The Current - Trump puts Canada’s defence spending in election spotlight

Episode Date: April 1, 2025

Defence is now a key election issue, fuelled by questions over whether the U.S. is a reliable ally under President Donald Trump. We ask military experts what kind of investment is needed to make sure Canada can protect itself, and whether whoever wins the election can deliver it.

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This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current Podcast. The old relationship we had with the United States based on deepening integration of our economies and tight security and military cooperation is over. What exactly the United States does next is unclear, but what is clear is that we as Canadians have agency. We can deal with this crisis best by building our strength right here at home. As a Liberal leader Mark Carney speaking last week, with the United States treating allies like enemies, Canadian defense has become a key election issue. To talk about that and the issues facing

Canada's military and the defense promises the party leaders are pitching in this federal election campaign, I'm joined by three experts. Mark Norman is a retired vice admiral, fellow with the Canadian Global Affairs Institute. Jody Thomas is a former national security and intelligence advisor to Justin Trudeau and a member of the Council on Canada-US Relations. Richard Shamuka is a senior fellow at the MacDonald-Laurier Institute. Good morning everyone. Good morning. Morning. Morning, Matt. Mark Norman, where would you put the state of Canada's military and defense in 2025? How would you assess it? Well, I think from a material perspective, it's in a pretty sad way.

Then there's a variety of components to that. But I think from a policy and political perspective, this is the first time in my adult life that defense has been such an important element of a national election campaign. And although that's encouraging, I think it's more a reflection of how bad we have let things become.

What's the saddest part of the state of our defense readiness? Well, I think the saddest part is the fact that we're now continuing to be called out for insufficient contributions. Behind all of that, of course, is the fact that the Armed Forces are really understaffed, under-resourced and under-equipped. Richard, do you agree with that assessment in terms of the state of Canada's military in 2025?

Absolutely. I think if you look at all the different components, whether it be the army, the air force, and the Navy, each one has serious capability deficiencies. Because we've basically not modernized our forces over the past 30 years, you have a lot of systems that take quite a long time to sort of keep them going to sort of put them on into service. And so if you look at our military in comparison to other militaries of our allies, we actually provide very little capability given the amount

of resources that we put in at this stage. An example of that is something I've read about 18 tanks. Can you explain that Richard? Yeah. So Canada really only purchased enough tanks so that you can consistently deploy 18 tanks at one time, basically a squadron. We didn't want to spend too much and the nature of the way that we deploy our forces, we've

really only purchased enough just to have sort of an ability to just have a sort of showing the flag or making a token capability that we show off when we go out to abroad. So if you think about what we're doing in Lafayette right now with 2200 troops and it basically 18 tanks, that's basically all we can give. Jodie Thomas, that phrase, we didn't want to spend too much, carries a lot of weight for

a lot of people. Do you think that Canada has been sleepwalking on issues of, I mean, we're talking about Arctic sovereignty, we're talking about NATO spending, military procurement. Has Canada been sleepwalking on these issues up until this election? I think that Canada has had the benefit of our geographic isolation for its entire existence and that isolation no longer protects us. Generation after generation has not invested

in the military. This is party agnostic. Governments have never seen defenses winning them votes, and we've been able to slide by. Times have changed, and it is time to invest. I would say that the purchasing just enough is probably accurate. I would say that the same exists right now with the number of jets we're going to buy. 88 doesn't allow for attrition. It doesn't allow for multiple deployments at the same time. And so I think that it is time to look at capability requirements and truly what needs to be purchased to meet those and meet our international

and domestic commitments. How much of that has to do with the President of the United States calling out not just NATO, but pointing the finger at Canada? I am not willing to give any credit to the President of the United States. I think that this is a realization amongst Canadians and political leaders that it is time.

Certainly all of NATO has put pressure on Canada and the other countries that are not meeting the 2% commitment and it's time for us to do that. You get no credit to the President of the United States? I just, President Biden, President Obama also put pressure on Canada. President Obama was quite famous when he did that in the House of Commons saying that we need more Canada. And so, in the House of Commons saying that we need more Canada. And so Donald Trump doesn't get to decide what policy is in this country. I think political leaders have decided this on their own

and I think Canadians support that. I mean, one of the things, if party agnostic, is this commitment to reach the 2% of GDP defense spending by 2030. Mark Carney is promising that. The conservatives and the NDP have also pledged to hit this mark. Richard, what is it going to take to get us there? We've heard this promise articulated before, but it is a big leap. What will it take to get Canada there?

