Accuracy is important in these discussions, Canada's spending is 6th from the bottom in terms of percentage of GDP ahead of Iceland, Spain, Luxembourg, Slovenia and Belgium and is 6th in total spending behind the USA, Germany, the UK, France and Italy.
Obviously not good and we desperately need that moolah but it isn't true that we're at the bottom.
Let's amplify on that: Here are, in order, the GDP of all NATO members whose GDP exceed a trillion dollars: (1) USA, 29.2T (2) Ger 4.7T (3) UK 3.65T (4) FR 3.2T (5) ITA 2.4T (6) CAN 2.25T (7) SPA 1.72T (8) NED 1.25T and (9) TURK 1.2T.
Funny enough, we are both the sixth highest GDP and the 6th biggest spender even with what we currently spend. I would call that normal.
Also, I am getting sick and tired of people constantly saying we are freeloading, especially off the Americans. The Americans didn't go into NATO to defend Canada, they did it because it was in their defense interest. They didn't enter into NORAD agreement because they wanted to defend Canada, they did it because it was in their defense interest. And we are not freeloading on that one: name me a single time where we did not fulfill our obligations as negotiated from time to time with the US as regards NORAD. The US did not "join" the Permanent Joint Defense Board and resulting joint defense approach to North America to defend Canada (Ok, maybe a little on that one since the premise was FDR's speech sating the US would never accept another country's attack on Canada and would move to defend Canada - and the reciprocal undertaking by Canada to "do all in our power so that no other country would ever use Canadian territory to attack the USA"), but again they did it because it is in their own national defense interest.
Are we so badly defended then? IIRC the last time someone tried to invade us was in 1812-1814 - and it was the Americans! Other than that, we did participate in wars in foreign lands beside allies on a frequent basis and, after a fashion to get up to speed, in a more than satisfactory way. So again, what is wrong with the way we deal with national Defense?
So, we spend a little over 1.2% of our GDP on defense, while the US spends 3.4%. But here's a little secret: The US spends it all on the defense of its own defense interests, every last penny. The US decided after WWII that it would be unchallenged militarily by any other country, or even group of countries, and that is their approach to defense spending.
Here is another little secret - of US internal politics, this one - Trump will never reach his own new bright line of 5% of GDP spent on defense. That would require the USA to almost double its current pending on defense, already the single largest expenditure, with a right wing congress that will absolutely refuse to raise taxes and US annual deficits already considered by many congressmen / senators to be out of control.
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