In this episode of the Full Comment podcast, host Brian Lyle Lilly is joined by David Perry, the President of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, and Christian Luprecht, a professor at the Royal Military College in Kingston and Queen's University, to discuss what exactly is the Canadian military?
00:01:26.280I assume that's what we see every night on the news as drones.
00:01:31.120That was Dominic LeBlanc, the minister of just about everything,
00:01:33.860talking about new investments for the Canadian military.
00:01:37.640The Carney government's been doing a lot of those lately,
00:01:39.680but have we actually hit the 2% target that NATO calls for?
00:01:44.100And will we ever get to 5% of GDP being spent on defense?
00:01:48.940Hello, welcome to the Full Comment podcast.
00:01:50.740My name is Brian Lilly, your host, and we're going to try and make sure that we work through all of this and get a good sense of what the actual purpose of the Canadian military is at this point.
00:02:03.680Joining me to talk about this is David Perry.
00:02:05.940He's the president of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute and Christian Luprecht, who is the professor at the Royal Military College in Kingston, as well as at Queen's University.
00:02:18.460So, I'll start with you, David. We magically hit 2% when we weren't spending 1%. Did we actually double our defense spending, or is it a bit of creative accounting going on?
00:02:30.420I think there's a lot of things going on. I'd say for one thing to be really technical, we don't know whether or not we've hit anything because the data that everybody's talking about is an estimate that is noted in the Secretary General for NATO's annual report. That's not just for Canada, that's for all the allies. There's a little letter E next to the data for 2025 because I don't think anybody yet has final closed off books.
00:02:54.460And I mention that because historically there has been, at times, a fairly significant difference between what we've estimated we're going to do and what we actually have done in practice.
00:03:04.040But at least I think it's positive that we're on the right track because even 11 months ago, this wouldn't have been an estimate that was possible.
00:03:12.200And there have been a couple of broad things that have happened.
00:03:14.200And the reorganization of the Canadian Coast Guard to fall under the Department of National Defense, as far as I can tell, has had some material impact by virtue of the accounting changes come with that.
00:03:27.760That's about four and a half billion dollars of money that was allocated to the fisheries department that is now with defense, right?
00:03:36.940My understanding was the number is a little smaller than that, about half.
00:03:39.580We are nearly as supportive of our Coast Guard as I think we need to be moving forward, or at least that we have been. It's closer to two is my understanding. And some of that had already previously been counted. But I think more of it is now because the organization's moved and their organizational mandate has changed.
00:03:56.920But then the other thing is like we actually have increased spending. So you go back and pick a different reference point. I was just pulling some data on this last couple of days. Like nominally, the overall spend at the Department of National Defense has increased by almost 100% in the last five years in terms of the top line.
00:04:14.100And the real significant increase, if you chunk that up in terms of the lines of spending at defense, is investment in capital equipment. So all of the initiatives to buy airplanes, to buy new vehicles, in some cases munitions, those have finally started flowing.
00:04:31.080A lot of that was the result of things initiated by Justin Trudeau that are just now finally getting flowing.
00:04:37.960And then Prime Minister Carney gave some top-ups sort of sprinkled across the wider defense budget.
00:04:43.360A personnel compensation increase that was announced in the fall, a couple billion dollars for that.
00:04:48.300A couple billion dollars allocated to some of the initiatives they have for their defense industrial strategy.
00:04:53.060And then additional spending of smaller amounts on information technology, support to the readiness of fleets through in-service support and maintenance, and plussing up some of the budgets for capital equipment.
00:05:05.660So I think it's a combination of a whole bunch of things that have us at least within the finish line of seeing a 2% mark.
00:05:12.400So, Christian, is the giving everyone a raise and topping up some spending,
00:05:18.360is that real investment in our military, or how do you see it playing out?
00:05:25.180Well, it's also a question of synergies and effects,
00:05:27.180and I think the conversation we've not had is about
00:05:29.400what actual effects do we want to achieve with that investment.
00:05:32.480So we have some sense of what we want to do in the Arctic and Arctic defense.
00:05:36.520Of course, that's how we started our conversation.
00:05:39.260But, you know, what are the key? So there's the transatlantic alliance, the need to shore up the alliance. The alliance is Canada's ultimately single most important multilateral institution to counteract the vagaries of U.S. anti-lateralism.
00:05:57.480And we still, I think, both the military and to some extent politicians think of it as a defense organization, whereas I think we need to think about the Canadian Armed Forces as an instrument of statecraft that allows us to assert political and economic interests in Canadian sovereignty in a time when Canadian sovereignty is hard-pressed and under duress.
00:06:22.580And so what is it that we want the Canadian Armed Forces to accomplish to that effect?
