Ottawa still spends only a pathetic 1.38% of GDP on defense.
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%).
