Canada’s promise to dramatically ramp up defence spending is generating more questions than answers, and the country’s foremost budget watchdog isn’t buying the government’s explanation for staying quiet on the numbers.
Kevin Page, Canada’s first-ever parliamentary budget officer and current head of the Institute of Fiscal Studies and Democracy at the University of Ottawa, is pushing back hard against Ottawa’s refusal to lay out a concrete financial roadmap for meeting its NATO commitments. In his view, the Carney government is leaving Canadians in the dark on one of the most consequential fiscal decisions the country faces in the coming decade.
“It’s a major question mark,” Page told The Canadian Press. “How is Canada going to finance this, and will it be able to meet its targets as well?”
At last year’s NATO summit in The Hague, alliance members locked in an ambitious new benchmark each member nation would spend the equivalent of five percent of GDP on defence by 2035. For Canada, long criticized for chronically underinvesting in its military, that figure represents a seismic shift in spending priorities.
But here’s the problem: Ottawa’s fiscal updates have only charted spending projections out to 2030. What happens between 2030 and 2035 arguably the most critical stretch of the commitment remains conspicuously unaddressed. Page says that gap needs to be filled in the fall federal budget, at the latest.
For a country that has spent years failing to even hit the previous two percent NATO target, the silence on the bigger number is raising eyebrows.
Prime Minister Mark Carney pushed back on the criticism earlier this week, arguing that locking in a detailed spending blueprint too early would be a mistake given how rapidly the nature of modern warfare is shifting.
He pointed specifically to the explosion of drone technology and artificial intelligence applications seen throughout the war in Ukraine as evidence that today’s defence priorities can look completely different in just a matter of months.
“If we had sat down even in June last year and mapped out what the armed forces would have thought how they would have spent 1.5 percent of GDP on defence, it would have looked a lot like how they would have answered that question five years ago,” Carney said Tuesday. “We’re not going to do that.”
The Prime Minister also noted that NATO itself agreed the new targets would undergo a formal review in 2030 suggesting there’s a built-in checkpoint before the 2035 deadline arrives.
Page acknowledged that military procurement plans evolve, but dismissed the notion that uncertainty justifies withholding the numbers altogether. Governments revise their figures all the time, he noted that’s what budget updates are for.
“You can’t say that the reason I’m not going to give you a number is because I want to do it well,” Page said bluntly. “Does that fly with you? It doesn’t fly with me.”
For Page, the stakes go beyond government accountability they cut to the heart of how Canadians will live with the bill. Defence spending of this scale, growing faster than virtually any other line in the federal budget, will require some combination of deficit financing, new revenue, or cuts elsewhere. Without seeing the plan, citizens and parliamentarians have no way to assess the trade-offs.
“I’d feel more confident in the government that we’re going to live up to commitments if I saw the allocation and plans,” he said.
Canada is navigating this debate while facing pressure from the Pentagon, which has made clear during trade negotiations that it wants proof Canada intends to follow through on its elevated defence commitments. But Page argues the domestic case for transparency is just as urgent.
Canadians, he says, deserve to know whether Ottawa plans to grow the deficit to foot the bill, raise taxes, or find the savings somewhere else. Those aren’t abstract policy questions they affect family finances, public services, and the country’s long-term fiscal health.
Despite the criticism, the federal government is holding firm on its position. Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand, speaking to reporters in Helsingborg, Sweden on Friday ahead of meetings with NATO allies, said Canada remains firmly committed to the five percent target.
“Canada is on track to meet five percent of GDP by 2035,” Anand said, adding that the country stands “solid and united with our partners in NATO.”
Whether that confidence translates into hard numbers in the fall budget remains to be seen. For Page and others watching Ottawa’s fiscal posture closely, the clock is ticking and the answers Canadians need are long overdue.
