About $15-billion, a year: that is the amount that the Parliamentary Budget Officer estimates the federal government would have to invest to reach NATO’s defence spending requirement of 2 per cent of GDP.
It is a big number and a major challenge, one made harder in the context of a large federal budget deficit, an affordability crisis, and demands on Ottawa from premiers, interest groups and other Canadians to spend even larger sums in many other areas – not to mention those who want tax cuts. Compounding the problem is that Ottawa has spent 10 years trying to justify why it has not met this goal, rather than developing and executing a plan to get there.
