OTTAWA — Prime Minister Mark Carney on Monday announced an ambitious defense spending target that would end Canada’s status as a NATO laggard and mollify frustrated Americans.
Carney committed to meeting the alliance’s current spending target of 2 percent in 2025, half a decade ahead of Ottawa’s previous commitment.
Carney’s announcement comes less than a week before he hosts President Donald Trump at the G7 summit in Alberta. The accelerated spending also follows amplified calls from the U.S. president and his Canadian ambassador, Pete Hoekstra, for Ottawa to honor its unfulfilled 11-year-old commitment to the target.
Carney framed the new spending as a necessary response to a more dangerous world that has left Canada more vulnerable to threats in the Arctic — and less protected by Americans.
“A new imperialism threatens. Middle powers must compete for interests and attention, knowing that if they’re not at the table, they’re on the menu,” Carney said, repeating a go-to line from keynote speeches before he formally entered politics.
“Our fundamental goal in all of this is to protect Canadians, not to satisfy NATO accountants,” he added.
“But now the United States is beginning to monetize its hegemony, charging for access to its markets and reducing its relative contribution to our collective security.”
Canada faces spending decisions in the coming weeks and months.
Carney’s government isn’t planning to unveil a budget until the fall, which has sparked widespread criticism from opposition parties. But his finance minister, François-Philippe Champagne, has told POLITICO that Ottawa must take into account whether NATO leaders adopt a plan to raise the spending benchmark to 5 percent at a June 24 summit in The Hague.
Champagne said in a recent interview that with the NATO summit coming in June, and “with the trade dispute we have with the United States, things could shift. Obviously, we have a big exercise around government efficiency.”
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte last week outlined a proposal that would see members spend 3.5 percent on core defense spending and a 1.5 percent component on defense tied to “security-related investment, including in infrastructure and resilience.”
Carney said Canada was already well positioned to make a contribution to that second component, as part of his government’s plan to build up Canada’s defense industrial base and make it less reliant on the U.S.
“With the fall of the Berlin Wall, the United States became the global hegemon, its gravitational pull on Canada, always strong, became virtually irresistible, and made the U.S. our closest ally and dominant trading partner,” Carney said.
Carney reiterated Canada’s intent to join the ReArm Europe initiative, which Defense Minister David McGuinty recently confirmed to CANSEC, Canada’s largest military trade show.
“Canada is confident that our economic strategy and our many strategic resources, from critical minerals to cyber, will make major contributions to NATO security,” Carney said.
“We will ensure that Canadian workers and businesses benefit from the huge increase in defense procurement that will be required using Canadian steel, Canadian aluminum, Canadian critical minerals, Canadian cyber,” said Carney.
Carney’s announcement amounts to a sea change in Canadian defense and foreign policy. Former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau once once privately advised NATO officials that Canada would never meet the 2 percent target, according to documents leaked from the Pentagon two years ago.
Some Canadians have been calling for increased spending more quickly, but until Monday, those calls were mostly ignored by political leaders from both the federal Liberal and Conservative parties.
Those calls have come for decades.
Less than one month after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S., Canada’s then Foreign Minister John Manley said it was incumbent on the country to spend more on its national security. Canada, he said, “can’t just sit at the G8 table and then, when the bill comes, go to the washroom.”
