BRUSSELS (AP) — Canada appears on track to soon meet NATO’s military spending directive, Defense Minister Bill Blair said Friday, especially by boosting investment in the Arctic near its shared border with Russia as the region is warming rapidly due to climate change.
After Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014, NATO allies agreed to end austerity and spend 2% of their gross domestic product on defense within a decade. Canada spent barely 1% at the time.
When it became clear last year that Russia’s war with Ukraine would continue, they decided that 2% should be a spending minimum. According to NATO figures, Canada will spend an estimated 1.33% of GDP on its military budget in 2023.
“My budget for defense spending next year will increase by 27% compared to this year,” Blair said at a meeting with his NATO counterparts in Brussels. “We have begun the important processes to acquire the additional capabilities we need (and) to meet NATO’s demands on us.”
He said Canada is “investing quite significantly in the High Arctic” and building new military capabilities, such as maritime sensors that can detect threats.
“I think this inevitably takes us to well over 2% of defense spending. But I still have some work to do to be able to express that both to my own country and to our allies,” Blair told reporters.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has said he expects about two-thirds of the alliance’s 32 member states to spend 2% of GDP on their defense budgets this year, compared to just three countries a decade ago.
