Front Burner - What’s behind Mark Carney’s military splurge?

Episode Date: June 12, 2025

For years now Canada's been badgered to pony up, and spend more money on the military. Those calls have come from our actual military itself, our NATO allies, and more recently the U.S. President.Well it looks like Mark Carney is going to pull out the credit card, and commit to spending an extra $9.3-billion on the armed forces by March, bumping our military spending up to two per cent of Canada's entire GDP.Carney has also pledged to end this country's reliance on the U.S. for equipment by diverting billions of dollars in spending to Canadian manufacturers.The timing awkwardly coincided with news about an embarrassing foray into Canadian military procurement: our plans to buy a fleet of F-35 fighter jets from America that the auditor general reported was billions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule.So, what is Carney's vision for the future of our military? And how serious are the threats against Canada?David Pugliese, defence reporter with the Ottawa Citizen, talks us through it.Fill out our listener survey here. We appreciate your input!For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

We're all looking for great places to visit in Canada. One of my favorites is the Stratford Festival. The theatre is truly of the highest caliber and there's so much selection. They have 11 large-scale shows on stage and trust me, whatever is on manure there will be exceptional. People always think Shakespeare when they think of Stratford, but it's so much more. Broadway musicals, family shows, classic comedy and drama. Whether it's Robert LaPage's Macbeth or Donna Fiora's Annie, you will be blown away. It's the perfect Canadian getaway. To quote William Shatner who got his start in Stratford,

every Canadian should make the pilgrimage to Stratford. Start your next adventure at StratfordFestival.ca. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Allie Janes in for Jamie Poisson. So for years now, Canada has been badgered to pony up, to spend more money on the military. Those calls have been coming from inside the country, like from our actual military itself, and outside, from our NATO allies, more recently the US president. Well it looks like Mark Carney is gonna pull out the credit card and commit to spending an extra 9.3 billion dollars on the armed forces by next March, bumping our military spending up to 2% of our entire

GDP. Earlier this week the Prime Minister outlined a new military path forward. He pledged to end this country's over-reliance on the US for equipment by diverting billions of dollars in spending to Canadian manufacturers. The timing was a bit awkward because it coincides with news about an embarrassing foray into Canadian military procurement. Our plans to buy a fleet of F-35 fighter jets from America that the Auditor General just said is going to cost billions more than expected and is already years behind schedule. So what is Carney's vision for the future of our military?

Will this be money well spent? And how serious are the threats against Canada, really? Today, I'm talking about all of that with David Buglesi, a defense reporter with the Ottawa Citizen. Hi, David, it's great to have you back on the show. Well, thanks for having me. So on Monday, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced a wide-ranging plan to, as he put it, A more confident, united Canada, a stronger Canada, can help transform this age of disorder

into an era of prosperity for all Canadians. And simply put, if we want a more reliable world, we need a stronger Canada. What were your main takeaways from that announcement? Well, it was a pretty significant announcement, financial boost both to the Defense Department and as well it brought in into the security budget envelope other departments that are spending on defense related issues. So through that, Carney has been able to meet this NATO goal of 2% of GDP. And so when he goes to G7 and later to a NATO meeting, he'll be able to say, well, we are going to meet it. And it is a lot of money being pushed out the door within the next 10 or 11 months.

Yeah, so we'll talk more about that money in a bit. So as is to be expected, Karin talked quite a bit about the US and this unique threat now posed by our southern neighbor and about reducing our reliance on the Americans. The United States is beginning to monetize its hegemony, charging for access to its markets and reducing its relative contribution to our collective security. In parallel, the world's trade routes, allegiances, energy systems, and even intelligence itself are being rewired. What do you think a reduction in that reliance might look like in a material sense? So he's talked about this a number of times and in the election run-up as well.

It's going to be difficult for him to accomplish this because the Canadian forces is so integrated into the U.S. military. Much of our equipment is U.S. produced. And as Mr. Carney has pointed out we're spending over 75 cents on every dollar of capital spend for defense goes to the United States that's not smart what's better if we spend going to try to do is look at other suppliers so there's lots of military oriented equipment out on the market from Europe. South Korea is now, you know, at our door.

And as well, Europe has this Rearm Europe program, which is going to funnel money into that new equipment. And Mr. Carney has talked about Canada joining that and signing on by I think he said July 1st. Am I right that we do make military equipment here but a lot of it actually is like the parent companies that own these factories in Canada are still American is that right? Yeah most of our defense industry I mean there are some you know some Canadian owned companies when most of our defence industry, I mean there are some Canadian owned companies, but most of them are largely American owned.

