Mark Carney is fear mongering about faraway countries while downplaying a security threat driving an ever-greater number of Canadians from their homes.
In the recently released federal budget “defence” is mentioned 148 times while “climate change” is cited 20 times (the document includes 40 more mentions of “climate” in an ecological sense and an equal number of mentions of defend”, “defending” and “DND” in a militaristic way). Yet it wasn’t Russia, Iran or China that drove hundreds of thousands of Canadians from their homes this summer. Or the summer before that. It was climate change induced forest fires, which are expected to worsen as temperatures increase.
In the budget Carney chopped in half the government’s commitment to plant 2 billion trees and reneged on a promise to subsidize electric vehicles. The Public Transit Fund and Greener Homes Grant also face further cuts. One of Carney’s first moves as prime minister was to eliminate the carbon tax and he’s pushing to expand fossil fuel infrastructure. He’s abandoned the country’s commitment to reduce GHG emissions for 2030 while boasting about Canada being an energy “superpower”.
At the same time as he pushes us towards the climate inferno, Carney is obsessed with “defending” Canada. The point of using the word “defence” 148 times is placating Donald Trump by increasing military spending so Canada can better assist a US war machine bombing in the Caribbean, Somalia and elsewhere. Irrespective of the public’s perception, Canada’s military is not structured to defend Canada, but rather to assist the US empire. The budget calls for a “strong fighting force”.
Carney’s militarism is extreme. A recent report from the Parliamentary Budget Officer concluded that planned capital spending on the military increased $108 billion over the next two decades since last year. There hasn’t been an equivalent boost in military spending since the early 1950s Korean war. While vague on DND’s exact spending next year, the budget adds 82 billion dollars over five years to war spending. The government is buying new submarines, surface combatants, fighter jets, and drones. They are also spending more on NORAD and look set to participate in Trump’s incredibly expensive (and likely useless) Golden Dome. Irrespective of the media claiming the military has been neglected in recent years, spending doubled during Trudeau’s decade in power (from $20 billion to $40 billion and from 1% of GDP to 1.4%).
At this point the main thing limiting spending increases is DND’s inability to absorb/spend the added resources. It isn’t easy to get $9 billion more out the door in eight months as Carney mandated in June. When that announcement was made the goal was to reach NATO’s then target of 2% of GDP on war (by contrast Mexico spends .7% of GDP on its armed forces). Now the budget reiterates Carney’s commitment to reach NATO’s even higher 5% of GDP target.
The budget repeatedly cites “defence” as an engine of economic growth. It doesn’t mention the care or green economy in a similar way. (The budget also mentions reconstruction in Ukraine though not Gaza).
Canada currently devotes 17 times more to the Department of National Defence and Veterans Affairs than to Environment and Climate Change Canada. But the climate crisis and ecological collapse are far greater security threats to Canadians than Iran, Russia, China or whoever else the US empire has decided is a threat.
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