Expect world leaders at this week’s NATO summit to call out Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — as he rightly deserves.
Canada is a cheapskate. We’re that friend who always “forgets” their wallet when they join you for dinner, who never splits the bill evenly because they “only had an appetizer,” who never treats their pals to a round but always drinks when someone else buys. Most us have had friends like this, and after a while, you stop inviting them out, leaving them to stare at the walls of their studio apartments alone.
Giroux also found that since 2017-2018, the Department of National Defence has allowed an average of 33 per cent of some of its capital expenditures to lapse. This leaves Canada playing catch up for years of under-funding.
The Liberals claim Giroux used the wrong figures, because he based his analysis on internal GDP forecasts instead of using projections from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which are used by NATO. The OECD’s GDP projections for Canada are lower than the PBO’s, which therefore pushes up our military spending-to-GDP ratio.
But if our economy grows faster — which the PBO believes it will — then the amount budgeted for defence will represent a smaller percentage of overall economic activity. This would be a good news story for Canadians, because a faster-growing economy creates more wealth, allowing more people to pay their rent, buy a home or feed their kids. A faster-growing economy also means the government collects more tax revenue, and thus can more easily increase spending on its priorities — like defence.
Expect world leaders to call Trudeau out this week, as he rightly deserves. But that’s nothing compared to the spanking he’ll get if Donald Trump wins the White House again. This time, Trump won’t ask what Trudeau’s number is. He’ll simply hang up the phone.
Postmedia Network
Tasha Kheiriddin is Postmedia’s national politics columnist.