Now we make certain products in Canada, for instance light armoured vehicles, those are made in London, Ontario by General Dynamics, which is an American company. However, they're producing the entire vehicle there. Some of the other things, we produce some of our own ammunition. In other cases, we produce components of ammunition, which are sent down to the US and put in bombs and such. We have a couple of areas of expertise, cyber defense, you know, we have critical minerals which are going to be important, that type of thing. But it's very limited. It's going to be difficult to move away from the United States in this area. Carney made this announcement about boosting spending to hit this 2% target on Monday.

And then on Tuesday, there was this other announcement, which is that the Auditor General released a report that found, among other things, some pretty major issues with Canada's plan to buy 88 American F-35 fighter jets. And so just for the audience, this is an arrangement that former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had finalized with Biden back in 2022. But among other issues, the AG's report says that this plan is going to cost 50% more than expected. Three years ago, the government announced the deal to buy F-35 fighter jets. 88 would be delivered over more than a decade at a cost of $19 billion.

Now the Auditor General says the price tag has soared to $27.7 billion. And so talk to me firstly, just briefly about why this whole plan has had so many issues. Well, the F-35 aircraft has had problems right from the get-go. And so the Harper government had committed to the F-35. There was a lot of controversy at that time, and they backed away because of all the technical problems and the cost problems, that type of thing.

Well, Peter, the F-35 affair was already bad for the government, but it just got dramatically worse. That's because the Auditor General now says that Cabinet Ministers did know that the cost figures they gave to Canadians were false. Many of these reports that you're citing are comparing apples to oranges. Our experts have put out their detailed figures and everything we've seen is within those figures and their contingencies. We now know... Trudeau came along and said we're never going to buy the F-35.

A Liberal government will also do what the Harper Conservatives ought to have said years ago. We will not buy the F-35 fighter jet. And is government committed to buying 88 of the aircraft? I am announcing that Canada is acquiring a new fleet of 88 state-of-the-art F-35 fighter jets. It's a highly technical fighter jet, self-fighter jet. People describe it as a flying computer, but the problems that Canada is having with this project go deeper than that.

And this is going to be a problem that's going to come back on Prime Minister Carney. He's pumping in all kinds of money, but will you get value for money? And so here we have the F-35 as a good example. It's now 50% higher than what was originally projected and we still haven't had an aircraft delivered. This is the ongoing problem with defence procurement, particularly in Canada. Cost overruns, delays. You can talk about spending more money on defense, but do you get more bang for the

buck? And in many cases, that's not the case. Right. So, well, let's talk more about money now. So 2% is this NATO benchmark target number. Canada, I believe, spent an estimated 1.45% of its GDP on defense last year. So obviously, as you noted, this would be a big spending bump. But I'm just wondering, like broadly, how meaningful is this 2% number that's put on countries? Like,

is this, does this actually mean something or is it just kind of an arbitrary number? The problem with the 2% or even percentage of GDP is if you've got a, you know, like some of these Eastern European nations that are part of NATO, they have extremely small GDPs. Oh, they're far surpassing the NATO standard, yet they have very small militaries and they don't have a lot of equipment. And so that's why, you's why this percentage is problematic. Tomorrow you could say, well, we're going to give Canadian forces 500% raises and boost everybody's salaries and that boosts your percentage, but does that give you more combat capability? And is the problem here that that percentage does not translate into what you can put on the battlefield?

The other problem is, is we've reached 2%, but now President Trump is talking about 5%, which is going to be an astronomical number. Right. For Canada, even just if we're talking about that 2% target, is that even feasible for us? Like, how would we pay for this? What would that mean? Well, that's a good point. If we continue on, you know, let's say we went to 4%, it's going to be $100 billion. The Defence Department can't spend this type of money.

And as you pointed out, where do we get this funding from? Mr. Carney says he doesn't want to raise taxes. But we just cut taxes. We're not raising taxes. We just cut taxes. There are some retired generals that have suggested we need to cut social programming. I don't think that's going to go over well

with the Canadian population. 11 large-scale shows on stage and trust me, whatever is on when you're there will be exceptional. People always think Shakespeare when they think of Stratford, but it's so much more. Broadway musicals, family shows, classic comedy and drama. Whether it's Robert LaPage's Macbeth or Donna Fior's Annie, you will be blown away. It's the perfect Canadian getaway. To quote William Shatner, who got his start in Stratford, every Canadian should make the pilgrimage to Stratford. Start your next adventure at StratfordFestival.ca.

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about new submarines, armored vehicles, drones, other technology. He's also talked about pay raises for members of the armed forces. From your perspective, what do you think are the most important things to invest in if he's trying to build up our actual military capacities here? So I think, well, he's already identified some areas that he wants to move forward in and submarines is one area. They're talking about self-propelled artillery for the Army, more space-oriented systems. And we will invest in modern and secure technological infrastructure, including artificial intelligence, cyber security, quantum technologies, and our capacity in space. Again, there's going to be problems. So they're talking about flying 12 submarines.

