Resistance to militarism is growing. Hopefully it can restrain Mark Carney’s extremism. In recent days we’ve seen messages from the Council of Canadians, Toronto District Labour Council and other established left groups questioning militarism. One of the five demands of the Draw the Line coalition that brought out tens of thousands Saturday was “End the war machine. Stand for justice and peace.”
Their statement noted: “Canada is joining the global arms race and massively increasing its military spending alongside NATO partners while cutting funding from healthcare, housing, and public services. Canada is arming Israel’s genocide in Palestine and fueling global conflicts that enrich weapons manufacturers like Lockheed Martin. We refuse to let war profiteers prosper while people suffer. We demand an immediate two-way arms embargo on Israel, cancelling Canada’s plans to balloon its military budget, and a foreign policy based on diplomacy and peace-building.”
Amidst this growing activism, I’ve received emails from an NDP MP and riding association criticizing the F-35, Golden Dome and military spending more generally. A recent party caucus retreat criticized cuts to social programs to pay for arms. In addition, Avi Lewis raised military spending in a CBC interview Friday about the launch of his NDP leadership bid.
I have not seen this much criticism of Canadian militarism since the war in Afghanistan in the mid-2000s. In 2021-22 the No Fighter Jet Coalition was able to break into the mainstream with a public letter signed by prominent individuals but that campaign was only able to get a single sitting NDP MP (Leah Gazan) to endorse its call. In fact, the party has usually celebrated militarism. In 2011, for instance, the NDP supported two House of Commons resolutions endorsing Canada’s central role in NATO’s destruction of Libya.
The growing opposition to militarism is essential as public resources fly out the door. A recent Globe and Mail article noted that Canada planned to buy a dozen submarines at a cost of about $10 billion each. The Liberals are also purchasing 15 surface combatant naval vessels from Irving Shipbuilding. The three initial ships cost $22 billion. (They’ll cost two to three times that sum over their lifecycle.)
By contrast, in last week’s big housing announcement Carney allocated $1 billion over multiple years to mitigating the abject misery faced by 100,000 Canadians living on the streets. Homelessness received one eighth of the cost of one of the surface combatant naval vessels! And they are purchasing fifteen of those vessels!
Carney’s militarism is extreme. In June the prime minister added an immediate $9 billion to this year’s war budget. That was on top of the already planned boost of over $3 billion and a military budget that doubled from $20 billion to $40 billion over the past decade. During that period military spending increased from 1% to 1.4% of GDP. The $9 billion boost announced in June, combined with some accounting gymnastics, brought Canadian military spending to NATO’s 2% of GDP target.
But that’s not enough for Donald Trump and the warmongers. Subsequently, Carney agreed to an even more outrageous NATO target of 5% of GDP on “defence” by 2034. While some of this target will be accomplished through accounting changes like adding the $8 billion spent on Veteran Affairs to the military tab, the boost in war spending required to hit 5% of GDP would be a disaster for Canadians and the world. It would lead to cuts to social programs and give the monsters (Carney, Anand, Poilievre etc.) who’ve been enabling Israel’s live streamed holocaust in Gaza greater capacity to intimidate and invade other countries.
Part of what is spurring the growing challenge to Canadian militarism is revulsion at what’s happening in Gaza. A significant share of the crowd at the Draw the Line protest I attended in Niagara Saturday seemed to have come out because of Gaza. Watching the horrors Ottawa is backing there, makes it hard to believe the mythology that the Canadian military will be used to defend international law or human rights.
As progressive minded people consider the issue, we shouldn’t just oppose Carney’s massive boost in military spending. We should ask ourselves why a country like Mexico spends 0.7% of GDP on the military and how come Iceland and Costa Rica don’t have militaries.
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