Mark Carney’s extreme militarization continues apace. But his unprecedented increase in spending on weapons of war hasn’t satiated the militarists in the right-wing media and business communities. They want to push the Liberals for more despite Canadian military spending far surpassing an analogous trade ally.
In Thursday’s budget the government announced $11.2 billion in new funds for the Department of National Defence over five years, which equals their headline investment for (purportedly) eliminating homelessness over the decade. After what it calls “the biggest increase in defence spending since the Second World War” last year, the budget explains “Canada has already reached NATO’s target of spending 2% of GDP on defence, with a funded plan to meet its commitment of spending 4% by 2030. This commitment puts Canada on a clear path toward the new NATO Defence Investment Pledge of spending 5% of GDP on defence and security by 2035.”
The budget includes a slew of large militarist pledges. Carney put up $2.3 billion over five years for a Defence Drone Initiative to “accelerate the discovery, acquisition, and deployment of uncrewed and counter-uncrewed capabilities.” It also added $7.6 billion over five years to extend Operation REASSURANCE, which is dominated by Canada’s ever larger and belligerent military mission in Latvia. There’s also new funding for Canada to join the European Union’s Ukraine Support Loan program to purchase military equipment. They also budgeted an extra $6 billion over 10 years to bolster the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, which currently has annual budget of $1 billion.
In response, peace researcher and activist Tamara Lorincz posted a number of extracts from the budget noting, “Unlike the title of the federal budget ‘Masters of our Destiny’, Canada does NOT control our destiny or our purse strings, because NATO, the US-led military alliance, dictates how much of our budget goes to weapons and war readiness. Notice how the Carney government perpetuates the lie that the war in Ukraine is ‘unprovoked’ to justify spending more Canadian tax dollars for militarism. *There is NOT one mention of ‘peace’, ‘care economy or ‘green economy’.”
Conversely, the Globe and Mail complained there wasn’t enough new military spending. A front-page Globe and Mailarticle quoted Canadian Global Affairs Institute president David Perry that “defence players will be disappointed to see progress toward Canada’s NATO target ‘flatline’ after 2027-28” while the editorial board published “A budget that ducks on debt and defence”. In it, Globe editors noted, “the budget forecasts that defence spending will hit 2.6 per cent of GDP in the next fiscal year. And there it will stay, for the next three years. (In fairness, the dollar cost will rise on a cash, and accrual, basis.) One of two things are true: Either the Carney government is planning a massive burst in defence spending from 2032 onward, or it has no intention of keeping the pledge to NATO.”
Canada should never have agreed to the odious NATO target of 2% of GDP, let alone the outrageous Donald Trump-inspired target of 5% (3.5% on core military spending and 1.5% more on defence infrastructure).
Instead of comparing Canada to other members of the belligerent military alliance — some of whom spend less — Ottawa should look to its third largest trade partner with similar geographic and economic dependencies. Mexico spends barely a quarter of what Canada is spending on its military. In 2026 Mexico budgeted 170 billion pesos ($13 billion Canadian) for its military while Canada allocated $75 billion in the latest budget. But Canada’s GDP is only 1.25 greater than Mexico’s. Each Canadian spends 15 times more than each Mexican on the military — $1,500 vs. $100!
Yet Mexico faces a far greater threat from the only country that would plausibly invade either of the two nations. In the mid 1800s the US took half of Mexico — California, Texas, Arizona, etc. — and that country has dispatched its troops into Mexico on multiple occasions since. Recently, top US politicians have talked about invading Mexico.
Additionally, the notion that Canada must increase military spending to ensure access to the US market is belied by Mexico’s example. That country is more dependent on trade with the US, shipping a higher proportion of its exports and GDP to the US. Despite greater economic dependence, Mexico’s foreign/military policy is far less pro-US or imperialistic than Canada’s.
The Canada/Mexico military spending dichotomy ought to be widely discussed. It may be the single most powerful statistic to undermine the extreme militarism sweeping Canadian political and economic life.
While the Globe and Mail and other militarists demand ever more spending on war, peace-minded Canadians should push for a comparison with our CUSMA partner.
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