Well, we don't have enough submariners to operate the four submarines that we have now. Yeah, it's been pretty well documented that the Canadian Armed Forces are facing a pretty significant recruitment and retention crisis. I mean our CBC colleague Murray Brewster reported a few weeks ago that the military's biggest retention problem is actually among new recruits because they're not getting trained and into the jobs that they actually want. And so talk to me a little bit more about from your perspective, you know, the big causes of this recruitment and retention crisis because obviously like you can like you're saying you can't really build up your your military if you can't actually staff it. Yeah one of the problems that they have and and

Murray has touched on this I get emails all the time some young individual goes to join the Canadian forces they they're accepted, and then they sit at home for a year. There's no capability to bring that person in to train them. And so what they do is, you know, a young person looks for other jobs, and then they take other offers. And this is an ongoing problem that's been happening. There's problems with getting security checks quickly enough. There's not enough people to train new recruits because they are over, for instance, doing the job, the military is doing the job in Latvia.

So you don't have enough trainers. So this is a vicious cycle. Painting forces is well aware of this, and they say they're making changes, they're going to improve the process. And so we'll see that if it works in the next book. So you were on the show back in March talking about Canada's Arctic sovereignty and what a big concern that is for many in Canada's military right now. People can find that in our feed, but I want to talk to you about some of the other areas of concern that maybe you're hearing about because I know you're having lots of conversations with people in different levels of Canada's

military world. And like if we're talking about beefing up Canada's defenses, what do you think they're most worried about defending against? Like is it a US invasion? Is it China? Is it Russia? What are you hearing about as like the big concerns? Well, there's a lot of rhetoric out there from defense analysts, from NATO officials, from former generals. Some of it at times seems wild. They're talking about we have to join Trump's Golden Dome missile defense. And the reason why is because North Korea might fire a missile at Parliament Hill. You know, a defense analyst said that. And you've got to ask yourself, why would North Korea fire a missile at Parliament Hill? Right.

I don't even know if we're on the radar of the North Koreans. You know, you've got generals. One of the things that they keep saying is we're going to be at war with China or Russia within four years. You see, 2030, the Chinese may go to war with us. And you have to stop and ask yourself a question. Why would China go to war with Canada or the United States? We're their biggest training partners. They need us. And then, and so you have to question, you know, where is this coming from?

And a lot of it is, I've seen this over the years and it's rhetoric and it fuels, we have to spend more on defense. And generals want money, companies want more money. And so it's, um, it's, it's a cycle, whether it's going to come to pass, but let's, let's hope that we're not at war with China in 2030, cause, um, that's going to be something else. Yeah. Well, I mean, do you feel like right now the country's kind of, I guess,

buying into that rhetoric? Certainly the politicians are, are I guess buying into that rhetoric? Certainly the politicians are buying into that rhetoric. I don't know if the average Canadian thinks that, you know, Chinese paratroopers are going to be landing in Toronto. I certainly hope not. I certainly hope not. Yeah. I mean, so what we're seeing is, is China is increasingly becoming more powerful,

particularly economically. And if they wanted to do damage to Canada or the United States, they could easily do it economically. Um, there are other measures that they could take to, to harm us. I mean, we've, we've heard Carney also describe China as a major threat to Canada, like it seems he's certainly talking about this too, right? Yeah, so, but he's talked about it, but he's then, he's also opening up a new communication links with China.

So yeah, it's, it's politics in one respect and it's also, uh, they need to increase the military or they want to increase the military and so you need an outside threat to justify that. increase the military. And so you need an outside threat to justify that. Trump is putting a lot of pressure for Canada to spend more money. They are just about the lowest payer in NATO, in addition to everything else. So Canada has really been taken advantage of. And if they had to pay just something modestly fair, they

wouldn't be able to succeed as a country. modestly fair, they wouldn't be able to succeed as a country. And part of the reason he's doing that is the money that we're going to spend is largely going to go down to the United States. F-35 is being built in Fort Worth, Texas. Those are high tech American jobs, well paying American jobs, courtesy of the Canadian taxpayer. So if we just take a face value, this idea that Canada could be at some risk that we need to, you know, beef up our defenses. I mean, let's just talk about the state of Canada's ability to defend itself right now. My understanding is that the military is in kind of rough shape, not, we talked about the staffing issues, but also the equipment is like not at its finest hour,

right? For sure. There are ongoing problems with the equipment, particularly in the Army. Some of the tanks are older trucks and that type of thing. The Navy, the submarines are in rough shape. You know, we spent a lot of money on these secondhand submarines and they're not going to see, they're not being used because of ongoing problems. In some respects, the Air Force is in better shape. It's got newer transport helicopters newer transport helicopters and transport aircraft, that type of thing.

