The Liberal government just passed an unprecedentedly militaristic peacetime budget. And they did so with barely a murmur from the parliamentary opposition.
On Monday Mark Carney passed his radical militarist budget, which devotes extraordinary sums to submarines, surface combatants, armoured vehicles, drones and other weaponry. The budget adds $82 billion to a military budget that doubled during Justin Trudeau’s decade in office, increasing from 1% of GDP to 1.4%.
The 2024-25 budget devoted $34.5-billion to the Department of National Defence. In 2025-2026 that was boosted by 38% to $48-billion (multiple billions of dollars more are spent on “defence” in other departments).
In the short term the main thing limiting military spending increases is DND’s inability to absorb/spend the added resources.
As Canadian Global Affairs Institute President David Perry notes, the budget will “add more than $300-billion to the defence coffers over the next two decades.” But, as Perry notes, this is only a start since the budget “clearly commits to increasing it” by even more. In fact, the budget sets Canada on a path to spend more of its GDP on the military than the US. The budget says Canada will spend 5% of GDP on war.
Canada’s fighter jet purchase highlights rising militarism. Stephen Harper planned to buy 65 F35s, which Justin Trudeau boosted to 88 and now Carney is reportedly planning to purchase up to 110. According to the Globe and Mail, the new plan is to buy 32-40 F35s and 60-70 Gripen fighters for a Canadian Airforce that’s bombed Libya, Yugoslavia and Iraq since the early 1990s. According to the Globe report, “Carney is worried about ‘retaliation’ from U.S. President Donald Trump if the rest of the F-35 order — 72 aircraft – is cancelled.”
To placate Trump Carney is prepared to boost the fighter jet purchase to as many as 110.
The plan to boost the reserves is even more outrageous. The armed forces want to increase the reserves by 1300% from 30,000 to 400,000. This would almost certainly require a draft.
In a recent Globe interview about the reserves, Chief of the Defence Staff Jennie Carignan said that the aim was to focus on sovereignty, which “would be a somewhat new direction for a military that’s normally been focused on expeditionary deployments overseas.”
Carigan is indirectly admitting that Canada’s armed forces are designed for (US) global power projection, not sovereignty. But, instead of mentioning the only country that could realistically invade, which is currently led by a president openly calling for annexation, Carignan mentioned “Russia, China, North Korea, Iran.”
Amidst this hyper militarism, Canada’s parliamentary left has been largely silent. One wonders what threshold of military spending increases would prompt the NDP to denounce Carney’s militarism?
In an article criticizing the NDP’s position on the budget Darrel Rankin wrote:
“For decades the NDP has campaigned on a platform to spend more money on the military than either of the two big business parties who usually dominate parliament, complaining about the ‘underfunding’ of Canada’s armed forces.
“Indeed, on June 25 the NDP stated that PM Carney’s pledge to nearly triple military spending was merely ‘extraordinary and unexpected’. From the statement, it is clear that the NDP wants to increase military spending…
“The Liberal budget locks Canada more firmly into the U.S.-led NATO military alliance which is aligned against the grouping of countries led by China and Russia.
“The arms race is propelling us towards another world war. There can and will be no security or peace derived from military strength. And might does not ‘make right.’
“Trade unions and all workers’ organizations must firmly reject the burdens, death and destruction of war and the arms race.
“Canada needs a foreign policy of peace and true collective security with all countries under threat of imperialism.”
Well said.
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