{"id":125150,"date":"2026-07-10T23:38:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-10T23:38:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/125150\/"},"modified":"2026-07-10T23:38:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T23:38:11","slug":"canada-just-spent-its-way-off-natos-deadbeat-list-the-money-didnt-buy-a-military","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/125150\/","title":{"rendered":"Canada Just Spent Its Way Off NATO’s Deadbeat List. The Money Didn’t Buy a Military"},"content":{"rendered":"

Canada has spent its way off Washington\u2019s list of NATO deadbeats. In Ankara last week, Secretary General Mark Rutte praised Ottawa by name for a two-year, $215 billion spending surge from Canada and the Europeans that he called staggering<\/a>. Donald Trump, who has spent a decade calling Canada a free rider, had nothing to add. For once, nobody in the room was angry at Ottawa.<\/p>\n

The number everyone was applauding measures money. It does not measure the military.<\/p>\n

\"Canada<\/p>\n

A CF-188 Hornet from the Canadian Air Task Force Lithuania flies over Lithuania on November 20, 2014 for the NATO Baltic Air Policing Block 36 during Operation REASSURANCE. Photo: Air Task Force \u2014 OP Reassurance, DND<\/p>\n

Carney Actually Did the Thing His Predecessors Promised<\/p>\n

Give Mark Carney his due first<\/a>. Canada hit 2 percent<\/a> of GDP on defense this year, the first time since the Berlin Wall fell, roughly $63 billion<\/a>, and five years ahead of even its own government\u2019s original timeline.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the largest single-year increase in Canadian defense spending in a generation. It comes after a decade in which Justin Trudeau reportedly told NATO officials<\/a> privately that Canada would never get there without a massive shift in domestic politics he didn\u2019t expect to see.<\/p>\n

Carney also signed on to NATO\u2019s new Hague pledge<\/a>: 3.5 percent of core military spending, plus another 1.5 percent on related infrastructure, by 2035. Eventually, that\u2019s north of $150 billion a year.<\/p>\n

Whatever else is wrong with Ottawa\u2019s defense establishment<\/a>, the target is the correct one, and Carney has taken it more seriously than any Canadian prime minister since the Cold War ended.<\/p>\n

\"Canada<\/p>\n

Canada Military Leopard C2 Tank.<\/p>\n

None of that is in dispute. What\u2019s in dispute is what the spending has actually produced.<\/p>\n

The Readiness Numbers Tell a Different Story Than the Budget Numbers<\/p>\n

Canada\u2019s own defense department published readiness figures alongside its 2 percent announcement. They are rough. Overall force readiness across the Canadian Armed Forces sits at 61.3 percent<\/a>, against an internal target of 90.<\/p>\n

Maritime fleet serviceability<\/a> is at 59.6 percent. Land equipment readiness is at 51 percent. Aerospace readiness \u2014 the fighters and patrol aircraft that would matter most in a NORAD contingency \u2014 is at 42.3 percent.<\/p>\n

An air fleet that\u2019s ready four days out of ten isn\u2019t a fighting force in any meaningful sense. It\u2019s a maintenance queue with squadron patches on it.<\/p>\n

The hardware still being years from delivery compounds the problem. The River-class destroyer program won\u2019t produce its final hull until around 2050<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The submarine project, meant to eventually field as many as 12 boats across three coastlines, hasn\u2019t yet chosen between its German and Korean bidders. No keel has been cut.<\/p>\n

\"Canada<\/p>\n

Canada Victoria-Class Submarine. Image Credit: Creative Commons.<\/p>\n

And looming over the whole file is the fighter decision that reportedly needled the Trump administration most in Ankara: whether Canada completes its F-35 order<\/a> or diverts part of it to the Swedish Gripen, a call that has been reviewed and re-reviewed for so long it has become its own small monument to Canadian defense indecision.<\/p>\n

Money committed. Capability deferred. That\u2019s been the pattern all year.<\/p>\n

Crews Matter More Than Hulls, and Canada Doesn\u2019t Have Enough of Them<\/p>\n

Hardware isn\u2019t even the tightest constraint. People are. Canada\u2019s auditor general reported last October that between 2022 and 2025, the Canadian Armed Forces received about 192,000 applications and recruited roughly 15,000 people. One in thirteen<\/a>.<\/p>\n

She didn\u2019t blame the budget. She blamed governance \u2014 decision-making she called ineffective, IT systems that don\u2019t talk to one another, a recruiting pipeline built for peacetime that cannot process wartime volume.<\/p>\n

Ottawa can point to genuine improvement. Enrollment hit 7,310 last year, the strongest recruiting class in three decades, helped by a 20 percent<\/a> pay raise and the largest military housing program since the Second World War.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s real progress, and it shouldn\u2019t be waved away.<\/p>\n

But a good recruiting year doesn\u2019t fix a broken intake system. The structural findings in the auditor general\u2019s report will outlast this year\u2019s enrollment numbers the way a cracked foundation outlasts a fresh coat of paint.<\/p>\n

Canada could take delivery of every destroyer, every submarine, every fighter jet on its current list precisely on schedule, and still lack the trained people to crew or fly them when it counted.<\/p>\n

Washington\u2019s Mistake Would Be Grading the Wrong Test<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a reason this belongs in front of an American audience, not just a Canadian one. The Pentagon has been quietly thinning the forces it commits to NATO\u2019s collective defense plan \u2014 fewer bombers, fewer fighter squadrons, fewer submarines held in reserve for a European contingency \u2014 on the assumption that Canada and the Europeans will backfill the difference.<\/p>\n

A Canadian force that is 40 to 60 percent serviceable, depending on the domain, is not backfilling anything. It\u2019s a promise, and NATO planners cannot count a promise as combat power, no matter how large the check that financed it.<\/p>\n

Carney himself has said meeting 2 percent is a beginning, not an end. He\u2019s right, though his own budget doesn\u2019t yet show the follow-through that claim requires \u2014 there\u2019s still no five-year plan<\/a> attached to the pledge, according to Canada\u2019s own parliamentary budget office.<\/p>\n

The test that actually matters isn\u2019t whether Ottawa reaches 3.5 percent by 2035. It\u2019s whether the serviceability and recruitment numbers move over the next two years, while the destroyers and submarines are still a decade or more from the fleet.<\/p>\n

If those numbers stay where they are, Canada will hit its five percent target right on schedule and buy the same half-ready force at a considerably higher price.<\/p>\n

NATO can count Canada\u2019s dollars without difficulty. What it cannot yet count on is the force those dollars were supposed to build.<\/p>\n

About the Author: Dr. Andrew Latham<\/p>\n

Andrew Latham<\/a> is a professor of international relations and political theory at Macalester College in Saint Paul, MN. You can follow him on X: @aakatham<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Canada has spent its way off Washington\u2019s list of NATO deadbeats. In Ankara last week, Secretary General Mark…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":125151,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[17,967,1888,691,3191,6925,41942,218],"class_list":["post-125150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-canada","tag-featured","tag-germany","tag-nato","tag-south-korea","tag-sweden","tag-technology-news","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125150\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}