Canadians are finally waking up to the funding crisis that’s sent the Canadian Armed Forces into a “death spiral”

From the Macdonald Laurier Institute

By By J.L. Granatstein

Must we wait for Trump to attack free trade between Canada and the US before our politicians get the message that defence matters to Washington?

Nations have interests – national interests – that lay out their ultimate priorities. The first one for every country is to protect its population and territory. It is sometimes hard to tell, but this also applies to Canada. Ottawa’s primary job is to make sure that Canada and Canadians are safe. And Canada also has a second priority: to work with our allies to protect their and our freedom. As we share this continent with the United States, this means that we must pay close attention to our neighbouring superpower.

Regrettably for the last six decades or so we have not done this very well. During the 1950s, the Liberal government of Louis St. Laurent in some years spent more than 7 percent of GDP on defence, making Canada the most militarily credible of the middle powers. His successors whittled down defence spending and cut the numbers of troops, ships, and aircraft. By the end of the Cold War, in the early 1990s, our forces had shrunk, and their equipment was increasingly obsolescent.

Another Liberal prime minister, Jean Chrétien, balanced the budget in 1998 by slashing the military even more, and by getting rid of most of the procurement experts at the Department of National Defence, he gave us many of the problems the Canadian Armed Forces face today. Canadians and their governments wanted social security measures, not troops with tanks, and they got their wish.

There was another factor of significant importance, though it is one usually forgotten. Lester Pearson’s Nobel Peace Prize for helping to freeze the Suez Crisis of 1956 convinced Canadians that they were natural-born peacekeepers. Give a soldier a blue beret and an unloaded rifle and he could be the representative of Canada as the moral superpower we wanted to be. The Yanks fought wars, but Canada kept the peace, or so we believed, and Canada for decades had servicemen and women in every peacekeeping operation.

There were problems with this. First, peacekeeping didn’t really work that well. It might contain a conflict, but it rarely resolved one – unless the parties to the dispute wanted peace. In Cyprus, for example, where Canadians served for three decades, neither the Greek- or Turkish-Cypriots wanted peace; nor did their backers in Athens and Ankara. The Cold War’s end also unleashed ethnic nationalisms, and Yugoslavia, for one, fractured into conflicts between Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, Christians, and Muslims, leading to all-out war. Peacekeepers tried to hold the lid on, but it took NATO to bash heads to bring a truce if not peace.

And there was a particular Canadian problem with peacekeeping. If all that was needed was a stock of blue berets and small arms, our governments asked, why spend vast sums on the military? Peacekeeping was cheap, and this belief sped up the budget cuts.

Even worse, the public believed the hype and began to resist the idea that the Canadian Armed Forces should do anything else. For instance, the Chrétien government took Canada into Afghanistan in 2001 to participate in what became a war to dislodge the Taliban, but huge numbers of Canadians believed that this was really only peacekeeping with a few hiccups.

Stephen Harper’s Conservative government nonetheless gave the CAF the equipment it needed to fight in Afghanistan, and the troops did well. But the casualties increased as the fighting went on, and Harper pulled Canada out of the conflict well before the Taliban seized power again in 2021.

Harper’s successor, Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, clearly has no interest in the military except as a somewhat rogue element that needs to be tamed, made comfortable for its members, and to act as a social laboratory with quotas for visible minorities and women.

Is this an exaggeration? This was Trudeau’s mandate letter to his defence minister in December 2021: “Your immediate priority is to take concrete steps to build an inclusive and diverse Defence Team, characterized by a healthy workplace free from harassment, discrimination, sexual misconduct, and violence.” DND quickly permitted facial piercings, coloured nail polish, beards, long hair, and, literally, male soldiers in skirts, so long as the hem fell below the knees. This was followed by almost an entire issue of the CAF’s official publication, Canadian Military Journal, devoted to culture change in the most extreme terms. You can’t make this stuff up.

Thus, our present crisis: a military short some 15,000 men and women, with none of the quotas near being met. A defence minister who tells a conference the CAF is in a “death spiral” because of its inability to recruit soldiers. (Somehow no one in Ottawa connects the culture change foolishness to a lack of recruits.) Fighter pilots, specialized sailors, and senior NCOs, their morale broken, taking early retirement. Obsolete equipment because of procurement failures and decade-long delays. Escalating costs for ships, aircraft, and trucks because every order requires that domestic firms get their cut, no matter if that hikes prices even higher. The failure to meet a NATO accord, agreed to by Canada, that defence spending be at least 2 percent of GDP, and no prospect that Canada will ever meet this threshold.

