Canada faces ‘challenging’ NATO summit amid spending dip, NORAD questions: experts
Global News
"How can we have confidence in a government that doesn't seem to be able to get its numbers together?" asked one defence expert about Defence Minister Anita Anand's promises.
Canadian officials will likely face a “challenging” NATO leaders summit amid new data suggesting a defence spending dip, and growing public confusion about where the cash is coming from for major promised NORAD upgrades, experts warn.
New numbers from the military alliance suggest Canada is slipping behind on its pledge to hit a prominent spending target as the size of the economy grows in comparison to promised new spending.
At the same time, there is growing frustration among the defence industry at the government’s handling of an announcement of $4.9 billion in upgrades to NORAD radar and surveillance systems.
“If the idea was to instill confidence that this is all buttoned down, I think they’ve done about the opposite that,” said David Perry, vice-president of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute and a defence policy expert.
“That basically is going to make the summit a little bit more challenging, especially in the middle of a fairly convoluted week and a bit, over what we are doing about continental defence and the budget.”
Perry said the government has trying to emphasize that spending on defence is on the upswing.
Now, he says the confusion is about whether the government is actually adding new defence spending, or “reshuffling things.”
Ranked by percentage of GDP spending, Canada now sits 24th out of 29 members in the NATO alliance. That marked a slight slip from spending 1.36 per cent of GDP on defence last year to 1.27 per cent now.
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