Yesterday, at Fort York in Toronto, prime minister Mark Carney announced that Canada would meet its NATO commitment of two percent of GDP by the end of next fiscal year instead of by 2030, in part through use of greater pay, more funds for sustainment, support for the defence industry, and some good ol’ creative accounting. Carney prefaced this by making a very real point about the changing nature of America’s place in the world: “The United States is beginning to monetize its hegemony, charging for access to its markets and reducing its relative contribution to our collective security.”
One of the big question marks has to do with the status of the Coast Guard, and how it gets folded into the calculation around defence spending—there were mixed messages on whether it stays under Department of Fisheries and Oceans, of if it will be moved into Department of National Defence (though there is also an argument for it to go to Public Safety), and the question of whether or not to arm those ships is a fraught one because of the training requirements for armaments. It sounds like there will be things like CSE’s cyber-capability being counted as part of this calculation as well, which again, seems to be more fudging numbers that we typically accused other nations of doing while we were more “pure” in terms of what we counted toward our spending commitments, and that seems to be going away.
I would add that while we get a bunch of competing narratives around the target, whether it’s the Conservatives’ memory-holing the fact that they cut defence spending to below one percent of GDP (in order to achieve a false balance on the books in time for the 2015 election), or the notion that we are nothing more than freeloaders in NATO, we should keep reminding people that even with lower per-capita defence spending, we have been punching above our weight taking on the tough missions in NATO (Kandahar, leading a multi-country brigade in Latvia) where as other allies who have met their two percent targets don’t contribute (looking at you, Greece). A poor metric of spending is not a good indicator of contribution, but it has created a whole false narrative that we should be correcting, but that’s too much work for the pundit class, who are more interested in hand-wringing and calling Justin Trudeau names than they are in looking at our actual contributions. (Here’s a timeline of the spending target melodrama).
Ukraine Dispatch
Russia made another massive overnight attack against Ukraine, launching 479 drones and twenty missiles of various types, targeting the western and central parts of the county. Another prisoner swap did go ahead yesterday.
https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1932086386145841186
Good reads:
- Mark Carney has invited Mohammed bin Salman (aka “Bonesaws”) to the G7 Summit, because why do we care about murdered journalists?
- Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum says she will attend the G7 summit.
- The Privacy Commissioner says that the RCMP lost a thumb drive containing information about victims, which later showed up for sale by criminals.
- Canada Post has rejected the union’s call for binding arbitration, and the minister doesn’t seem interested in forcing a vote like Canada Post wants.
- Civil society transparency organisations sent an open letter to the president, calling for wholesale reform of the Access to Information regime.
- Pierre Poilievre says that major projects like pipelines don’t need consensus, and should be built regardless. (Do you want litigation? Because that’s how you get it).
- David Eby says he’s not blocking any pipelines, and says there is simply no project proposal, no proponent, and no money toward any project.
- Michael Geist notes the problems with the privacy provisions oddly inserted into the tax cut bill.
- Andrew MacDougall puts the Trump/Musk fight in the context of the attention economy that both are exploiting.
- Althia Raj takes note of the problems in Carney’s “One Canada Economy” bill and the dangerous grab for power therein.
Odds and ends:
But clearly the solution, as Conservative MPs keep saying in QP, is to remove more environmental protections and regulations.
— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-06-09T13:18:26.560Z
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