I will note too that it's unique in how he's deploying political capital into defence. And actually pursuing real capital as well. Trying to get that rearmament bank here. Lecturing Bay Street to invest more in defence companies. Putting Doug Guzman (former banker and exec at Goldman Sachs and RBC) as head of the new investment agency. I think a lot of this is an approach unique to Carney. I literally can't imagine any other Canadian politician doing this.
Canada moves to 2% GDP end of FY25/26 - PMMC
- Thread starter Maxman1
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I'm not entirely sure about Harper; he did some great things for the active Army during Afgh, but a lot of it was at the cost of operations and maintenance of everything else, and fucked the navy and all infra for a decade in a hole we never dug out of.
Aside from the big, sexy investments in fancy gear, we are fixing a lot of things on the bases that have been rusting/rotting out since the Cold War to an extent I never thought I'd see in my career, and also getting support to make sure that we don't just get the fancy gear, we get the infrastructure, training, parts and maintenance on top of people to actually operate it properly.
The downside is it's coming too fast for us to keep up with after decades of being hollowed out, but in theory we'll go from 'more with less', which was trending to 'even more with almost nothing' to 'enough to do your expected capabilties in a sustained way'. It's a pretty insane shift, and is the kind of thing that makes me want to stick around and maybe avoid some of the lessons we've learned the hard way as things were falling apart.
I don't get where the myth about Harper comes from. He essentially continued spending that Martin had started right before. And only did the absolute minimum that was necessary for Afghanistan, with no substantial recapitalization funding beyond some trucks and LAVs. That's nothing at all like what Carney is attempting today.
As a younger Biden once said, "Don't tell me your priorities. Show me your budget and I'll tell you your priorities." And I think Harper's was tax cuts, not bolstering the CAF. What f'd us was getting Trudeau whose priority was social spending right after. Carney is the first PM in my career putting his money close to where his mouth is.
As a younger Biden once said, "Don't tell me your priorities. Show me your budget and I'll tell you your priorities." And I think Harper's was tax cuts, not bolstering the CAF. What f'd us was getting Trudeau whose priority was social spending right after. Carney is the first PM in my career putting his money close to where his mouth is.
Yep. Just having some basic infrastructure funding is a difference. Few years back I couldn't get trees trimmed that were impacting satellite links. No budget. I had to beg some engineer reservists to do me a solid and trim trees. I don't think a lot of people actually understand how bad it has been recently.
I'm staying longer. This is exciting. And we're doing meaningful stuff. I also get to pitch in and help build the next generation. I have seen GOFOs put off retirement for this. It's a huge change. I just hope they can fix the small procurement stuff so that regular troops can see the benefits sooner. We're in a weird place where the $10B projects are getting accelerated but the $10M purchase is bad as ever. I joked with a buddy that if he wants new antennas for tanks, he should just order a new tank fleet. It's easier.
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I think one has to look at the timeframe when talking Harper. In the early years he was quite supportive and he approved the acquisition of the Leo 2 and Leslie's Future Family of Combat Vehicles program which brought LAV UP and TAPV and was steering to CCV and HIMARS. When CCV was cancelled it was an army decision while the government apparently were prepared to sign the contract within days. Defence spending rose significantly during those years.
Things changed once the combat phase of Afghanistan was over in 2011 and the effects of the US housing crisis was being felt in Canada. The country had run deficits since 2008 and Harper was determined to reduce the deficit. In 2009 it was $55 billion; by 2013 he'd wrestled it down to $5 billion. That came at a cost for the military whose budget is the biggest discretionary fund that the government manages.
Harper did more than the minimum and, in fairness, so had Martin. The villains in this game were Chretien and Trudeau.
I wonder if the Trudeau Famiily and Chretien Military disinterest is a Quebec thing or a Liberal thing. It feels like Canada is saying goodbye to the last fifty Years of Federal obsession with Social justice and internal belly button gazing. To bring the Axworthy/Rock arm of the Liberals to the microphone must mean Carney is smashing some Rice bowls. GOOD!!I think one has to look at the timeframe when talking Harper. In the early years he was quite supportive and he approved the acquisition of the Leo 2 and Leslie's Future Family of Combat Vehicles program which brought LAV UP and TAPV and was steering to CCV and HIMARS. When CCV was cancelled it was an army decision while the government apparently were prepared to sign the contract within days. Defence spending rose significantly during those years.
Things changed once the combat phase of Afghanistan was over in 2011 and the effects of the US housing crisis was being felt in Canada. The country had run deficits since 2008 and Harper was determined to reduce the deficit. In 2009 it was $55 billion; by 2013 he'd wrestled it down to $5 billion. That came at a cost for the military whose budget is the biggest discretionary fund that the government manages.
Harper did more than the minimum and, in fairness, so had Martin. The villains in this game were Chretien and Trudeau.
Carney had a Western Canadian upbringing, an Excellent education, and serious responsibilities in Europe, Japan and NYC. The man is making Canada grow up and My God its heartening to finally feel we are a Country on the move again.
I hope the Ottawa apparatchiks are spiritually ready for this serious change. Game time.
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Trudeau actually spent more on the military than Harper did (Trudeau averaging around 1.27% a year whereas Harper averaged about 1.16% a year). Harper has the lowest expenditure on record in 2014 (.99%) out of any year for defence spending.
Harper liked to talk a lot about everything they were doing (and he did do a lot of buttons and bows type things, which matters to a lot of people) but ultimately just kept up the same standard as everyone before him.
