Former Lieutenant General and member of NATO’s Defence Staff of Canada Michel Maisonneuve said Canada could “absolutely meet” the alliance’s 2% target if the federal government makes it a priority.
However, most NATO members are long past discussing 2% as the ideal target but rather as a minimum contribution, with 3% being presented as the new target.
NATO membership requires countries to contribute 2% of their GDP to be allocated for military spending.
In an interview with True North, Maisonneuve said the new target is an opportunity for Canada to fix the many pre-existing problems in the Canadian Armed Forces while honouring its commitment to the organization.
“Definitely we can meet 2% and we should be able to meet that by tomorrow,” Maisonneuve told True North. “There’s no question why we should not be able to accelerate that and there is talk about that right now within national defence and the government.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had claimed that Canada could hit the 2% target by 2032 last summer in Washington D.C., amid a whirlwind of scrutiny from NATO members.
“We will continue to explore opportunities that will further increase defence spending and advance Canada’s strategic interests,” said Trudeau at the time without providing details on how his government would accomplish the goal.
Seven months later, no further details have emerged beyond what Maisonneuve referred to as basic “virtue signalling.”
“There will be hard and courageous decisions to be made. Right now, we’re funding every special interest group out there and giving them lots and lots of money,” he said, “getting ourselves into greater and greater deficits and debt.”
According to Maisonneuve, Canada’s debt is roughly 52$ billion annually, an amount nearly double what is spent on the CAF.
While it’s time “to get a grip on that,” some things that could be done in the immediate short term to help reach the 2% threshold would be to fix the CAF’s “military housing and facilities” which have been “falling apart” for some time.
“Increasingly, members will release (from the Canadian Forces) rather than relocate to an area they cannot afford or taking a loss on an existing home,” reads a leaked military briefing from 2023.
“Throw a whole bunch of money at that. Get Canadians to build on that and get them to work. Get them to build more housing on bases to house good young Canadians who want to serve our country but are faced with the same affordability or worse affordability crisis than civilians,” said Maisonneuve.
“You can improve the hangers for the aircraft. You can improve the classrooms,” said Maisonneuve, who recently authored the book In Defence of Canada: Reflections of a Patriot.
“But the thing is, this stuff isn’t sexy and the government loves to have sexy things out there. They love to say ‘we’re buying a new airplane, we’re buying a new ship,” he added.
While Maisonneuve recognizes the importance of those purchases, he believes that the government should prioritize getting projects expedited that have been shelved over the past 10 to 15 years.
The CAF is currently missing 15 to 16 thousand military personnel in what Maisonneuve referred to as the “middle strata, the ones who actually do the project management” such as equipment procurement.
“We’ve got a NORAD modernization project that could be advanced very quickly, we could put a couple of billion into that which would increase our ability to get things done.”
Maisonneuve also suggested the CAF implement financial incentives for fitness to get its obesity problem under control, citing a recent report that found 72% of personnel are either overweight or obese.
“How about retention bonuses to keep people in because we’re losing them left, right and centre,” he said. “Increased pay, you could almost double the pay of young men and women who serve. They pay EI premiums but are not allowed to go on unemployment insurance.”
A staggering number of CAF soldiers have had to resort to food banks in recent years due to lack of military support.
The Business Council of Canada released a report last fall that provided recommendations on how best to do things like producing ammunition and spare parts for CAF equipment.
Maisonneuve said he can sympathize with U.S. President Donald Trump’s frustrations regarding other nations lagging behind on their financial commitments with “Canada being the worst” among them.
Trump recently called for NATO nations to up their spending targets to 5%.
“In NATO, the U.S. has always spent 3.4% on national defence its military and has been funding NATO for years and years,” said Maisonneuve. “So Trump is saying, ‘now it’s time for you boys and girls to pay up and take your responsibilities and stop free riding on the backs of Americans.”
Regardless of Trump’s bombastic claim that every country should up their NATO contributions to 5%, which Maisonneuve is certain Canada will never reach, he does believe that 3% is feasible for most other countries.
“We could easily do 2% and we should look at 3% as the eventual target,” he said. “That would go a long way in saying, ‘okay we’re moving forward on this.’”