Canada should consider hiking GST, other taxes to pay for defence-spending boost: analysts
A steep new military spending commitment for Canada – the biggest increase in more than 70 years – has handed Mark Carney’s government a fresh challenge: how to pay for it.
At the June, 2025, NATO leaders’ summit, the Prime Minister pledged that Canada will spend as much as $150-billion annually on defence within a decade: equivalent to 5 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP).
With the federal government announcing new plans to triple Canadian defence spending, the military itself is saying the organization is so overwhelmed and dysfunctional that they won’t be able to meet even their current duties for at least another seven years.
No sooner had Canada committed to immediately meeting NATO’s long-standing target of spending 2 per cent of GDP on defence – an increase of $9.3-billion annually – than the goalposts shifted. Dramatically.
At last week’s NATO meetings, a new benchmark emerged: 5 per cent of GDP. While 1.5 per cent of that could include spending on cybersecurity, infrastructure and defence-related technology, the overall target is a staggering $50-billion increase.
The Canadian Army is investigating members who allegedly shared what the country’s top soldier called “abhorrent” content within a private Facebook group.
According to a statement from Lt.-Gen. Mike Wright, the “Blue Hackle Mafia” group featured “racist, misogynistic, homophobic and antisemitic comments and images.”
In the message to armed forces members shared with CBC News, the army commander wrote that he is “disgusted by the content of some of the posts published on this group.”
They have no idea how many CAF members are involved. It could be two.
How many CAF members are in groups supporting so-called “gender affirming care” AKA child mutilation?
Election promises and massive defence spending increases promised by Prime Minister Mark Carney at a NATO summit last month will fuel huge annual federal budget deficits averaging more than $77-billion a year, a new report predicts.
A fiscal forecast released by the C.D. Howe Institute Thursday said the combined cost of Liberal Party election platform pledges, plus a June 25 commitment by Canada to boost military expenditures by as much as $90-billion each year, will drive Ottawa deeper into the red.
So now we have a number. After sliding along for years pretending we meant to hit NATO’s 2 percent of GDP defence target, or quietly admitting we didn’t, we suddenly promised to. Then the target was raised to 5 percent and the prime minister didn’t blink even though it will cost $150 billion a year, a lot of money even in Ottawa. Which mercifully and horribly brings us to the practical question: Where are we going to get it?
Of course, there are people who don’t want us to try. Some socialists would rather spend the money on social programs or not at all, and some libertarians would rather not spend it at all, meaning the latter do need to find it anyway but the former don’t. As for those who think saying we’ll spend it amounts to having spent it, it buys us precious little time today.
By anyone’s measure, $150 billion a year is an eye-watering amount of money to spend on anything — let alone defence.
While it pales in comparison to the inflation-adjusted appropriations of the Second World War, it is potentially, for this generation, the very definition of beating ploughshares into swords.
Last week, Prime Minister Mark Carney and our North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies agreed to a new defence investment pledge — investing 5 per cent of annual gross domestic product (GDP) by 2035. That figure includes 3.5 per cent on core military capabilities and 1.5 per cent on defence and security-related infrastructure, such as ports and emergency preparedness systems.
This is an historically significant commitment and is rationalized by NATO political leaders in the context of rising global security threats and a need to increase contribution from non-U. S. members.
Mere weeks after announcing that Canada would finally meet its decade-old commitment to spend the equivalent of two per cent of GDP on defence, Prime Minister Mark Carney and his NATO colleagues pulled another arbitrary number out of a hat and agreed to increase spending to five per cent by 2035.
Yet lazily focusing on the top-line spending number will only serve to distract us from the real goal: crafting a coherent strategy to ensure we have an Armed Forces capable of defending Canadian soil and assisting our allies abroad.
More transvestites is always the answer.
On Monday June 9, Prime Minister Mark Carney did the unthinkable. He promised to immediately boost defence spending to meet the NATO spending objective of 2 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) within the current 2025 – 2026 fiscal year.
The original defence budget tabled for this same timeframe was $40 billion or roughly 1.3 per cent of Canada’s GDP. With Carney’s new directive, spending on defence and security is to balloon to $62.7 billion prior to April 1 2026.
Prime Minister Mark Carney says Canada and its NATO allies have all agreed to hike their defence-spending target to five per cent of annual GDP by 2035.
Carney says Canada can no longer rely on its geography to protect it as new weapons and threats emerge on the wold stage.
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte put forward a plan that says allies will invest 3.5 per cent in core defence needs — such as jets and weapons — and 1.5 per cent in defence-adjacent areas, such as infrastructure and cybersecurity.
Prime Minister Mark Carney recently announced that Canada will finally meet NATO’s defence-spending target of two per cent of GDP. But, as the man wouldn’t know austerity if it hit him over the head, it will come at a significant cost to Canadian taxpayers.
The defence spending target has been a long-standing bone of contention between Canada and NATO. “Allies currently meeting the NATO guideline to spend a minimum of two per cent of their (GDP) on defence will aim to continue to do so,” the members agreed in a declaration following a meeting of the North Atlantic Council in 2014. Any allies below this level would “aim to move towards the two per cent guideline within a decade with a view to meeting their NATO capability targets and filling NATO’s capability shortfalls.”
The 5% of GDP spending target is just a sham, NATO countries have until 2035 to reach the “goal” giving loads of time for freeloaders like Canada to promise the sun, moon and the stars while contributing little.
Once adopted, all member nations except Spain will have until 2035 to reach the goal of 5%.
The agreement calls for at least 3.5% of national GDP to be spent on core military needs, while an additional 1.5% can be allocated for related expenditures.
Maybe it’s all an EU plot to rid themselves of NATO and US dominance. Carney would go big on that grift.
I advise against ever taking Carney at his word. He wants us out of NATO and with the EU yoke round our neck.
NATO’s 5% benchmark would cost Canada $150B a year, Carney says
Signing on to NATO’s new defence spending target could cost the federal treasury up to $150 billion a year, Prime Minister Mark Carney said Tuesday in advance of the Western military alliance’s annual summit.
The prime minister made the comments in an interview with CNN International.
“It is a lot of money,” Carney said.
As global instability grows and international threats evolve, Canada can no longer afford to underinvest in its national defence. The government’s renewed commitment to strengthening the Canadian Armed Forces is timely — and long overdue. But as we debate where to allocate dollars, we must remember one fundamental truth: national defence isn’t just about equipment or infrastructure. It’s about people.
OTTAWA—Canada’s top soldier says the military should keep buying at least some additional F-35 fighter jets from the United States, which she said will remain a key partner as Prime Minister Mark Carney pursues deeper defence ties with the European Union.
Gen. Jennie Carignan, the chief of the defence staff, said Monday that the F-35 jet comes with many advantages, from the capacity to cover Canada’s immense territory, to the ability for regular upgrades to keep up with rapidly advancing technology. Canada has already signed off on buying 16 of the jets through the American government, but the Liberal government put the rest of the purchase under review in March, amid tensions with the U.S. over President Donald Trump’s tariffs and talk of making Canada the 51st American state.
Carney and his pals get a piece of the action by choosing a Euro fighter.
Prime Minister Mark Carney on Monday at an EU-Canada summit in Brussels formally signed a historic security and defence pact between Canada and the European Union.
In signing the agreement, Carney cemented Canada’s participation in the EU’s €150 billion (C$237 billion) joint arms procurement fund (SAFE), a five-year loan facility that allows participating countries to borrow funds to jointly purchase military equipment.
