Trump allies lose patience with Canada’s promises to NATO on spending

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia — Canada is hinting that it will accelerate plans to boost its defense spending to hit a long-elusive NATO target. But it’s looking like that’s too little, too late to avoid the wrath of the incoming Trump administration and its push to get NATO allies to spend more.

Canadian Defense Minister Bill Blair said Friday that Canada will make good on its pledge from this summer to meet the alliance’s target of spending 2 percent of GDP on defense by 2032. He even suggested it could be earlier.

There are “many opportunities to accelerate plans to spend 2 percent of GDP on defense,” Blair told reporters at the Halifax International Security Forum, a three-day gathering of political, diplomatic and military leaders from around the globe.

Republican lawmakers have delivered a blunt response: It won’t be enough.

Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) is a leading critic of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s track record. Turner let loose in an interview with POLITICO ahead of his own trip to Canada this weekend — to Montreal where he was leading the U.S. delegation to NATO’S Parliamentary Assembly on Friday.

“The Trudeau policies are the freeloading policies of a NATO of decay. If everyone had the policies of Trudeau, there would be no NATO,” said Turner, who also serves as vice chair of the Defense and Security Committee of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.

In Halifax, a Republican colleague of Turner expressed a similar sentiment.

Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho), the ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who is poised to take the chair next year, seconded Turner’s tough talk on a panel with Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.).

Turner “wasn’t very diplomatic. Unfortunately, it was true,” Risch said. “I do not speak for the president-elect of the United States. If he were in this room, you would get a very large guffaw from him on talking about 2032. It’s gotta be better than that.”

Blair called Turner’s remarks “unfair.”

“Nobody has to argue with me that we need to spend more money. I came here last year and said we needed to spend more money, we needed to do more,” Blair told reporters in Halifax on Friday. “We’ve been working tirelessly over the past 12 months to do just that.”

Allies who demand more from Canada “are pushing on an open door,” he said, saying there are “many opportunities to accelerate” plans to spend 2 percent of GDP on defense.

Canada is one of just eight nations in the 32-member alliance that don’t meet the benchmark of spending 2 percent of their GDP on defense. Ottawa currently spends about 1.37 percent of its GDP on defense. Though it has the sixth-largest GDP among NATO allies, it ranks 27th in defense spending as a proportion to its GDP, according to a recent study from the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington-based think tank.

In April, a new federal defense policy set a spending target of 1.76 percent by 2030. Facing renewed pressure in the leadup to July’s NATO summit in Washington, Trudeau’s government unfurled the 2032 date.

The U.S. lawmakers’ take is also getting the backing of some in the U.S. military establishment, suggesting that Trump’s crusade to get allies to pony up more on defense could have wider appeal.

“It is no longer possible (or right) to skate along while others are doing more given the emergency we’re in,” said Jim Townsend, a former senior Pentagon official who ran NATO defense policy during the Obama administration. “Canada will certainly catch it from the Trump administration and rightly so. Canada is a stand up neighbor and ally and they need to stand up again.”

Blair told reporters in Halifax that he’s asking American counterparts to help get money flowing more quickly. His Cabinet colleague, Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly, said in an interview that Canada’s military relies in part on American suppliers — and efficient defense industry supply chains.

Asked about the incoming Trump administration, Joly said: “Yes, it is the investments we’re making and the money, but it is also the timeframe, and we need to be able to work with the administration to speed up procurement processes.”

Risch, who met with Blair in Halifax, wasn’t doing much applauding onstage: “There are a lot poorer countries, and a lot of countries that are in a more difficult position than Canada is, that are stepping up and doing the 2 percent right now.”

Mickey Djuric contributed to this story.