🇨🇦 NATO Wants Canada at 5% of GDP on Defence — After Ottawa Spent Decades Gutting the Military

Canada only just hit NATO's 2% GDP defence spending target in March 2026 — after years of Liberal stalling, excuse-making, and creative accounting — and now the CD Howe Institute says the alliance expects member states to reach 5% by 2035. That would represent a near-tripling of defence outlays in under a decade, according to the think-tank, for a country that hollowed out its armed forces while funding gender equity offices and diversity consultants inside DND.

This is what happens when a country outsources its security to allies for thirty years and then gets handed the bill all at once. The Trudeau government's response to every NATO funding deadline was another promise, another review, another reframing of existing spending as new commitment. Canada's credibility in the alliance is roughly what you'd expect after that track record. Getting to 5% requires not just money but an industrial base, a procurement system, and political will — none of which were cultivated. The reckoning is here and it is expensive.

🍁 Maple Chronicles