Justin Trudeau was caught between the moon and New York City this week — halfway between the fanciful, self-congratulatory realm where Canada, in his words, “has an important story to tell” and the real world where this country is increasingly irrelevant.
The prime minister was in the Big Apple, mugging for pictures with Wolverine actor Hugh Jackman at an event in support of the Global Citizen Now initiative to empower women, where Canada committed new funds to support women’s rights organizations. He also spoke to the venerable Council of Foreign Relations to highlight Canada’s role as “a reliable and responsible partner” of the United States.
He told the Council that the world is experiencing a “moment of uncertainty like we haven’t seen in our lifetimes,” with authoritarianism on the rise and new threats emerging to weaken democracy. “If we don’t step up, other forces will step in,” he said.
Yet, even the illegal invasion of Ukraine has not fundamentally shifted the Trudeau government’s stance.
The prime minister’s closing press conference in New York was a spate of the logorrhea we have become used to since 2016 when he told the Paris climate conference, with his hand on heart, that “Canada is back and we’re here to help.”
“Canada has an important story to tell — a story of trust in institutions, of pulling together and making investments in support of the middle class,” he said on Friday in New York, warming to his theme.
“Canadians know that no country is immune from the impact of things that happen on the other side of the world….This is an important role that Canada can, and must, play on the world stage.”
Watching the prime minister reprise his fantasy vision of Canada as a city on a hill, it almost obscured the reality that this country is considered by many of its allies and partners to be inconsequential and, worse, unreliable.
The role that Canada can play on the world stage is extremely limited, according to the Pentagon’s assessment, leaked to the Discord messaging app and reported in the Washington Post.
Defence spending shortfalls mean that Canada cannot conduct a major operation while maintaining its NATO battle group in Latvia, the documents suggested.
The leak also said Trudeau has privately told NATO officials that Canada will never meet the alliance’s spending target of two per cent of economic output — even though it has officially committed to that number.
Defence spending shortfalls are “straining partner relationships,” the leaked documents suggest. Germany is concerned about whether the Canadian Forces can continue to aid Ukraine, Turkey is disappointed that Canada refused to support the transportation of humanitarian aid after February’s earthquakes, while Haiti is “frustrated” at Ottawa’s refusal to lead a multinational mission.
The Washington Post story coincided with an open letter from 60 prominent Canadians, including former Liberal and Conservative defence ministers, calling for the Trudeau government to redress the poor state of the current defence capability. Recent commentary has pointed out that the Forces are short 10,000 personnel, the air force lacks half the pilots it needs, nearly all of Canada’s 78 Leopard 2 tanks require extensive maintenance and the submarine fleet is obsolete.
The Liberals spent $28.4 billion on defence in the last fiscal year — the highest amount in real dollars since the 1990s. But that is still just 1.33 per cent of GDP, $18.2 billion short of NATO’s 2 per cent target.
Spending is forecast to rise in the coming years to pay for the 88 F35 jets and warships that have already been ordered. But the Parliamentary Budget Officer does not believe Ottawa has set aside enough money to pay for these procurements.
The Defence Department was set to provide an update last fall but failed to do so and there was no new money in the spring budget.
Meanwhile, serious countries like Britain, Germany and Japan have woken up to the new threat environment and ramped up military spending.
Canada’s soft power has also been neutered. The recent budget slashed the foreign aid budget by 16 per cent this year, a move critics claim undermines this country’s ability to combat crises like climate change and human rights abuses that Trudeau has trumpeted as central to our role on the world stage. The Auditor General recently pointed out that Global Affairs reallocated money from sub-Saharan Africa to support Ukraine.
In light of all of that, it is breathtaking that Trudeau could stand up in front of an audience of policy professionals in New York and highlight the need to “step up”.
Under this Liberal government, Canada has not stepped up, it has stepped back and allowed others to carry the burden.
The old English proverb about “fine words buttering no parsnips” might have been written for this prime minister.
Parsnips have been un-buttered since 2015 and are likely to remain so, as long as there are no political gains in truly stepping up.
jivison@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/IvisonJ
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