Spending Spree

Thank you, Murray Brewster.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/defence-spending-canada-uk-nato-9.7266431

I’d drafted my own piece on Canada’s defence spending spree — and the reckoning waiting behind it. Murray beat me to it; a story almost nobody in this country understands yet. They will.

I love Retail Therapy as much as the next person. Big-ticket items make us all feel better about defence in this ‘hate-Trump-and-all-things-American’ era. 40+ million Canadians are finally ready to support defence spending — to buy capability that lets Canada stand on its own, or at least stop showing up empty-handed to our alliances. Successive governments, of both parties, gutted the military. Now we’re all on board to buy new kit.

I love buying ski gear, bikes, water sports kit. Look at my garage – it’s stacked to the rafters. But like I tell my boys: there’s always a price you don’t see when you’re loading up the credit card.

Defence? I’m glad to see 12 subs for the Royal Canadian Navy announced. AEW aircraft for the RCAF announced before the experts even defined requirements. A real shipbuilding industry with 3 primes. Soon funding for Autonomous Collaborative Platforms, new helicopters, including attack helos. Eventually the Canadian Army might get some love — if the money isn’t spent & credit isn’t maxed out by then.

I support every bit of it. I want this country to have real capability — to defend itself & stop being the ally that shows up with excuses. But nobody is pricing in what comes after the announcements. Decades of sustainment. That’s the part that bankrupts governments, not the ribbon-cutting.

“People can’t argue and critics can’t lambaste you if they don’t have the numbers.”

Keep debating a mixed fighter fleet. Buy a 4th Gen fighter instead of investing in 5th and 6th Gen? That won’t age well. Eventually the public sees the math: duplicated infrastructure, hangars, simulators, & weapons that can’t be flown on both jets. That’s an astonishing bill — one that will have everyone asking why we didn’t spend that money on the Army instead. They’re deployed overseas right now & Reservists are still buying their own kit out of pocket because the Army doesn’t have the budget to equip them. Or why we didn’t spend it on the missiles and bombs our warstocks actually need.

When Canadians see the real bill, they’ll choke — and no political party will survive the backlash. I lived in the US through the 2008 crash. I watched over-leveraged families lose everything when their bills came due. Stand by. Our government won’t survive the debt that’s coming either.

Infinite funding? Not even the US has that. Clearly the UK doesn’t either.

Defence spending needs Purposeful Action — buying kit to check a geographic box only works so many times.

Thanks, Murray. Timely piece — and well ahead of what’s coming. I love a good spending spree. But stand by: the hard part is paying for it.