LILLEY: No one believes Trudeau's sudden promise on NATO
Under immense pressure, Trudeau threw together some ideas, claimed he had a plan and said we'd meet our NATO target. No on is buying it.
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Justin Trudeau wants you to know that it’s Stephen Harper’s fault Canada isn’t meeting it’s NATO commitment to spend 2% of GDP on defence.
Sure, Trudeau has been prime minister for almost nine years and in that time government spending has grown from $289 billion to $535 billion over that time – an 85% increase.
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During his closing news conference at the NATO summit in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, Trudeau repeatedly blamed the former Harper government for Canada’s current underspending.
Meanwhile, allies took their quiet gripes and made them loud complaints about Canada being a laggard and shamefully riding on America’s coattails when it comes to defence. There were questions raised in the hallways and over lunch at the summit about why Canada should get preferential treatment in trade or other matters if we refuse to live up to our NATO defence commitments.
“Canada is a member of the G-7 group of leading democracies, but why? Prime Minister Justin Trudeau isn’t leading anything, and he won’t even commit his country to meet its minimum obligation as a member of NATO,” The Wall Street Journal editorial page stated.
“When we wrote last year about Canada’s status as a defense scofflaw, it created a stir in Ottawa. But the Trudeau government remains as much a deadbeat as ever.”
America’s most widely read newspaper, a shaper of opinions in the corridors of power, said, “The Trudeau government free rides on everyone else’s defense dollars, even as threats in the Arctic grow.”
While Trudeau tried to claim there was no political pressure on him or his government to increase spending this week, that was clearly not the case. Meetings with American political leaders and our European allies came with strong rebukes over Canada failing to meet their targets.
The Trudeau government released an updated defence policy in April and while it included plans to increase defence spending, the plan only said we would get to 1.74% by 2030. Then, in a hastily put together announcement, the government was claiming we will reach 2% by 2032 and, by the way, we will be buying a dozen under ice submarines.
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The announcement seemed like the pleading of a jilted lover promising their partner that they will change this time.
The submarine announcement came with no details and no money attached to it. The move to 2% came with no explanation of how our defence spending will meet the target or where the money will come from.
No one is buying Trudeau’s act, other than Trudeau and those around him.
Still, he took credit and patted himself on the back for getting Canada to reach its goal eight years from now even though the pledge was to hit the spending target this year.
“We have shown that a responsible government steps up in a changing world and does the necessary work not just to increase defence spending, but to do it in the right way,” Trudeau said.
To Trudeau, the right way appears to be haphazardly, under pressure, and with no details.
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As a country we definitely have the ability to spend more on defence, just look at how much government spending has grown under Trudeau. His priorities have been elsewhere though, he wants to spend on everything but defence.
In a bizarre turn, towards the end of the news conference, Trudeau even questioned the purpose of the 2% target.
“We’ve always questioned the 2% as the be-all and end-all of evaluating contributions to NATO,” he said.
He hasn’t so much questioned the target as ignored it and now, faced with a wall of political pressure from every ally that matters, he’s thrown some ideas together and written a new defence strategy on the back of a napkin.
Trudeau has shown that he’s big on making announcements and poor on delivering.
The good news for Canadians, and our allies, is that he won’t be in office much longer, so his failure to deliver won’t matter. Let’s hope the next guy, Pierre Poilievre, will do the right thing.
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