So there's certainly a lot more equipment that could be purchased, more modernized. Whether, again, it comes to spending. So we are buying new warships being built at Irving Shipyards on the East Coast. Well, the original budget was $25 billion or 15. Now, we're talking at, you know, I think we're getting the first three ships for around that amount of money. And all 15 are going to cost, you know, the, the, well, parliamentary budget officers, but the price tag is more than 80 billion. And so you have these massive cost overruns. And again, it comes back to you. You're putting a lot of money out. What are you getting for? I want to zoom out now and just sort of talk about, you know, if we look historically at Canada's role militarily, for decades we were known for our peacekeeping efforts in

places like Rwanda, Haiti, the Balkans. I mean, some will remember the scandal of Operation Deliverance in Somalia in the 90s. These are some of the guys from the unit which captured a 16-year-old Somali named Shadane Arone and then gave him a command performance with fists, boots, lit cigarettes, and iron bars. Co-starring Master Corporal Clayton Macchi. There won't be a sequel to this little desert take on reservoir dogs. You just can't have a sequel when this little desert take on reservoir dogs. You just can't have a sequel when you beat the lead to death.

But peacekeeping obviously is no longer a big part of what the Canadian military does. And we sort of moved into this role as this support force for American and NATO war efforts in Iraq and Libya, of course more significantly in Afghanistan, and I don't know if this is a derisive way to put it but we've kind of been in like a sidekick role, sort of a supplementary support force to these you know bigger armies like the US. But now I'm wondering right now with this rebuilding effort, what do you think the broader goal is in terms of what our role will be militarily or our place and how that kind of fits into the trajectory of these other roles that we've played in the past?

Well, I think the broader goal is to rebuild the Canadian forces. There are obviously problems going on there. And so it's to shore that up. Whether it changes how we approach operations, international operations for instance, remains to be seen. You know since since 9-11 we've been highly supportive of American and NATO military operations. I don't see that changing. This potentially gives us more capability to do that. You know, it will be interesting to see

how much of this is going to be directed at our own territory. So for instance, the Arctic, that's number one. Secondly, the military is being used as climate change continues to wreak havoc in our country. The military is in every summer is being called upon to move large numbers of people from communities that are that are being facing forest fires and such. And so it'll be interesting to see how much of the money is directed into things that can be used for Canadians directly. You know, self-propelled howitzers would be great to defend Latvia, but you know, people in Fort McMurray might be asking, well, you know, are there enough aircraft to evacuate our community in the case of another forest fire? Right.

And that type of role has a lot of support among Canadians from what I've seen. Well, obviously, this is something that we're seeing. I mean, even this week, we're seeing military planes, military helicopters and personnel being deployed to a lot of northern communities, especially Manitoba and Ontario, to evacuate these northern communities, especially Manitoba and Ontario, to evacuate these northern communities right now. Yeah, I mean, I think it's and I'm always surprised that the government hasn't done this. I always thought it'd be a no brainer to announce, you know, more transport aircraft,

more transport helicopters. And then you you design it, you pitch it as this is to help our country, you know, internally. Or I'll give you an example. So the Greek air force operates Canadian water bombers. Um, and they fight fires in Greece. Um, now this has always been, this role has been resisted by the Canadian military. But I, you know, I've always wondered, why not? Why not do this? One, you buy Canadian water bombers,

so you're making Canadian jobs. And two, you're protecting your own country. Maybe Air Force pilots don't wanna fly these water bombers, but you have another force that does that. And so it'll be interesting to see if it's business as usual for the Defense Department or if they start thinking, I hate to use this term, you know, outside the box. But if they start looking at security in

different ways. That's really interesting. The G7 is set to begin in just a few days in Alberta and we're gonna be talking more about that on the show on Friday, but just specifically in terms of defense, what do you think is gonna be on the top of the agenda? I think Mr. Carney's gonna point out that he's reached GDP 2%. It'll be interesting to see how Mr. Trump reacts.

It'll probably be great, except I want 5%. You're already starting to see that from American officials. Defense Under Secretary was tweeting about the 2%, Canada reaching 2%, and he's there, well, yeah, that's great, but it's not good enough. We want 5%. And I think in terms of defense, that's going to be a lot of focus, a lot of pressure from the Americans. All right, David, thank you so much as ever. It's always a pleasure.

Thank you. All right, that is all for today. I'm Allie Janes in for Jamie Ploessant. Thanks for listening to Frontburner and we'll talk to you tomorrow.