Justin Trudeau’s big defence policy update took two years to create. But it still leaves major questions unanswered

But as the years ticked by after it was first promised in Budget 2022, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, expectations grew that it would be a definitive plan for how to replenish and rearm the Canadian Armed Forces, which is saddled with critical staffing shortages and aging equipment.

When it landed, the plan promised big — $8 billion in new spending over the next five years and $73 billion over a 20-year horizon — without delivering specifics on a whole lot of issues: What kind of submarine fleet does Ottawa want to buy, and for how much? What kind of integrated air and missile defence capabilities? What kind of Arctic all-terrain vehicles? 

What kinds of helicopter landing platforms should be installed on Canada’s offshore patrol ships?  What kind of ground-based air defence systems? What kind of long-range air- and sea-launched missiles? What kind of new tanks and light armoured vehicle fleets? What kind of strike drones and counter-drones is the military looking at?

Those are all on the to-do list.

Some items have price tags attached and commitments to spend: a new base of cyber operations is the biggest in the short term, at $917 million over five years. New tactical helicopters is the biggest in the long run, at $18 billion over 20 years.

Much of the rest is unclear.

The plan vows to raise the annual defence budget from $30 billion now to $49.5 billion by 2029-30. That is projected to be 1.76 per cent of GDP — still shy of the NATO target for member countries to spend two per cent of their GDP on defence, a target the previous Conservative government agreed to and Trudeau recommitted to last year.

In Ottawa, sources told the Star the defence policy update had been submitted for months, and sat in the Prime Minister’s Office with no decisions taken since at least last fall. Some put the delay as much longer.

A senior government official said only that the big decisions on complex, massive purchases took a long time precisely because, well, they are complex and massive. There was a flurry of activity last year only to have the discussions stall again on the nature of the big purchases, the official said.

What’s not clear is whether the delay was solely the result of higher-cost demands by the military that were too rich for the government, or whether there was a split in cabinet, or between cabinet and the prime minister, over those big ticket items at a time when the Liberals are facing demands on all sides to help Canadians and trim spending.

In an interview Friday, Defence Minister Bill Blair did not explain why the policy took so long to produce, but suggested he needed to make sure there was a convincing case that more big spending was justified. 

” The most important audience for this policy review is Canadians,” he said. “My job has been to make sure we present our case to Canadians, so they can understand the value of this investment.”

Even now, while the document said Ottawa will look at buying a new fleet of conventionally powered submarines, which means electric or diesel, the prime minister told reporters the federal government will “certainly” also look at nuclear-powered submarines. That was not indicated in the policy.

Is he saying that only to swing a Canadian invitation into the defence alliance of Australia, the U.S. and the U.K. known as AUKUS? The government isn’t saying. It first downplayed Canada’s exclusion from AUKUS, saying it was for allied countries in the Pacific which had or were buying, as in Australia’s case, nuclear-powered submarines, which Canada didn’t have. Now Trudeau says Canada is seeking entry to that alliance, as is Japan.

What’s clear is that Ottawa has tried to hold down expectations on just how much it will spend for now, and has not charted a path to reaching its NATO spending target.

In the spring of 2022, then-defence minister Anita Anand said she submitted three “aggressive” spending options to Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland: to exceed the NATO spending target, to hit it, and to raise spending but land below the target. That year’s budget set out only the promise of more to come in a defence policy update.

This week, that third option carried the day.

Speaking to the Star this week, Anand, who is now head of the Treasury Board, also defended the delays, saying defence spending has increased under the Liberals, and by a lot. Anand says the government has taken a pragmatic and deliberate approach to increasing military purchases of big-ticket items, while planning for the longer term.

She points out the government agreed last year to buy 88 F-35 fighter jets and new maritime patrol aircraft, and will increase its NATO presence in Latvia. When it came to the defence update that began under her, she says, it took time to conduct public consultations then incorporate “1,500 pieces of feedback from public stakeholders.”

“What we are putting on the table with the defence policy update is a systematic approach to increasing defence spending that is prudent, that takes into account the need to roll out currently planned procurements as well as take on additional procurements,” she said Wednesday.

On Friday, Blair said some of the unanswered questions in the plan are being worked on, including the commitment to buy new submarines while the Canadian navy explores what type of fleet it will need. He said Canada will “need” to put more money forward to buy submarines. 

“Whatever form that might take, that’s going to easily take us beyond two per cent” of GDP, he said. 

Yet even Anand acknowledged the obvious: there is no guarantee that Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre will respect the Liberal defence policy plan if, as polls suggest, he is elected prime minister in a federal election expected in the fall of 2025. Poilievre has not laid out his views on defence, except to say he’ll “restore” the military.

Guy Thibault, a retired army officer who served as vice-chief of the defence staff, said he’s pleased the government decided to spend money on the military at a time when “clearly there are a lot of pressures” to fund other programs and keep the deficit in check.

But he said the new plan seems to lack a sense of “urgency,” with just $8 billion of the $73-billion program scheduled to be spent in the next five years.

He referenced the many commitments to “explore” expanding the military’s capabilities, including the vague plans to look into replacing Canada’s aging fleets of submarines, tanks and armoured vehicles.

“It doesn’t seem to be true that the government considers this to be urgent,” he said.

“Two years later, we get kind of a commitment to do more studies.”

Thibault suggested Anand’s three options for increased defence spending were all deemed to be “eye-wateringly too expensive” for the government after the financial pressures of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Zita Astravas, a former Liberal adviser who was chief of staff to former defence minister Harjit Sajjan, said it’s normal that something so significant would require intense consultations and multiple drafts over a long time.

“Also, it’s not an insignificant amount of money that you’re asking (for),” Astravas said.

“Going to (the Finance Department) on any given project — let alone a whole strategy that outlines multiple multibillion-dollar, multi-year procurements — is never an easy conversation, no matter what the what the economic scenario is,” she added.

The defence update has also promised billions of dollars for recruiting the more than 16,700 soldiers, sailors, pilots, engineers and technicians needed to build back to basic strength, and billions for maintaining its current fleets of vehicles, ships and aircraft.

Sean Maloney, a professor of history at Royal Military College specializing in defence issues, said in an interview that Canada still has a major defence procurement problem and an overall “lack of appreciation of how long it takes to get a capability up and running and then deploy it.”

Maloney said the defence policy missed an important opportunity to educate the Canadian public and future governments.

In his view, it should have presented a more coherent analysis of the bigger global threat picture to explain what has underpinned Canada’s defence strategy since the 1950s — which Maloney says is Canada’s role and responsibility to ensure the U.S. nuclear deterrent strategy is an effective one, including in the high north.

From there, he said, Ottawa should have laid out specifics on what it will cost to get there.

Correction — April 15, 2024

This story has been updated. The original version said the national defence policy update did not provide specifics on several projects, including what kind of ships would allow sea helicopters to land on. In fact, the ships have been decided and they are the Arctic offshore patrol vessels. What remains to be decided is what kind of landing platform will be installed on those ships to secure the sea helicopters.