But something has changed.

Three opinion polls at the beginning of March all reported similar results: the Canadian public – worried about Russia and Putin’s war against Ukraine, and anxious about China, North Korea, and Iran (all countries with undemocratic regimes and, Iran temporarily excepted, nuclear weapons) – has noticed at last that Canada is unarmed and undefended. Canadians are watching with concern as Ottawa is scorned by its allies in NATO, Washington, and the Five Eyes intelligence sharing alliance.

At the same time, official Department of National Defence documents laid out the alarming deficiencies in the CAF’s readiness: too few soldiers ready to respond to crises and not enough equipment that is in working order for those that are ready.

The bottom line? Canadians finally seem willing to accept more spending on defence.

The media have been hammering at the government’s shortcomings. So have retired generals. General Rick Hillier, the former chief of the defence staff, was especially blunt: “[The CAF’s] equipment has been relegated to sort-of-broken equipment parked by the fence. Our fighting ships are on limitations to the speed that they can sail or the waves that they can sail in. Our aircraft, until they’re replaced, they’re old and sort of not in that kind of fight anymore. And so, I feel sorry for the men and women who are serving there right now.”

The Trudeau government has repeatedly demonstrated that it simply does not care. It offers more money for the CBC and for seniors’ dental care, pharmaceuticals, and other vote-winning objectives, but nothing for defence (where DND’s allocations astonishingly have been cut by some $1 billion this year and at least the next two years). There is no hope for change from the Liberals, their pacifistic NDP partners, or from the Bloc Québécois.

The Conservative Party, well ahead in the polls, looks to be in position to form the next government. What will they do for the military? So far, we don’t know – Pierre Poilievre has been remarkably coy. The Conservative leader has said he wants to cut wasteful spending and eliminate foreign aid to dictatorial regimes and corrupted UN agencies like UNRWA. He says he will slash the bureaucracy and reform the procurement shambles in Ottawa, and he will “work towards” spending on the CAF to bring us to the equivalent of 2 percent of GDP. His staff say that Poilievre is not skeptical about the idea of collective security and NATO; rather, he is committed to balancing the books.

What this all means is clear enough. No one should expect that a Conservative government will move quickly to spend much more on defence than the Grits. A promise to “work towards” 2 percent is not enough, and certainly not if former US President Donald Trump ends up in the White House again. Must we wait for Trump to attack free trade between Canada and the US before our politicians get the message that defence matters to Washington? Unfortunately, it seems so, and Canadians will not be able to say that they weren’t warned. After all, it should be obvious that it is in our national interest to protect ourselves.

J.L. Granatstein taught Canadian history, was Director and CEO of the Canadian War Museum, and writes on military and political history. His most recent book is Canada’s Army: Waging War and Keeping the Peace. (3rd edition).

Related Topics:#CAF #CanadianArmedForces #CanadianArmedForcesFreedomConvoy #JLGranastein #MacdonaldLaurierInstitute feature

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Global Military Industrial Complex Has Never Had It So Good, New Report Finds

Published on December 1, 2025

Todayville

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Wallace White

The global war business scored record revenues in 2024 amid multiple protracted proxy conflicts across the world, according to a new industry analysis released on Monday.

The top 100 arms manufacturers in the world raked in $679 billion in revenue in 2024, up 5.9% from the year prior, according to a new Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) study. The figure marks the highest ever revenue for manufacturers recorded by SIPRI as the group credits major conflicts for supplying the large appetite for arms around the world.

“The rise in the total arms revenues of the Top 100 in 2024 was mostly due to overall increases in the arms revenues of companies based in Europe and the United States,” SIPRI said in their report. “There were year-on-year increases in all the geographical areas covered by the ranking apart from Asia and Oceania, which saw a slight decrease, largely as a result of a notable drop in the total arms revenues of Chinese companies.”

Notably, Chinese arms manufacturers saw a large drop in reported revenues, declining 10% from 2023 to 2024, according to SIPRI. Just off China’s shores, Japan’s arms industry saw the largest single year-over-year increase in revenue of all regions measured, jumping 40% from 2023 to 2024.