So currently under the previous government's plan, Canada will hit 2% at 2032. Now there's some little leeway in there. The parliamentary budget officer said that there might be a shortfall, but for now we'll say that they'll hit a 20-30-20. The question is, can that be accelerated any further? And you've seen various plans. Mark Carney releases his platform last week. He said he's going to move it out for two years. Part of the problem, and Mark Normans said this at the very start, was that there's real

shortfalls within the capacity within the department. And that is true at the senior levels to sort of manage these programs, to identify requirements, shepherd these programs through and within the government as a whole to sort of move through a procurement to sort of move that quicker. The big spends that the Canadian forces need are in the procurement accounts. And there's really only one or two programs that can be accelerated at any speed. Beyond that, it's going to take quite some time to push through money to make it to increase the forces. That's a huge leap to 2%, right? We're at

what 1.37% now? Yeah, by the government's numbers, it's $81 billion in 2032. And I think we're at 30 some billion dollars right now. Mark, do you believe the 2% is the magic number that it's made out to be? It's the number that everybody's agreed to. And I think it's an important metric for framing the conversation absent anything else. But you know, Richard and Jodi have made some good points. I just want to pick up on something in the previous round, which is a lot of this we need to be doing for ourselves. If we were actually delivering the kind of military that Canada needs, we would probably

be at or above 2% anyway. And the problem is that we have shortchanged a lot of the investments, both in terms of delaying them, in terms of reducing them or completely avoiding or ignoring them. So those have had a cumulative effect. Yeah, there's a huge bow wave to use a nautical term here that we have to push through, but we should be doing this because we need to do it ourselves. My sense is that we would be above 2% if we were actually taking this seriously and all

this 2% stuff would be probably a% if we were actually taking this seriously and all this 2% stuff would be probably a footnote in the bigger conversation. Can I go back to something that you said earlier, which is that we have to do this beyond kind of individual personalities. You wrote something in the National Post in February saying, when the leader of our closest neighbor ally and trading partner says he can destroy us with the stroke of a pen, it's a real threat. To dismiss it as anything less would be irresponsible

and naive. Surely this has something to do with Donald Trump and our relationship such as it is, such as it was with the United States. Well, absolutely. But to Jody's point, we can't hang it all on him because there's a much deeper set of issues playing out here. There's an entire shift in the

political landscape in the United States and there are a whole bunch of people around the president and his current administration who are of a similar mindset. We can't just blame this on one guy. There are deeper systemic and structural issues here that have created the problems we're dealing with in Canada, but equally in the United States, they're not going to go away even if that individual was to go away. How do you know when an idea is worth your time? I'm Nala Ayed, host of Ideas. Join me as we deep dive into the stories and ideas that shape us. No topic is off limits, from the allure of authoritarianism to what we can learn from the average cat.

Find and follow ideas wherever you get your podcasts. Jody, Mark Carney has suggested that we could look elsewhere for new fighter jets, given what's going on when it comes to tariffs, for example, and threats of annexation. You have people who were involved in the purchase of F-35s saying that relying solely on American-made F-35s would in their words be irresponsible given the hostility of the US government. Is there a point to that, do you think? I think there's some validity to it. I think that it's going to require a lot of analysis to ensure that by making a decision and changing course because of some of the more bombastic and

irrational rhetoric out of the United States that leads us to think that they're not going to be a reliable consistent partner. Using that as the reason to look elsewhere, we need to ensure that we would not lose a place in a production line. We would not slow down the refurbishment and the replenishment of the Royal Canadian Air Force. Our jets are really critical to the defense of North America. They've certainly been used around the world in NATO missions and other missions, but they're really critical to the defense of North America. And so we need to ensure that the F-18 replacement is not slowed

down by a changing course. And I think we need to look very carefully at the number of jets we need and what that mix could be. Our NORAD mission is really critical. And I would hate to see anything impact the ability to execute that mission. Do you believe the United States is a reliable ally in 2025? I believe that the military to military relationship is solid. I believe that the relationship in the security agencies is solid. I think that there is certainly an irrational and mercurial president, and we cannot be dependent on what he says day to day for the defense of Canada. You didn't say that they're a reliable ally though.

I believe that when push comes to shove, yes, they're a reliable ally. I think that there is a bombastic character in the White House right now. And I don't think the people surrounding him are necessarily advising him honestly and fearlessly. They're just agreeing with him. But I do believe that if we were to find ourselves in a situation where we had to rely on them, I think that the military to military ties would prevail. Mark Norman, you floated on social media media the idea that Canada should consider its rights

and protections under the NATO Charter, specifically Article 4, that we should formally approach our allies for support, diplomatic or otherwise, as we are threatened by the United States. What are you getting at there? Well, I'm being intentionally provocative, and this was in the early days of the rhetoric that Jody has described. And what I was saying is that NATO has some very clear rules and expectations of conduct amongst its member nations. Article 4 basically says that if a country is feeling threatened, it has the right to

bring its concerns to the North Atlantic Council and discuss them. That's a pretty serious and provocative gesture, but my point was that we're either going to roll over and continue to manage these things on a tactical issue by issue basis, or we need to take a more strategic approach and we shouldn't rule out the fact that if this gets ridiculous, that we do have those rights and protections. I would add that I suspect that some folks in Copenhagen are probably having similar considerations, not because of my tweet, but because of the essence of what it means to

be part of a multilateral organization or not. Richard, this impacts issues of procurement as well. What do you make of the idea that we could pivot to Asia or to Europe for our weapon systems and for our equipment if the United States is not acting in a reliable fashion? I think it's really difficult. One of the natures of the European defense market versus the American is that it's very much controlled by individual states that have significant stake in the actual companies that produce the weapons themselves. You think about Naval Group or Thin Can Terry.

