At last! Finally, we’re seeing some real nation-building by Prime Minister Mark Carney.
I’m referring, of course, to his decision to extend the national school lunch program.
This is an excellent way to ensure Canadian schoolchildren — who represent the future of our country — aren’t drifting off to sleep in class because they’re hungry. (An astounding 2.5 million Canadian children live in food-insecure households.)
Sadly, however, beyond this wise move, the Carney government seems poised to deliver a brutal budget next month that will take us in exactly the wrong direction, undermining any hope of “nation-building.”
Carney announced plans last June that will seriously limit the options for Canada’s future, by hugely increasing the country’s military spending over the next decade, raising it from 1.4 per cent of GDP to a staggering five per cent of GDP. That amounts to an annual military expenditure of $150 billion, compared to the $41 billion we spent last year.
Such extreme peacetime military spending was never contemplated, even by the most hawkish Canadian defence analysts, until U.S. President Donald Trump started throwing around the five per cent figure. Yet even the excessively-armed United States only spends 3.5 per cent of its GDP on defence.
The very idea of linking military spending to GDP is nonsensical, according to Paul Robinson, a military historian at the University of Ottawa. That’s because GDP measures the country’s total output, from its auto manufacturing to its hamburger production.
“There is no reason why you should spend more on defence just because you are eating more hamburgers,” argues Robinson. “To make sense, defence spending has to be linked to needs, not GDP.”
The Carney government clearly did not do a careful assessment of Canada’s defence needs before embracing Trump’s five per cent figure. Rather, it was a sudden move, apparently designed to please Trump -— even though there’s no reason to believe it will make the slightest difference in Trump’s highly capricious decisions about tariffs or anything else.
Carney may have also deluded himself into thinking Trump will be less inclined to push us around if we have more military might.
More likely, a military version of “Elbows Up” will provoke the mercurial president to demonstrate American dominance by designating Canada, along with Chicago, as a place to send U.S. troops for military exercises.
Indeed, the impossibility of Canada defending itself from its rogue neighbour — the only country that could realistically invade us — is underlined by our 2023 deal (still in place) to purchase 88 U.S.-made F-35 fighter jets.
As Canadian political scientist Michael Byers notes, Washington controls the F-35’s complex software, which it could deny to Canada, along with spare parts for the aircraft. “Canada’s F-35s would, one by one, become unflyable,” observes Byers.
Retired Canadian senator Douglas Roche notes that, while Canada already spends 20 times more on the military than on diplomacy, our focus should be on diplomacy. “In this new surge of militarism, diplomacy has been pushed aside, at our collective peril.”
This military spending binge will definitely leave the cupboard bare. As the military eats up endless billions of taxpayer dollars over the next decade, every single aspect of government spending — including the school lunch! — will end up under the knife, sooner or later. Any promises to the contrary will simply vanish over time, as the military budget balloons ever larger.
Former U.S. president Dwight Eisenhower famously warned: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”
We urgently need to bring the country together, making it work for all Canadians, strengthening feelings of unity and national purpose, as we collectively gear up to resist the Trump menace. Diverting hundreds of billions of dollars away from ordinary Canadians, in order to needlessly swell our military, is hardly the way to do this.
This article was originally published in the Toronto Star.
Support rabble today!
We’re so glad you stopped by! Thanks for consuming rabble content this year.
rabble.ca is 100% reader and donor funded, so as an avid reader of our content, we hope you will consider gifting rabble with a donation during our summer fundraiser today.
Nick Seebruch, editor
Whether it be a one-time donation or a small monthly contribution, your support is critical to keep rabble writers producing the work you’ve come to rely on as a part of a healthy media diet.
Become a rabble rouser — donate to rabble.ca today.
Nick Seebruch, editor
