Prime Minister Mark Carney signalled he hopes Canada will be able to sign on to a major European defence rearmament plan by July 1, a step toward reducing the country’s dependency on the United States for weapons and munitions.
He made the remarks on CBC’s Power & Politics following the speech from the throne, which committed his government to joining ReArm Europe.
The speech did not set you a timeline, but Carney said he wants to move aggressively
“Seventy-five cents of every dollar of capital spending for defence goes to the United States. That’s not smart,” Carney told host David Cochrane.
Canada has been engaged in talks with the European Union since Carney took office — before the spring federal election — about joining the plan which foresees the nations on the continent spending $1.25 trillion on defence over the next five years.
“We’re making great progress on that, and by Canada Day we’d like to see something concrete there,” Carney said.
The comments and the throne speech pledge come one day after NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte told an alliance parliamentary conference in Dayton, Ohio, that he expects the 32-member Western military alliance will approve a new defence spending threshold of five per cent of the gross domestic product at the upcoming leaders’ summit.
“We are finalizing a plan to dramatically increase defence spending across the alliance,” said Rutte, which suggested the NATO target for direct spending on the military could be set at 3.5 per cent of GDP with an additional 1.5 per cent GDP tacked on for defence-related items.
U.S. President Donald Trump has been advocating for the five per cent of GDP spending figure for months. In his Power & Politics interview, Carney said Canada will spend what makes sense and wouldn’t commit to a specific figure.
“I’m not a fan of picking an arbitrary number and then trying to figure out how to spend up to it,” the prime minister said. “At the NATO summit, NATO partners are going to be asked to spend more, to do more, for mutual protection. We’re going to participate in that.”