These are Europe's largest shipbuilding companies and they're owned by the states. But I'd like to go back really quickly just to a point about Canada-U.S. relations. Yeah. I think if you think about the sweep of our bilateral relations is that we've been really effective at understanding the nuance and understand that U.S. is not a unitary state and that you have congress you have civil society groups you have businesses state governors and been really effective at sort of playing each one off of each other in our past and certainly certainly the basic, the rhetoric, I think has cut deep into Canadian psyche and it's been really effective in some ways at sort

of building our own nationalism. But we've got to be a little bit careful not to, we need the allies within the United States to help us to some degree. And some of the rhetoric on our side doesn't help that as well. Clearly, you know, the administration has gone well beyond the pale in a lot of these areas, but we have to manage those bilateral relationships and those other groups because a lot of them aren't happy either. You think about what's going on with the signal day, between Congress and the administration. This is the information about the bombing in Yemen that was disclosed to a journalist on signal.

Absolutely. You see senior GOP senators, house members, when you have a razor-thin margin in the Senate, they're not happy. I think there's a path for us to navigate that relationship between us and the administration by using these other actors like we have in the past. Historically, there's been other presidents that have not done well for the Canada user relationship. We think about Nixon as being one, right? We got past that. I think we should look to history in some ways to sort of build on those relationships. So if this is an opportunity, Richard, just finally, what will show you, I mean, what

do you want to see from whoever becomes prime minister that they are taking this opportunity? If the state of our military and defense is in, in Mark Norman's words, a sad way. What will show you that whoever becomes the leader of this country is taking that opportunity seriously to bolster it? I do think a balanced approach is required. I think Jody mentioned that as well. As you know, we think about our NORAD commitment that is to many US Congress members is really critical and they've been talking about that for over a decade now.

We can move away to some degree, but we can't do it in ways that will clearly anger some of those allies that we need. And sort of taking all these different sort of parties' views into account and sort of building a policy that is nuanced and able to sort of best pull out what the best advantage or the best sort of outcome for us as Canada is probably what I'm looking for for the next leader. Jody, what would be the first priority for you? We're talking in this country in a different way, it feels like, about sovereignty,

but also defending that sovereignty. What would the first priority for you be from whoever becomes the next prime minister? I think we need to see the strategy to get to 2%. How we're going to invest in Canada, how we're going to increase Canadian resilience and not be so integrated with the United States. We obviously need to be interoperable with the United States. NATO is interoperable with the United States, but we don't need to be quite as integrated as we are.

That's possible, you believe? I do. I also think we need to see where we're going to invest in Canadian capacity in Canadian industry. We're never going to invest in Canadian capacity in Canadian industry. We're never going to have the defence industrial base that the United States has, but we do have some niche areas where we're really, really technically advanced. And I think that's where we should be investing in Canadian technology. And anywhere where we can see an opportunity to accelerate existing programs, increase the drone program, increase the jet program, increase the LAV,

the Light Armored Vehicle Program. Things that are in the hopper now that can be quickly advanced as we look to what else needs to be done to procure increased capacity for the Canadian Armed Forces. I would also like to see some attempt at procurement reform very quickly. Mark Norman, last word to you.

Whoever becomes prime minister at the end of April, what should be their first priority in addressing what we've been talking about? I would pick up on Jody's last point. I think we need to substantially fix the weak link in the chain, which is how we actually deliver all of these programs. And that's a combination of the procurement system itself,

but it's also a big component of that is to reset the relationship with Canadian industry. And Canadian industry has an enormous piece to offer in this, and we have not fully leveraged the potential that they can provide. And I think that that's a huge opportunity space for the next government. And you think it will be seized upon? Again, one of the things that you've all said is that electorally, this has not been a priority

because typically issues of national defense do not generate votes. Is this really a different moment, do you think? I would like to believe it is, and I am optimistic in that context. It promises enormous potential, as I said a minute ago. The question for us is whether we're gonna seize that opportunity or whether we're just gonna treat it

as just another issue to be managed. Obviously, I'm passionate about this and I think this is an enormous and generational opportunity and I would like to believe that the next Prime Minister will grab it and really do something important with it for Canada and not just to satisfy and not just to satisfy some transactional demands that are imposed on us from outside of our own borders. It's good to speak with you all about this. Thank you very much for your insights. Thanks for having me. Thank you. Thank you, Matt. Mark Norman is a retired vice admiral and a fellow with the Canadian Global Affairs Institute. Jody Thomas is a former national security and intelligence advisor to Justin Trudeau, now a member of the Council on Canada-US Relations.

And Richard Shamuka is a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.