Amidst pressure Avi Lewis has criticized Carney’s $100 billion submarine purchase. But there’s still a need to directly challenge the militarist ethos in the NDP.
On Tuesday evening Lewis finally criticized Mark Carney’s plan to buy attack submarines. On former Global and CTV reporter Rachel Gilmore’s program, the NDP leader said there’s “no rationale for why we need 12 rather than the four” submarines we currently have.
I haven’t listened to the full hour-long interview, but the leader of the Green Party of Quebec Alex Tyrell sent me a transcript of the parts on militarism. It represents a significant step forward, particularly after Lewis’ disastrous response to my question about Carney’s submarines five days ago.
After referencing the massive size of the submarine procurement, Gilmore asked Lewis for “your take on this submarine purchase and also, more broadly, this agenda of so much defence spending. I think that there’s this sort of twin concern where a lot of people are scared. I mean, the world is scary right now. But is this arms race, effectively, that’s happening—does that help, or is that more dangerous? Do you support these military purchases?”
Lewis responded:
“No, no, no, no. I mean, I think overall the direction is really troubling. And it highlights the very painful contradictions when the government is saying we can’t afford pharmacare, we have to privatize our healthcare, we can’t afford any climate policy, we’re not going to have any policies that directly intervene in the market to address the cost of food, the cost of housing, the cost of everyday life—but we have hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars for weapons and war.
“And I think, look, we’re talking about arbitrary commitments of not percentages of our budget—percentages of our entire economy—dictated by NATO. And I think I’m the only federal politician that has actually said that it’s my view that we shouldn’t be spending 2% of our economy on the military, let alone five, which Carney has committed to.
“Carney has a national defence industrial strategy that foresees half a trillion dollars of investment in the next decade on making Canada a major arms exporter, and I’m completely against that. I don’t think we should be increasing arms exports by 50%. Who are we going to be selling all these weapons to? Germany and France and traditional Western allies? Like, if you just want to take the conventional right worldview, they’re not buying our weapons. They’re ramping up their own militaries.
“Who is it going to be that Canada’s going to be selling weapons to? A lot of our current customers: Saudi Arabia, UAE, maybe Israel. These are not countries that Canadians want us to be arming. These are countries that are implicated in genocides. So I think the whole thing needs to be questioned.
“And I think that, you know, the submarines are just one of, like, a whole bunch of massive increases in spending that are totally—you know, there’s no plan from the government. There’s no rationale for why we need 12 rather than the four [submarines] that we have. There’s no rationale for why they need so many attack capabilities. And it’s $100 billion, which is just committed like that.
“According to the PBO, the Parliamentary Budget Office, it’s about $11 billion, $12 billion a year for full pharmacare for everyone. So we are talking about the better part of a decade of free medicine for every person in this country as part of our single-payer healthcare system instead of these 12 subs.
“Let’s have a debate about which we need more in our daily lives, which makes us more secure as a society: housing, food, healthcare, care for elders, for kids. These are the national projects of national interest that we need to be investing in. And the money is there, clearly, and instead the Carney government is committing it to weapons and war. And I just think it’s way out of—it’s just way out of whack with what Canadians actually really need in their daily lives.”
At another point in the interview Lewis decries the long-term danger of addicting the economy to war production. He also raises an important point about how the Trump threat is being used to justify huge military spending. “What is the major threat to Canada’s security today? It is the US. I don’t think there’s a way to prevent US military incursion in Canada. So don’t use our fear of the US to just create a whole new military industrial complex … I’m for rebooting the whole conversation.”
A clip of those words caused a stir among rightists and some left militarists. While Lewis’ wording was awkward — familial, cultural, business, etc. outreach is the main way to prevent a US invasion while a defensive, guerilla, type armed forces could contribute to dissuading aggression — it is an important point for a liberal/left audience.
Among the starkest contradictions in Canadian politics today is how Donald Trump is openly pushing Ottawa to increase military spending, yet many liberal/leftists support increased military spending to purportedly defend against Trump. There are liberal/leftists who support increased military spending to defend against Trump but ignore the hundreds of bilateral military accords with the US or how Canada’s military is structured to assist the US war machine.
A leading left ideologue of the ‘increase military spending as a response to Trump but refuse to discuss the structure of Canada’s armed forces’ perspective is former NDP MP Charlie Angus. A past member of the NATO Parliamentary Association who voted twice in support of NATO’s 2011 destruction of Libya, Angus publicly criticized Lewis yesterday over opposition to the new Canadian-led NATO war bank. On Bluesky Angus posted, “Canada is in a deadly serious moment unlike anything we have seen in a century. We need political leaders to offer a vision of how respond to the threat while offering ways that our nation can move forward. Claiming that the PM’s priority is supporting Trump’s war machine is a total falsehood.”
Below that statement Angus showed an image of an email Lewis had just sent out criticizing the NATO war bank. The part Angus quoted stated: “Instead, Mark Carney wants to invest massive piles of public money into America’s war machine. The people don’t want this, Charlie — please sign and share the petition below to make sure this government knows Canadians don’t want their dollars going toward Trump’s military industrial complex. ndp.ca/stop-the-war-bank.”
Angus calling it a “total falsehood” that the PM is acquiescing to Trump on militarism is belied by Carney’s own words three weeks ago. At the NATO summit the prime minister said Trump had “won the argument” on increasing military spending and when Carney announced a big increase in military spending fourteen months ago the Wall Street Journal aptly reported, “Canada plans to boost military spending this year, aiming to catch up to its NATO commitments and try to placate President Trump amid sensitive trade talks.”
Angus represents a militarist, imperialist, ethos of NDP politics that needs to be directly challenged. As far I know, Angus has never apologized for voting to bomb Libya.
After receiving thousands of emails about the submarines and being embarrassed in a social media clip on the subject, Lewis finally made a statement critical of the submarines. Additionally, his recent email on the NATO war bank dropped the “Canada needs a modern and well-equipped military” formulation he included whenever criticizing Canadian military policy previously.
These represent steps forward. Don’t let the Anguses take the NDP a step back.
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