Trudeau defends Canada’s military spending at NATO summit

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took to the defensive over Canada’s military spending during his opening remarks at the NATO Summit Tuesday.

“When we took office, our GDP spending on defence was less than 1 per cent, and we vowed to change that right away,” he said.

Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland recently echoed those sentiments, pointing to Canada being the seventh largest spender in the alliance. “Our government has been steadily increasing our spending in defence because we recognize the threats in the world.”

“In the budget I tabled in April, we put forward a fully costed plan to get our defence spending up to nearly 1.8 percent in 2029.”

The NATO alliance is expecting a plan from the Trudeau government after it was agreed upon by all parties to spend at least 2 per cent of their national GDP on defence, which Canada has reportedly fallen short of the target heading into the summit.

This comes against the backdrop of growing Russian aggression in Ukraine, which the intergovernmental military alliance has been highlighting as a crucial reason to meet those targets.

On Monday, Moscow launched a wide-scale bombardment across multiple Ukrainian cities, which included air strikes on a children’s hospital.

Ukrainian officials say as of Tuesday, the death toll is at least 43 people.