This article originally appeared in Maclean’s.
By Aurel Braun, June 9, 2025
For decades, Canada lived a charmed existence. We’d assumed the U.S. would always be there, that NATO would last forever, that Russia was a manageable threat and that China’s interest in the Arctic was largely benign. We believed that the long peace in Europe would just continue. So we let our military languish.
That fantasy came crashing down when Donald Trump returned to the White House. Suddenly, the country we had always relied on made clear it might not return the favour. At the same time, China and Russia have drawn closer, with Beijing bankrolling Russian energy projects in the Arctic and indirectly helping fund its military build-up. China has now declared itself a “near-Arctic state.” The region, once considered remote and secure, is now a strategic frontline. Our borders are not as distant as they used to be.
Canada spent the last decade inching up our defence budget from a grossly inadequate one per cent of our GDP to a still-dismal 1.37 per cent, landing dead last in the G7. Ottawa, particularly in the last decade, has always had guileless faith in international institutions and a rule-based international order, centred principally on the U.N. Our attention has remained fixed on international summits, diplomatic charm and humanitarian foreign aid. We sought a UN Security Council for many years—the Trudeau government spent at least $10 million on its campaign—but inevitably lost. The idea that soft power alone would suffice took root and stayed there.
The federal government’s defence strategy from last year, titled “Our North, Strong and Free,” at least acknowledges some of our current threats. It outlined lofty goals like building “a Canadian Armed Forces that can keep us strong at home, secure in North America, and engaged in the world.” However, it only allocates $8.1 billion in investments to defence over the next five years, a pathetic 1.76 per cent of GDP by 2030, when the vast majority of our allies have already reached or surpassed NATO’s two per cent spending floor last year. In his new government’s Throne Speech, Prime Minister Mark Carney said he wanted to significantly increase Canada’s defence capacity, but has only pledged to meet the NATO spending floor by 2030. No amount of creative accounting can disguise the fact that Canada continues to fall short. At this pace, we risk shrinking our global influence, exposing ourselves to great threats and slowly ceding our sovereignty in key regions—particularly the Arctic.
Our military, in its current size and capacity, doesn’t reflect the country we are: a nation of 41 million, with global interests, vast territory and a responsibility to our allies. Transforming it will require a radical spending increase within the next two years, not the next five, then a further spike to 2.5 per cent or more to be in line with NATO guidelines. A firm commitment to these targets would not only provide desperately needed funds for defence, but will also help build domestic and international confidence, recruit military personnel and buy modern equipment.
Our armed forces are simply too small for a country of our size and global footprint. The Canadian Armed Forces, though highly trained and committed, only have about 63,500 regular troops, well below our authorized strength of 71,500 and woefully inadequate to meet our domestic needs, let alone international commitments. In contrast, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Poland is doubling its already substantial armed forces, and France and Germany are moving rapidly in the same direction. With enough funding and strong recruitment efforts, Canada could grow its active forces to at least 100,000, which would be the number necessary to meet the country’s defence needs.
Since our troops are limited in numbers, we also need a qualitative advantage when it comes to equipment: cutting-edge technology, yes, but also basics. Our armour, aircraft and tanks have atrophied and are all in short supply. Canadian pilots fly a small fleet of 79 F-18 fighters that are older than they are, sailors man obsolescent ships and soldiers face vast Russian armoured forces with just a few tanks. Our first batch of new F-35 jets won’t start arriving until 2026—if they come at all. The five incoming offshore patrol vessels are welcome, but they’re lightly armed and have limited icebreaking capacity. We still need heavy icebreakers in the Arctic and speedy delivery of modern frigates and destroyers. The slow pace of warship construction means that Canada should urgently reach agreements with efficient foreign builders for joint production, as the U.S. has just done with Hyundai shipyards in South Korea.
National resilience requires the right combination of hard power—largely military—and soft power. Soft power cannot work without hard power; that would be like having morning cream without the coffee. And wise, increased defence expenditures contribute to an economic boom and yield political benefits. Back in the ’70s, West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt impressed upon Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau the importance of coupling hard power with economic diplomacy. Trudeau got the message: he boosted Canada’s defence spending and the West German defence industries by having Canada buy German-built Leopard tanks. In turn, Germany strongly supported an economic agreement between Canada and the European Economic Community, the precursor to the EU. That kind of strategic thinking has been lost. We need more of that today.
None of this will be easy or cheap. But neither is sovereignty. As an academic, I certainly would prefer Canada spend more on education and health care than on defence, but the inconvenient geopolitical reality is that unless a country can protect its freedom and sovereignty, none of those other public goods can be delivered.
Aurel Braun is a professor of international relations and political science at the University of Toronto, an associate of the Davis Center at Harvard University, and advisory council member at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.