Public Sentiment Turns Hawkish: Canadians Favour Boosting Defence Spending

The Canadian Armed Forces have been underfunded for decades. Under both Liberal & Conservative Governments, Canada has failed to spend 2% of GDP on our military, a failure that has been left unresolved despite our country pledging to do so.

In 2006, we agreed - alongside our NATO allies - to link military spending targets to GDP, and that pledge was strengthened in 2014. But during that time, we never hit that target. This understanding continues to this day, and not even Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022 was enough to convince the federal government to make good on our promise to our allies.

While it would be easy to pin the blame solely on politicians for this, the truth is that the Canadian public rarely prioritized defence spending. Did you ever witness a mid-election mass protest calling for a large military buildup? Did you ever see Canadian defence companies actively lobbying on news channels for more military investment? Did you ever see an election debate turn on military-related questions...