Canada Is a Military Free-Rider in NATO

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was in Lithuania this week for the annual NATO summit, but it’s too bad there wasn’t a junior table where he could sit. That’s where his country belongs based on Ottawa’s feeble commitment to alliance defense.

In 2014 all NATO members agreed to spend 2% of GDP on defense by 2024. Eleven out of 31 countries now make it, but Canada still isn’t close at 1.38%. That’s up from 1.01% in the nine years since 2014, but it still falls between those exemplars of muscular self-defense Italy (1.46%) and Slovenia (1.35%).

Canada ranks sixth from NATO’s bottom in spending on defense as a share of GDP, and its spending on military equipment—i.e., weapons—is seventh lowest. Canada is a member of the G-7 democracies but spends less on defense than the other six.

Canada was an important contributor to the Allied effort in World War II and is a founding member of NATO. But somewhere along the way it began to think of its membership as largely a place to rub shoulders with global powers and a platform for making moral pronouncements. Last week Ottawa put in its two cents against cluster munitions. But asking its citizens to meet their actual obligations to the cause of freedom is apparently too much to ask.

One explanation may be the Trudeau government’s view that its military is more of a social project than fighting force. In his December 2021 mandate letter to the new minister of defense, Mr. Trudeau wrote: “Your immediate priority is to take concrete steps to build an inclusive and diverse Defence Team, characterized by a healthy workplace free from harassment, discrimination, sexual misconduct and violence.” See how that cultural manifesto works on the Ukrainian front lines.

Canada has also long been a free-rider off the U.S. military, which it knows stands guard over North America. Mr. Trudeau’s Liberal Party figures it can thus afford to shirk on defense and shovel money into public unions and social-welfare programs. Canada’s military is so degraded that even its role in peace-keeping missions has waned. Nowadays Ottawa can be counted on to “fight” for human rights, which is to say that it talks a lot about them.

But if sovereignty and national pride mean anything, Canada can’t afford to float above the fray on defense. One clear and present danger for a country with water on three sides and a total of four aging submarines is the Russian navy’s increasing activity in the Arctic.

NATO needs members that keep their commitments, and the nations of the G-7 have an obligation to lead the way. If Canada doesn’t want to play that role, then the G-7 should consider a replacement. Poland, which now spends 3.9% of GDP on defense, would be a candidate.