense Base is still in its own reconstruction phase?
If the liberal government intends to move quickly, there are existing mechanisms such as the exception of National Security (NSE), which allows the Government to avoid certain obligations of the commercial agreement when the team is considered essential for national security.
There is also the mechanism of the urgent operating requirement (UOR), which can be used to acquire essential equipment in an accelerated timeline to meet a specific and immediate operational need of the Canadian Armed Forces.
You can also use an anticipated contract award (ACAN), which indicates the intention of the defense department to grant a contract to a specific supplier and allows other potential suppliers to demonstrate what they can provide.
At the end of the NATO Summit, Carney was asked if he intends to use any of those tools at his disposal.
It doesn’t sound like this.
“The big question. The first thing we are looking for is to change the machinery of the defense acquisition, if I can say so,” he said referring to the new defense acquisition agency that his government created.
Once the agency is built, Carney said they will seek to make “adjustments to our ability to buy Canadian and our ability to buy more quickly as appropriate.”
