... "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 the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad — has made a conscious political choice when it comes to spending priorities, she said. Poland also shares a long border with Belarus, a close ally of Russia. "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 ...
