Is Canada about to get serious about the military?

Big announcement coming on defence spending, a long chat with Ambassador Pete, Ben Shapiro on Musk vs Trump and the backstory.

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On Monday morning, Prime Minister Mark Carney will give a speech in Toronto, tour a military facility and then speak to the media. Why on earth is a Liberal PM doing any of this?

It’s all about Donald Trump.

Carney is setting the table for the meal that I told you was coming last week. If you were paying attention, you saw my report last Tuesday that a deal was getting close between Ottawa and Washington and then on Wednesday that a draft proposal was in place.

On Friday, he announced the legislation on reducing internal trade barriers from the federal perspective and his plans for building projects of national interest. As I noted at the time, if you listen to Carney’s words, he won the election, but Pierre Poilievre won the argument.

It’s cold comfort to Poilievre to see policies that he pushed for years being proposed – even in water downed forms – by the guy that beat him in the election.

So, that brings us to Monday’s defence announcement.

Carney will be making an announcement in Toronto that in some ways has one person in mind, Trump. He’s going to announce a big hike in spending as part of his push to get a trade deal. If Trump can get Canada to increase defence spending, it gives him the win to strike a deal.

He can claim that the United States isn’t subsidizing Canada any longer.

On many fronts, Trump’s claims of subsidizing the country are false, but on defence it is true. We have under the American umbrella for far too long without paying our fair share.

According to the World Bank, we went from spending 4% of our GDP on defence in 1960 to 2.7% in 1967 and then after Pierre Trudeau took over in 1968 it began to drop and never really recovered.

There is speculation that Carney will announce a significant increase in spending, perhaps to 2% of GDP from the current 1.3%. Others believe he may announce 2.5%, 3%, or even higher. A few are predicting a bold plan to raise spending to 5%, a level some European countries are moving toward.

Canada’s military – which holds a very dear place in my heart - simply wouldn’t know what to do with that kind of cash infusion.

They are currently short, somewhere between 14,000 and 15,000 active service members, and that is with a pathetically low level of strength. Morale is low, standards have been lowered to try and recruit more, and it hasn’t worked.

Seeing big, out of shape men with man buns and beards in uniform on parade doesn’t exactly invoke the warrior ethos that you need for the military. And if you find that statement troubling and don’t know why the current regulations are the issue and not the statement, then you’ve never been near and don’t understand the military.

Anyway, Carney should announce something big on Monday as he continues to set the table for announcing a trade deal with Trump.

But what do the American say...

More than a decade ago I hosted a TV show, a highly popular one, on the now defunct Sun News Network. A semi-regular guest was a guy named Pete Hoekstra; a former Republican member of the House of Representatives who had helped frame the Contract with America with Newt Gingrich.

Hoekstra would come on my show and try to explain Republican political points of view to Canadians. That was a rare thing back then when, and really still is, because in Canadian media circles, Republicans are always treated as the lowest of the low.

Well now, Pete Hoekstra is Ambassador Pete Hoekstra, Donald Trump’s representative to Canada.

On Friday, I had the chance to sit down with him for an extended interview for the Full Comment Podcast. We turned the cameras on and talked Canada-U.S. relations. This is a man who knows Donald Trump well, he knows Canada well and you should pay attention to what he says.

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About that Warrior Culture...

Ben Shapiro’s latest column is about the Trump administration’s decision to rename the USNS Harvey Milk. It’s sure to outrage some, but on this point, Shapiro has a point.

The naming of navy ships, or anything else in the military, is about building up the unit and not the individual. Trust me, basic training is all about taking the individual out of the equation and making it all about the unit.

I was on route to receiving top honours in basic training until I forgot this. Sgt. Shaw and his team never forgave me.

Speaking of Ben...

Our friend at The Daily Wire had a fun little scoop that I didn’t hear elsewhere about the break-up between Elon Musk and Donald Trump. Plenty of people have tried to put it down to two oversized egos, but Shapiro has a different take.

He says it comes down to the basest issue – petty jealousy.

What to read...

Lorne Gunter is taking the common sense approach on the issue of graphic content in school libraries. There is an uproar over Premier Danielle Smith’s government ordering school libraries to drop certain publications with graphic depictions of oral sex, among other things, but Gunter explains why this is the right thing to do.

Franco Terrazzano, the federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation is making the argument that Canada Post is losing a ton of money so the government should privatize it. My questions is, who would buy it? You could privatize the functions Canada Post delivers, but you could never privatize it like we did Air Canada or Petro-Canada.

I’ve known Stephen LeDrew a long time and I consider the former President of the Liberal Party of Canada to be a friend. Yes, you can be friends with Liberals. LeDrew was a fierce critic of Trudeau, but so far, likes what he sees with Carney and that could be a long-term problem for Poilievre and the federal Conservatives if more and more people feel that way.