Trudeau has lost his power to seduce and Canada’s standing has been lost, as allies far poorer than this country live up to their promises
Justin Trudeau is so schooled in the art of denial that he now tries to deflect inescapable truths.
In Washington Thursday, at the conclusion of the NATO summit there, the prime minister unveiled what his defence minister, Bill Blair, called a “credible, verifiable path to two per cent” spending of gross domestic product on defence by 2032.
Let’s leave aside the fact that the plan is neither credible nor verifiable. Trudeau was asked if he was worried that the political problems that have dogged him this week will now hang over this country for the next eight years.
Trudeau has been roasted by U.S. lawmakers behind closed doors and in public.
Yet, Trudeau dismissed the premise of the question. “There has not been a political problem this week,” he said. “Our allies are pleased to hear that we have a plan and a timeline to get to two per cent.”
Everything is relative, one supposes. This week’s headaches are likely to have proved a mild vexation compared to the throbbing migraine that will come if Donald Trump is elected president again.
NATO’s secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg, has long said two per cent is the floor for defence spending, not the ceiling.
Jeffrey Kroeker, a principal at global risk advisers Massey, was in Washington for defence industry meetings this week and said there is “palpable anger” on the American side. “If you think they won’t link defence to the review of CUSMA (the Canada-U.S.-Mexico trade agreement) you are dreaming in technicolour. Republicans and Democrats have said as much,” he said.
Canada’s two-per-cent “plan,” such as it is, amounted to a line in the closing press conference in which Trudeau made the commitment, without any details on how it would be achieved.
In April, the government said it was exploring options to purchase a new submarine fleet and on Wednesday formalized a process that has been underway for some time, with Royal Canadian Navy personnel visiting yards in Germany, Japan, South Korea, France, Spain and Sweden.
The government is looking at buying up to 12 subs to replace the four aging Victoria class ships that will be taken out of service at the end of the 2030s.
The Defence Department said that it will issue a request for information from bidders later this year.
The price tag will be hefty. The Dutch recently bought four new attack subs from the French for around $8.5 billion. If you assume a similar ballpark figure per sub, and then double the number to include infrastructure on both coasts and training, the cost, even amortized over the life cycle of the boats, should push Canada over two per cent in the early 2030s.
The preferred option appears to be the German Type 212 submarine, which is being bought by the Norwegians. On Wednesday, Blair announced a maritime security and defence procurement agreement with Germany and Norway. It did not commit Canada to buy the Type 212, but a deal would have the advantage of interoperability, as well as endearing Ottawa to two NATO allies.
“The political alliance compact probably tips the scales” toward Germany’s Thyssenkrupp submarine, said Philippe Lagasse, an associate professor at Carleton University.
Other front-runners are the South Koreans and Japanese, although the latter are said to be reluctant to take part in a bidding war, having witnessed the F-35 procurement debacle.
As important as choosing the right sub is the need to get on with the process before Canada loses the capacity to operate submarines.
In his press conference, Trudeau expressed his frustration that his government gets no credit for having spent $175 billion on defence since coming to power. Canada is in the top five of absolute spending increases among NATO allies since 2015, he said more than once. “We have stepped up massively,” he said.
The prime minister also complained about the use of the two-per-cent metric as “the be all and end all” to evaluate military contributions. “Nominal targets make for easy headlines … but don’t make us safer,” he said.
His problem is that the world is a more perilous place than it was a decade ago and Canada’s allies have resolved to face that peril where they stand.
Ottawa’s response has been decidedly more supine.
Lagasse said the typically risk-averse bureaucracy has decided that there is no good way to spend more money in a smart way in a shorter time frame.
Meanwhile, 70,000 people applied to join the military last year and only 4,000 were admitted. The vice-chief of the defence staff admitted at committee that one reason for that discrepancy is that medical assessments and security clearances take too long because “the paper-based processes are terribly antiquated.”
Paying soldiers more and digitizing the system would be quick and easy ways to increase defence spending for any government that was genuinely interested in meeting its NATO commitments.
On the international stage — as on the domestic stage — Trudeau has lost his power to seduce, and Canada’s standing has been lost, as allies far poorer than this country live up to their promises.
Just saying Canada is “one of the big countries in NATO” does not make it so.
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