American companies dominate the top of the list, which measures individual companies’ revenue, with Lockheed Martin taking the top spot with $64,650,000,000 of arms revenue in 2024, according to the report. Raytheon Technologies, Northrop Grumman and BAE Systems follow shortly after in revenue,

The Czechoslovak Group recorded the single largest jump in year-on-year revenue from 2023 to 2024, increasing its haul by 193%, according to SIPRI. The increase is largely driven by their crucial role in supplying arms and ammunition to Ukraine.

The Pentagon contracted one of the group’s subsidiaries in August to build a new ammo plant in the U.S. to replenish artillery shell stockpiles drained by U.S. aid to Ukraine.

“In 2024 the growing demand for military equipment around the world, primarily linked to rising geopolitical tensions, accelerated the increase in total Top 100 arms revenues seen in 2023,” the report reads. “More than three quarters of companies in the Top 100 (77 companies) increased their arms revenues in 2024, with 42 reporting at least double-digit percentage growth.”

armed forces

2025 Federal Budget: Veterans Are Bleeding for This Budget

Published on November 27, 2025

Todayville

Kelsi Sheren

How the 2025 Federal Budget Demands More From Those Who’ve Already Given Everything

I’ve lived the word sacrifice.

Not the political kind that comes in speeches and press releases the real kind. The kind Mark Carney wouldn’t know if it slapped him in the face. The kind that costs sleep, sanity, blood. I’ve watched friends trade comfort for duty, and I’ve watched some of them leave in body bags while the rest of us carried the weight of their absence. So when the Prime Minister stood up this year and told Canadians the new budget would “require sacrifice,” I felt that familiar tightening in the gut the one every veteran knows. You brace for impact. You hope the pain lands in a place that makes sense.

It didn’t.

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Six months into Mark Carney’s limp imitation of leadership, it’s painfully clear who’s actually paying the bill. The 2025 budget somehow managing to bleed the country dry while still projecting a $78-billion deficit shields the political class, funnels money toward his network of insiders, and then quietly hacks away at the one department that should be sacrosanct: Veterans Affairs Canada.

If there’s one group that’s earned the right to be spared from government-imposed scarcity, it’s the people who carried this country’s flag into danger. Veterans don’t “symbolize” sacrifice they embody it on the daily And when Ottawa tightens the belt on VAC, the consequences aren’t abstract. They’re brutal and direct, causing nothing but more death and destruction. But Mark Carney doesn’t lose sleep over veterans killing themselves.

Punishment disguised as budgeting for a veteran means the difference between keeping a roof or sleeping in a truck. Punishment disguised as budgeting means PTSD left untreated until it turns a human being into another suicide statistic. Punishment disguised as budgeting means a veteran choosing between groceries and medication because some number-shuffler in Ottawa wants to pretend they’re being “responsible.”

This isn’t fiscal restraint it’s political betrayal wrapped in government stationery. Ottawa sells it as hard choices, but the hardness always falls on the backs of the same people: the ones who already paid more than their share, the ones who can’t afford another hit. Carney and his cabinet won’t feel a thing. Not one missed meal. Not one sleepless night. Not one flashback.
But the men and women who already paid in flesh? They’re the ones being told to give more.

That’s not sacrifice.
That’s abandonment dressed up as fiscal policy.

And Canadians need to recognize it for what it is a government that demands loyalty while refusing to give any in return. The fine print in the government’s own documents reveals what the slogans won’t.

Over the next two years, VAC plans to cut $2.227 billion from its “Benefits, Services and Support” programs. [2] Broader “savings initiatives” reach $4.4 billion over four years, much of it through reductions to the medical-cannabis program that thousands of veterans rely on to manage chronic pain and PTSD. [3] Independent analysts estimate yearly losses of roughly $900 million once the cuts are fully implemented. [4]

To put that in perspective: no other department is seeing reductions on this scale. Not Defence, not Infrastructure, not the Prime Minister’s Office thats for damn sure. Only the people who’ve already paid their debt to this country are being asked to give again.

The government’s line is tidy: “We’re not cutting services we’re modernizing. Artificial Intelligence will streamline processing and improve efficiency.”

