LILLEY: Trudeau misses target as his words in NATO speech ring hollow

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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau opened his remarks at the NATO summit in Montreal by condemning the rioting that took place Friday. He then proceeded to tell the audience a bunch of utter nonsense about how important NATO is to his government and how much they are spending on defence.

Still sporting his Taylor Swift friendship bracelet to meet leaders from our military allies, Trudeau tried but failed to sound like a leader with moral clarity and conviction.

“What we saw in the violence and the riots on Friday night are absolutely unacceptable,” Trudeau said with a concerned tone in his voice.

“As a democracy, as a country that will always defend the freedom of speech, it’s important for people to be able to go out and protest and express their anger their disagreements in free and comfortable ways, but there is never any room for antisemitism, for hatred, for discrimination, violence.”

The reason that rings hollow is because there has been plenty of room for antisemitism, displayed weekly on the streets of Canada’s major cities. Week after week, mobs have openly shown support for terrorist groups like Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and most recently Hezbollah, for one basic reason – they are fighting with Israel.

“We don’t want no two states, take us back to ‘48,” they proclaim.

That’s why Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s response to Trudeau on social media the other day rang so true. Poilievre went on a rant Saturday in response to Trudeau’s initial statement about the riots on social media.

“You act surprised. We are reaping what you sowed,” Poilievre wrote.

“This is what happens when a Prime Minister spends nine years pushing toxic woke identity politics, dividing and subdividing people by race, gender, vaccine status, religion, region, age, wealth, etc.”

Poilievre went on to give examples of Trudeau creating problems in Canada and promising that he will stop the division and heal the country, if elected. You get the sense that Poilievre means what he says, while Trudeau is merely an actor playing a part and repeating the lines provided to him.

It was the same during his speech on Monday when he tried to act like the military is important to him, that he’s the saviour of the Canadian military by increasing spending after Stephen Harper’s Conservatives cut it.

“Canada believes deeply in NATO,” Trudeau said.

That can hardly be considered a true statement, given that we haven’t met our NATO spending targets in years. It was just last year that the Washington Post reported on Pentagon documents, where it was revealed that Trudeau had told other world leaders behind closed doors that his government had no intention of meeting that spending target.

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In his speech on Monday, Trudeau even went out of his way, after praising NATO, to say that he doesn’t believe that the spending target of 2% of GDP is the right way to measure things, even though it has always been the target. He even took time at an international conference to say that the previous Harper government cut military spending, while the Trudeau Liberals have been increasing spending.

There’s some truth to that, spending is up, but Trudeau let spending decline in the first few years he was in power. According to the public accounts, the official record of government spending, Canada spent less on defence in fiscal year 2016-17 than we had in 2014-15, the last full year of the Harper government.

Beyond that, in 2014-15, defence spending accounted for 7.3% of all government program spending, dropping to 6.6% in 2016-17 and just 6.3% of program spending in 2023.

Trudeau told the crowd that Canada is well on its way to meeting the 2% of GDP NATO target – by 2032-33. The plan has been called into question by the Parliamentary Budget Officer, claiming the government used some dodgy math to get there.

The entire speech that Trudeau delivered was about as serious as the friendship bracelet he was sporting. NATO needs Canada to provide real leadership, we won’t get that from Justin Trudeau.