THOMSON: NATO 75 years on, and how Canada went from admiral to cabin boy

Yesterday, Foreign Ministers from NATO’s 32 member nations gathered in Brussels to celebrate the Alliance’s 75th year of existence. Luckily for Canada, invitations were not based on performance — we’d have never got one.It’s hard to believe that 75 years ago, Canada was one of the original twelve signatories of the North Atlantic Treaty. We were essentially a peer nation alongside post-Second World War heavyweights such as the UK, the US and France. Fast forward to today and Canada, a founding member, barely rates a seat at the kids' table. Even the newest members to join the alliance, Sweden and Finland, dwarf Canada in terms of what they offer the alliance in regard to equipment and resources.A quick comparison of military hardware reveals just how stark the differences are.Sweden has 110 Leopard 2A5 main battle tanks. Meanwhile on paper, Canada has approximately 82. But of that 82, only half are operational at any given time according to statements made last year by former Army Commander Jean-Marc Lanthier.Or Finland, which has one of the largest artillery arsenals in Europe, with an impressive 1,500 weapon variants. This includes self-propelled guns as well as several different multiple rocket launcher systems (MRLS.)I’d list what Canada has for comparison sake, but it’s too embarrassing to detail. Let’s just say it ranges from none to some.But none of this will come as a surprise to anyone who has paid the slightest bit of attention to the Canadian defence file over the past three or four decades.For starters, Canada is terrible at procurement.We lack the ability to provide the Canadian Armed Forces with the equipment they need to use in a contemporary context, to say nothing of predicting requirements for future theatres of operation and developing threats.The rapid advancement and employment of first-person view (FPV) drones as weapons of war, as seen in Ukraine, is a perfect example. After two years of observing a conflict that could rapidly expand to include it, Canada has yet to develop either a significant offensive or defensive drone capability.Part of this is due to our lack-lustre defence spending.According to NATO figures, Canada ranks well behind many smaller and less wealthy member nations, such as Albania and Norway. In 2023, Canada ranked 25 out of 30 allies in regard to defence. We spent barely 1.38% of our GDP towards defence and the majority of that was spent inefficiently and with little oversight.Further compounding this is our government's glaring incompetence at forming a coherent foreign policy. Canada’s Minister of National Defence (Blair) and Foreign Affairs (Joly) underscored this particular fact in their joint statement on NATO’s 75th anniversary.“To address the security impacts of climate change, we host the NATO Climate Change and Security Centre of Excellence recently opened in Montréal, Québec. In addition, the North American regional office of NATO’s Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic will soon open its doors in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Further, Canada is championing the Women, Peace and Security Agenda at NATO and promoting the increased representation of women in the uniformed services across the Alliance.”It's so painfully Canadian that we would brag about hosting a Climate Change Security Centre while doing absolutely nothing to manage our own Arctic sovereignty that is increasingly vulnerable to infiltration or annexation as a result of climate change. Worse still, our government is absolutely hopeless at conveying to Canadians why a coherent foreign policy, and the need for increased defence spending, is essential for our security and prosperity.They missed a golden opportunity to do so during the presidency of Donald Trump.President Trump didn’t mince words. He was very vocal that NATO member states should meet the alliance's 2% GDP defence spending commitments. He went so far as to rebuke several world leaders that he felt were riding on the coat tails of others — including ‘two-faced’ Trudeau in 2019.But instead of pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps and meeting our NATO spending commitments, our government brushed aside the reproach and good advice. It was easy to do and cost next to zero political capital.You might recall that during those years Canada’s political elite, media and intelligentsia were almost uniformly afflicted by Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS). Even now, tens of thousands still suffer ‘Long TDS’. But all kidding aside, it meant that if Trump thought Canada should spend more on defence, then that idea, no matter how much sense it made, could not be supported.In hindsight this was childish, but highly emblematic of our foreign policy both then, and now.Had we simply met our commitments, as a serious country should, we might have found ourselves better prepared for a potential world war that seems to be looming on the horizon. It also might have made the possibility of a second Trump presidency and the predictions that it will usher in a new era of US isolationism, less concerning.But we can’t change the past.The trouble is that as Canadians, nor do we seem to learn from it. Canada has found itself under-manned and ill-equipped at the outset of every major conflict it has become embroiled in, from the First World War to Afghanistan. It’s unfortunate, but it’s also more than likely that this will be the case for the next war too. Which is why Canadians, and their government, should be watching the approaching winter with apprehension and regret.Just like the grasshopper in Aesop’s parable, Canadians have danced and sang our way through decades of peacetime. We forsake the work that was required to maintain the status quo or the challenges of the unknown. We shamefully forgot the difficult sacrifices that won our prolonged state of blissful peace.Now, when winter arrives, as it inevitably does, Canada will undoubtedly find itself uninvitedly knocking on the doors our allies, wishing we had at least done the minimum expected of us.

THOMSON: NATO 75 years on, and how Canada went from admiral to cabin boy

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