That sounds fine until you read the departmental notes. The “modernization” translates into fewer human case managers, longer waits, and narrower eligibility. It’s austerity dressed up as innovation. I’ve coached veterans through the system. They don’t need algorithms; they need advocates who understand trauma, identity loss, and the grind of reintegration. They need empathy, not automation.

This isn’t abstract accounting. Behind every dollar is a life on the edge, the human cost and toll is very real.

Homelessness: Veterans make up a disproportionate number of Canada’s homeless population. Cutting benefits only deepens that crisis.
Mental Health: Parliament’s ongoing study on veteran suicide shows rising rates of despair linked to delays and denials in VAC services. [5] Knowing MAID for mental illness alone in 2027 will take out a significant amount of us.
Food Insecurity: A 2024 VAC survey found nearly one in four veterans reported struggling to afford basic groceries. That’s before these cuts.

We talk about “service” like it ends with deployment. It doesn’t. Service continues in how a nation cares for those who carried its battles, and this doesn’t include the cannabis cut to medication or the fight’s we have to fight when they tell us our injuries are “not service related”

The insult is magnified by the timing. These cuts were announced just days before November 11 Remembrance Day, when Canadians bow their heads and say, “We will remember them.”

Apparently, the government remembered to draft the talking points but forgot the meaning behind them, not a single one of the liberal government should have been allowed to show their faces to veteran’s or at a ceremony. They’re nothing but liars, grifters and traitors to this nation. Yes I’m talking about Jill McKnight and Mark Carney.

The budget still runs the second-largest deficit in Canadian history. [6]
Veteran cuts don’t fix that. They barely dent it. What they do is let the government say it’s “finding efficiencies” while avoiding the real structural overspending that created the problem in the first place. When a government chooses to protect its pet projects and insider contracts while pulling support from veterans, that’s not fiscal discipline it’s moral cowardice. The worst part is that This isn’t an isolated move. It fits a six-month pattern: large, attention-grabbing announcements about “reform,” followed by fine print that concentrates power and shifts burden downward. Veterans just happen to be the first visible casualty.

The same budget expands spending in other politically convenient areas green-transition subsidies, digital-governance infrastructure, and administration while the people who once embodied service are told to tighten their belts.

As a combat veteran, I know what it’s like to come home and realize that the fight didn’t end overseas it just changed terrain. We fought for freedom abroad only to watch bureaucratic neglect wage a quieter war here at home. Veterans don’t ask for privilege. They ask for respect, for competence, for follow-through on the promises this country made when it sent them into harm’s way.

Here’s what really needs to change, the liberal government has to go, thats step one. Restore VAC funding immediately. Any “savings” plan that touches benefits, services, or support should be scrapped. End the AI façade. Efficiency can’t replace empathy. Keep human case workers who understand the veteran experience. Audit and transparency. Publish a detailed breakdown of where VAC funds are cut and who approved it. Canadians deserve to see the receipts. National accountability. Every MP who voted for this budget should face veterans in their constituency and explain it, face-to-face.

Budgets are moral documents. They show what a country values. By slashing VAC while running record deficits, this government declared that veterans are expendable line items, not national obligations. The Prime Minister promised “shared sacrifice.” But the only people truly sacrificing are the ones who already gave more than most Canadians ever will.

Sacrifice isn’t about spreadsheets; it’s about service. It’s what every veteran understood when they raised their right hand. This government’s brand of sacrifice asking wounded soldiers to pay for political mismanagement isn’t austerity. It’s abandonment.

Canada owes its veterans more than a wreath once a year. It owes them respect written into every budget, not erased from it.

KELSI SHEREN

Footnotes

[1] The Guardian, “Canada’s 2025 Federal Budget Adds Tens of Billions to Deficit as Carney Spends to Dampen Tariffs Effect,” Nov 5 2025.
[2] True North Wire, “Liberal Budget to Cut $4.23 Billion from Veterans Affairs,” Nov 2025.
[3] StratCann, “Budget 2025 Includes Goal of Saving $4.4 Billion in Medical Cannabis Benefits,” Nov 2025.
[4] Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, “Where Will the Federal Government Cut to Pay for Military Spending and Tax Cuts?” Nov 2025.
[5] House of Commons Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs, “Study on Veteran Suicide and Sanctuary Trauma,” ongoing 2025.
[6] CBC News, “Federal Budget 2025 Deficit Second Largest in Canadian History,” Nov 2025.