NATO’s 5% benchmark would cost Canada $150B a year, Carney says

Signing on to NATO’s new defence spending target could cost the federal treasury up to $150 billion a year, Prime Minister Mark Carney said Tuesday in advance of the Western military alliance’s annual summit.

The prime minister made the comments in an interview with CNN International.

It is a lot of money, Carney said.

On Wednesday, NATO members will debate increasing the benchmark for defence spending from the current two per cent of gross domestic product to a combined five per cent (3.5 per cent for direct military funding and 1.5 per cent for defence infrastructure).

Carney moved swiftly to break down the numbers. His government recently committed an additional $9.3 billion to this year’s Department of National Defence budget, bringing the annual military appropriation to roughly $62 billion.

The Liberal government would have to find an additional $45 billion to $50 billion for the Defence Department to meet the 3.5 per cent of GDP direct military spending goal.

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Carney told CNN that an additional $50 billion for defence infrastructure would be counted under measures the federal government is already taking — or is about to do.

A little less than a third of that overall number is spending on things that quite frankly we’re already doing to build the resilience of our economy, the prime minister said. So, it would be domestic resilience, it would be defending the areas that are important to defend, but also supporting critical minerals development.

Carney did not speak with the Canadian media travelling with him to the NATO summit. Instead, the Prime Minister’s Office made Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand available before the CNN interview aired.

She was questioned about the five per cent plan and suggested Canada was prepared to go along with it.

As a founding member of NATO, we have always been consistent with our allies and with supporting what is on the table at NATO, Anand said. “The question really is the timeline. What is the timeline that we would utilize to get to a heightened percentage?“

Carney told CNN that allies were looking at a 10-year horizon.

NATO dinner with Dutch royals

The NATO leaders had agreed to the tightly focused agenda in order to minimize the potential of facing the wrath of U.S. President Donald Trump. The leaders are having dinner with the Dutch royal family on Tuesday and before a meeting of the North Atlantic Council on Wednesday.

Some allies, notably Spain and Slovakia, have openly balked at the new target.

Even Belgium’s conservative prime minister, Bart De Wever, was skeptical when asked about it on Monday.

I’m not comfortable at all with the five per cent figure. It’s huge, De Wever told Canadian journalists following a Second World War commemoration ceremony in Antwerp.

The breakdown in 3.5 and 1.5 helps a bit … but 3.5 means that we almost have to triple what we’re spending on defence. We’ve jumped to two per cent, we’re more or less in the same situation as Canada.

Veteran Canadian diplomat Sen. Peter Boehm said avoiding the new target would be hard in the current geopolitical climate.

There may not be much of a choice, Boehm told CBC News in a recent interview.

A former U.S. ambassador to NATO, Kurt Volker, said no one should underestimate Washington’s single-minded focus on the target — and the words Trump wants to hear.

The emphasis that the U.S. is looking for is everybody to say, ‘Yeah, we mean it,’ said Volker in a briefing by the Center for European Policy Analysis. We have a plan. Five per cent is real. We’re going to get there. We have a real threat in Europe. We have to do more.

Reaching the combined five per cent goal would require Canada to spend perhaps as much as $50 billion more annually on the military and defence infrastructure.

I’m fairly confident that Canada and the whole of the alliance can do this, Rutte told CBC’s Power & Politics last week during the G7 Summit in Kananaskis, Alta.

He said the current pledge, agreed to more than a decade ago, is no longer enough in light of the growing conflicts in the world.

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With the two per cent, we simply cannot go and defend ourselves, Rutte told host David Cochrane. He said it may be enough in 2025, but not in three to five years.

We have ramp up the defence spending.

Boehm says he believes the five per cent goal is achievable for Canada depending on the timeline and the effectiveness of procurement.

The country’s moribund defence procurement has been the country’s Achilles’ heel since almost forever and Boehm said it will require creativity to achieve those percentage goals.

In a change from past years, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was invited only to attend the leaders’ dinner, not the meeting of allies. He arrived late Tuesday.

Rutte insisted that despite the downgrade, Ukraine would remain a vital topic.

You will see important language about Ukraine, including connecting the defence spending up to 2035 to Ukraine, and the need for Ukraine to stay in the fight, he said.

This article is republished from RCI.