The reality is both the Liberals AND Conservatives didn't do enough for defence for decades. The difference being by time Trudeau took over we had close to 30 years of neglect accumulating which for those that know break down maintenance that is when things become most expensive to maintain. As seen in the link below, pick any point in the last 38 years and they all look about the same. Little ebbs and flows here or there, but ultimately still low no matter who it is.
Ratio of military expenditure to GDP Canada| Statista
In 2024, the ratio of military expenditure to gross domestic product (GDP) in Canada stood at 1.31 percent.
www.statista.com
The numbers speak differently, I wouldn't say Trudeau is anymore the villain in this than Harper or Martin (I can't believe I am actually defending Trudeau, this is a first). Harper's contributions was only slightly more than what Martin was averaging (Martin averaged 1.106% a year), and Trudeau on average beat them both out.I think one has to look at the timeframe when talking Harper. In the early years he was quite supportive and he approved the acquisition of the Leo 2 and Leslie's Future Family of Combat Vehicles program which brought LAV UP and TAPV and was steering to CCV and HIMARS. When CCV was cancelled it was an army decision while the government apparently were prepared to sign the contract within days. Defence spending rose significantly during those years.
Things changed once the combat phase of Afghanistan was over in 2011 and the effects of the US housing crisis was being felt in Canada. The country had run deficits since 2008 and Harper was determined to reduce the deficit. In 2009 it was $55 billion; by 2013 he'd wrestled it down to $5 billion. That came at a cost for the military whose budget is the biggest discretionary fund that the government manages.
Harper did more than the minimum and, in fairness, so had Martin. The villains in this game were Chretien and Trudeau.
I would say Chretien was definitely the one who created the new status quo with the gutting of the defence budget, but no one after him until Carney got even close to bringing the defence budget anywhere near where it was before Chretien got in. Pretending the Conservatives did 'good' in that time period is rose tinted glasses, and this is from someone who generally liked Harper.
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Don’t get your hopes up. I’m old enough to have been through this before and it bloody well hurts when the balloon pops.
But…
Carney is building a higher end tech industry with national defence and that’s quite a big difference and not seen from probably the late 1950’s, especially when every other industrial scale endeavour (not related to oil and resources) is in full retreat or simply disappeared from our economy (telecom manufacturing, pulp and paper, furniture, electronic devices, appliances all for typical examples).
One thing I fear to say - we will shortly have far too many people of working age for the next economy while at the same time we’ll need national service for jobs young people don’t want to do - in defence forces, security, some aspects of health/home care and quite possibly agriculture. Assuming if course the world doesn’t blow itself all to hades in the coming months.
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One thing that I'm not sure if it's intentional or not is how much of the defence spending is actually going to Canadians by default; just on infra alone we're talking some kind of crazy number in the hundreds of billions in the next decade to 15 years, and that will support a huge amount of jobs across the country.
It's the kind of thing where smaller regional firms get enough business to go national, and will give the national firms enough capitol to look internationally. For some of these communities it's going to pump in a lot of good paying steady jobs for a long time as well, and keep injecting more over time with the expanded bases.
I don't really care if it's a make work project or not, but it does seem like a really productive way for the GoC to create a lot of work around the country while actually building up the military, so will take it as a win, even if it is a lot of things you won't really see, like upgraded power distribution runs, new water mains, replacing old windows, asbestos remediation etc. But just in basic things like replacing fire alarms we're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars of panels and field devices that will need new techs to install and service, so hopefully that helps out with apprenticeships and similar.
I would disagree that Carney is building a Tech industry. The Tech industry was already here, been here for years, it was being slowly being beefed up as Trudeau took office. They went and destroyed it by shutting down the industries that were flush with money. The massive uncertainty caused by cancellations of large infrastructure/ defense projects negatively affected further movement in those and other industries.
People want to work, but they have been given a false sense of what work is, what a hard day is. It starts in early child hood development, goes into school and follows them into post secondary school and work. Just look at how many days. (full days) students attend now.
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To me this is the key thing that Carney is doing that is different than previous PMs. It's one thing to fund the ships, vehicles and weapons but in order for a military to truly be effective it needs the infrastructure, training, etc. to enable and sustain the use of that equipment. To me, this will have the greatest impact on the effectiveness of the Canadian military.
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Carney gives off the whiff of what Peter Newman would refer to as the "Old Order". What I mean when I say that is he gives off an Argus Corp vibe and he is cut from the same cloth as E.P. Taylor, Colonel Eric Phillips and Conrad Black.
There is an old documentary about Argus Corp from the early 1980s, it profiles all these men and a young Conrad Black, who eventually took over Argus Corp. Black was obsessed with military history, particularly the Napoleonic Wars.
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The tech industry is a shadow of what it once was in Canada. It is certainly not being "built up".
Yes and no. We have certain competencies that are still strong. It's not always obvious or well known. Just a decade ago, Montreal was probably on par with Silicon Valley for AI. Tesla's foremost battery expert? A prof at Dalhousie who has probably trained a good chunk of their battery lab. Or the expertise that companies like Xanadu have developed in quantum computing. These companies are all now getting contracts from DND and being pulled into mainstream defence procurement.
MilEME09
Army.ca Fixture
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I suspect its the unwillingness of a large faction of the liberal party to admit the post cold war world of not needed major defense budgets is over. If you look historically, until 1963 we invested heavily in defense regardless of party. There then was a shift in both major parties and we saw cuts, and a significant downward trend
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What do you call a Prime Minister who increased defence spending 25% over his predecessor?
Justin.
