It wasn’t so long ago that Canada perennially cashed in on its so-called “peace dividend.” The logic went like this: while our tanks might rust, the salaries of our Armed Forces members stagnate, and our ammunition stockpiles dwindle, the government could reallocate military spending toward areas of more immediate concern — entitlement programs, infrastructure and other “flavours of the day.”
Point to whichever geopolitical disaster from recent history you like, one thing is painfully clear: the dividend has been spent. But the problem isn’t just that our leaders have been slow to acknowledge this new reality — it’s that they’ve been even slower to act on its implications. Because the inverse logic now applies: in a more volatile world, there is a crisis fee to pay. A big one.
