House of Commons Standing Committee on National Defence
feat. David Perry
June 17, 2024

Mr. Chair, Members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear today and speak to Canada’s new defence policy, Our North, Strong and Free.

In my opening remarks I’ll speak about the policy itself, considerations for its implementation and how I think it is being viewed by Canada’s allies in the context of the Washington, D.C.. NATO Summit celebrating the alliance’s 75th anniversary three weeks from now.

Our North, Strong and Free is a bit of a paradox. On one hand, building on previous defence policies dating back to 2005 it does a good job of capturing the fraught international security environment we live in and how Canada needs to respond to deal with our current reality. It also pledges to invest in many needed capabilities and makes a generationally large commitment of funding to the Canadian military. By my math, the financial commitment that has been made since 2017 is roughly a quarter of a trillion dollars on a cash basis, over about quarter century.

On the other hand, though, Our North, Strong and Free falls well short of where we should be in terms of committing resources to defence and changing the behaviour needed to use resources effectively. It also highlights a widening disconnect between Canada’s approach to defence and that of our allies and demonstrates no intention on Canada’s part of living up the key commitment we made to our NATO allies regarding defence investment. Given that the policy took two years to produce, it is a serious shortcoming that it only announces a review of defence procurement, instead of revealing how we will actually change defence procurement. Similarly, the policy offers little indication of how recruiting and enrolling new Canadian troops will be addressed and outlines an absurdly long 8-year window to return to CAF to its current authorized strength – one, I’d note, which will be insufficient to operate the promised new equipment such as Airborne Early Warning and Control aircraft.

The policy also bizarrely notes the need for new capabilities like submarines and integrated air and missile defence, which it pledges to explore, but provides no money to actually acquire. As a result, if everything in Our North, Strong and Free unfolded exactly as intended the day it was published, Canada’s defence spending would have reached just 1.76% of GDP by 2029. As everyone here knows, Canada committed to spend at least 2% of GDP on defence, but this policy clearly conveys that we have no intention of doing so.

With respect to implementation, in my observation, Our North, Strong and Free appears to have been written with much less focus on its implementation than the previous defence policy, Strong, Secure, Engaged, which came with many implementation enhancing transparency measures that I see no sign of today. And I would offer that implementation of Strong, Secure, Engaged has been highly uneven. Despite successes like the many RCAF projects, I would remind the committee that the very first initiative in SSE was to “Reduce significantly the time to enroll in the Canadian Armed Forces by reforming all aspects of military recruiting.” Had that initiative been meaningfully implemented I do not believe the committee would have recently heard that despite receiving over 70,000 applications the CAF only enrolled 4,000 members. Fixing this unacceptable situation in many fewer than 8 years must be the top defence priority and unless it is addressed swiftly, the implementation of the rest of Our North, Strong and Free will suffer.

Finally, let me comment on how Our North, Strong and Free is likely viewed by our allies in the context of the forthcoming NATO Summit in Washington. I acknowledge that Canada has, and is, making important operational contributions to NATO, including in our north, across the Atlantic Ocean and in Latvia. But this alone is very clearly insufficient, and we are increasingly out of line with our allies and our own commitments. Canada heads into the Washington Summit as the only ally not meeting either NATO investment pledge, since we spend neither 2% of GDP on defence nor do 20% of our defence expenditures go towards equipment and related R&D. Our North, Strong and Free indicates that we will meet the equipment target next year, but Strong, Secure, Engaged indicated we would meet that investment target too, and we haven’t yet.

Further, as I mentioned reaching 1.76% of GDP would require both every dollar earmarked for ONSAF to be spent as intended, and the economic projection the policy was based on to hold. As I mentioned above, I see serious shortcomings in policy’s implementation. As well, just since ONSAF was published, the OECD’s economic projections used in that calculation have already been revised upwards for the next two years, and I’ll note that the calculations underpinning ONSAF assume that by 2029 the economy is hundreds of billions of dollars smaller than predicted in the 2024 federal budget.

As a result, as of today, we are already falling short of the spending as a share of GDP outlined in the policy so Canada will fall short of spending 1.76% of GDP by 2029 unless more money is committed to defence and the conditions are created to actually spend that money. So not only is Canada heading into the Washington Summit with no intention of, or plan to, spend 2% of GDP on defence as we told our allies we would, we are also already falling short of the spending mark we said we would reach just two months ago.

Thank you.