Author: Blazingcatfur

Prime Minister Mark Carney has pledged to meet Canada’s NATO obligation to invest two per cent of GDP in defence by the end of the year. But at a time of growing political instability, it’s important to remember that soldiers are not the only ones protecting Canada.

Working in the shadows, Canada has a civilian army of more than 6,400 intelligence practitioners in the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and the Canadian Security Establishment (CSE) — both with headquarters in Ottawa, where most of their staff are — working around the clock to keep us safe. Unfortunately, according to a Public Safety Canada survey in 2021, 54 per cent of Canadians don’t know what they do. Also, despite the vital role they play in Canada’s defence, their budgets are not included in NATO’s calculation of Canada’s defence spending.

It is widely agreed that if Canadians don’t start focusing more on productivity and prosperity, we’re going to be in a heap of trouble strategically as well as economically. But headlines like “prepare for a decade of thrift and lower living standards” underline the familiar problem of trying to fight an enemy with outposts inside your own head. We’re so certain ever-bigger government makes us healthy, wealthy, and wise that when it makes us ill, poor, and baffled, we think yeah, we can’t afford to spend but we also can’t afford to cut. So the usual political incentives keep us spending, wildly.

You see this problem in the lax fiscal performance of governments of nearly every stripe nearly everywhere. But even more in the way their tongues praise fiscal prudence while their hands mock it.