There was a particularly striking moment last week in Warsaw as Prime Minister Mark Carney renewed his friendship with Poland’s Donald Tusk, a flash that subtly captured the stark choices Canada will likely face in the not-too-distant future.
Carney was genuine in his praise of the Eastern European country’s wholehearted, enthusiastic embrace of NATO and the Western alliance’s defence spending targets.
“We learn much from the prime minister, from his government, including the importance of pulling our full weight in NATO,” Carney said.
It was an off-script, telling remark about the difference between Poland and Canada when it comes to defence spending.
“It will take us a few years to reach the Polish levels of commitment. But it’s possible, and we have made that commitment. We will quadruple our spending on defence between now and the end of the decade.”
Prime Minister Mark Carney followed a surprise visit to Kyiv with a swing through Warsaw, and said Canada is taking a lesson from Poland when it comes to defence spending.
A few years is an understatement. Warsaw surpassed the old NATO spending benchmark of two per cent of GDP in 2022. Ottawa hopes to get there by next spring.
Poland is projected to spend 4.7 per cent of GDP on defence this year — making it NATO’s top spender with an annual defence budget equivalent to $45 billion.
But what has it sacrificed to get there? And is it a model Canada should, or could, emulate?
During last spring’s federal election, the Liberals promised to rebuild the country’s military and defence industrial base, but have studiously avoided the specifics of how and at what cost.
Details, you ask? Wait for the new defence procurement agency, we’re told.
Canada has embraced NATO’s Trump-inspired hike in the defence spending target to five per cent of GDP (3.5 per cent on direct military spending and another 1.5 per cent on defence infrastructure) over the next decade.
The cost? As much as $150 billion per year.
“Poland’s point of departure is already very, very different from ours,” said Catherine Godin, Canada’s ambassador to Poland, who was asked during Carney’s visit about the Eastern European country’s rearmament efforts.
Poland — because it borders Russia — has made a conscious political choice when it comes to spending priorities, she said.
“Health and education come second to security and defence, something that we cannot fathom in our country. It would be a very different conversation. So to learn from them, certainly they put this at the top of their priority. We would need to have a Canadian consensus to be able to do it in the same way.”
And there’s the rub.
While the public has generally been in favour of increased defence spending, the trade-offs have not been made clear.
Tough choices on horizon
The fall federal budget could very well be a watershed reset of the way the country spends money and the public could be asked to accept tough choices.
Carney has already ordered all federal departments, with the exception of defence, to find 15 per cent savings in their budgets.
At the end of the NATO summit in June, the prime minister insisted that building up Canada’s defence industrial base is not an either/or budgetary exercise.
“We’re not at a trade-off. We’re not at sacrifices in order to do those,” Carney said.
“In other words, more [defence production] will happen in Canada. More of it will help build our economy at the same time as it improves our defence, and we’ll get the benefits.”
Members of the Canadian military are getting a pay raise of up to 20 per cent, as the federal government looks to boost recruitment and retention in the ranks. The $2-billion spending package also includes new allowances for certain deployments and operations.
The prime minister reiterated his campaign promise to grow the economy and balance the country’s operating budget within three years.
For his part, Defence Minister David McGuinty said he believes the public understands the seriousness of what we’re facing as a nation beyond our borders.
“I think Canadians know that the landscape has changed, that the geopolitics are changing,” McGuinty said.
Analysts from different European think-tanks have noted how Poland is rearming faster than it can find soldiers.
It has been buying military equipment from the United States as well as South Korea, where hot production lines continue to churn out warplanes, tanks, armoured vehicles and warships at a pace European manufacturers are struggling to match.
Godin says it’s been easier for Poland to build up that country’s defence industry because, unlike Canada, much of its defence industry is state-owned or operated.
Defence production is consolidated within the Polish Armaments Group (PGZ), which comprises over 50 companies. Much of the industrial base was inherited from the time the country was part of the Soviet Union’s Warsaw Pact, although some privately owned companies do exist within the framework.
Poland’s decision to continue to buy from the United States is nowhere as controversial in that country as it is in Canada.
Warsaw secured $4 billion in Foreign Military Financing (FMF) from Washington in July to buy equipment such Apache attack helicopters, HIMARS mobile rocket artillery and Patriot missile defence systems.
It is a conscious political choice that the country’s top leaders have said is being made to keep Poland on a friendly footing with the Trump administration.
Canada, on the other hand, is reviewing its marquee defence purchase of 88 F-35 stealth fighters from the U.S. defence giant Lockheed Martin. There are other projects, such as the purchase of P-8 surveillance planes and HIMARS for the army, which could also be politically unpalatable to a testy electorate that’s been told Canada intends to shop elsewhere for its military hardware.
Alan Williams, a procurement expert who headed the purchasing branch of the Defence Department in the early 2000s, underlined that in grappling with this issue, the federal government can’t lose sight of the mission, which is to equip the military with the best equipment — be it American, Canadian or European.
“As a bureaucrat, my objective would be: I will buy the best product no matter where it comes from,” Williams said.
“If it’s from the U.S., I’m not going to say no because there’s a hate on with Trump. I would buy it there. If the government has a different policy framework for that, I would abide by it. That’s their decision and it’s a political decision.”