00:06:28.140And I'd also say we still talk about investments in defense.
00:06:31.240And I don't find that language particularly helpful.0.85
00:06:34.240For one reason that Canadians, I think, although more Canadians now than perhaps before,
00:06:39.480investing in defense isn't a big vote-getter.
00:06:42.340And what I think we're actually investing in is deterrence.
00:06:45.580What we're investing in is changing the adversary's mind.
00:06:49.700What we're investing in is real capabilities so that adversaries take us seriously and so that allies take us seriously.
00:06:59.640So that touches on a point that I'd like both of you to address, which is what is the role of the Canadian Armed Forces?
00:07:08.380At one point, it was force projection going into the Second World War, the First World War, Korea.
00:07:37.360What is the role of the Canadian Armed Forces in these days?
00:07:40.840And what should it be beyond filling sandbags in a natural disaster, which at times is what government has looked to the military to do?
00:07:52.760When we share the continent with the largest military force, the largest economy in the world, there was always a considerable threat to our sovereignty.
00:08:02.000And one of my late colleagues, Niels Orvik, wrote a famous piece about what are we investing in?
00:09:56.960and among the political leadership in this country
00:09:59.920that the premium that we've been paying for our insurance policy
00:10:03.680is increasingly inadequate and insufficient relative to the risk that we're facing.
00:10:10.920You said that defense spending is not a vote-getter,
00:10:16.920and this is the first time in a long time.
00:10:19.260I would argue that Paul Martin and then Stephen Harper
00:10:21.600increased defense spending in a significant way
00:10:24.880at the beginning of the Afghan mission,
00:10:26.740and Stephen Harper quickly found out it got him no support.
00:10:29.420In fact, it cost him politically, and then he withdrew again. So are politicians coming up with a different calculus, David, about, as Christian said, needing that insurance policy? What do you see as the role of the Canadian Armed Forces in this day and age? How should the public view their role?
00:10:52.000Well, I think you're asking a question that we haven't seen enough of an answer to from the government. I would give Prime Minister Carney a huge amount of credit for devoting what I think had been the single most missing variable in Canada's defence in recent years, which was political leadership and an articulation of the need to make investments and an articulation of a priority being placed on defence, which I have, from my own view, I've seen from this government that I hadn't seen for a long time.
00:11:22.000I think, though, to your point, the question about what do we want to see our armed forces be able to do in the future, even given the money the government's spent in this past fiscal year that ended two days ago as when we're having this conversation and what they're planning to spend this current fiscal year, which just started, which is considerable, just on the Department of National Defense alone, we're now talking about about 50 billion a year in the main estimates as they start the year.
00:11:45.740That's a huge increase and a really significant sum and a major reallocation of funds from other government activities.
00:11:53.340And I think we need to see more articulation from the crown of what they actually want to see the armed forces be able to do.
00:12:00.820We've seen a focus, as we're talking about, on the Arctic.
00:12:04.280That's great, but we don't really have an articulation of what the relative weight of effort between that and other things that we've focused on in the past is going to be.
00:12:11.700How much emphasis are we going to put towards the ability to deter various adversaries, like as Christian was saying, versus being able to fight wars overseas? In what way, with whom? The past framework around our defense policy dating back to just after the Second World War would be that we'd answer all of those questions in context in combination with our American allies primarily and with the rest of the NATO alliance, although that's really very heavily reliant on the U.S. in any respect.
00:12:40.700And I think that the prime minister needs to flesh out what he's talking about when he keeps mentioning a rupture and a different relationship with the United States, because the relationship with the United States, to some of Christian's point, has been the fundamental cornerstone of Canadian defense dating back to the end of the Second World War.
00:12:59.080And if that's changing, we need to know how and in what ways and what the impacts are.
00:13:03.440well and i i think answering that question but the relationship and about what we want for our
00:13:11.620forces lead you to okay how does that impact other questions such as what is the role of norad are we
00:13:18.820still going to be part of norad uh the chief of norad the other day was saying that we you know
00:13:23.820you don't need the f-35 to defend north america okay but are we just buying fighter jets to defend
00:13:31.180North America? Or are we going to be part of, you know, campaigns like we were in the past in
00:13:37.020Bosnia, where our fighter jets were deployed? They were deployed for a time against ISIS about
00:13:42.40015 or a year, 10, 15 years ago. So, I mean, those are, I don't think we're asking or answering the
00:13:50.900fundamental questions as we run to spend money, which could turn out to be problematic.
00:13:56.380So there's a lot there. I think just one thing, at least in my interpretation with General Guillaume, the NORAC commander was talking about, it was a response to what the United States should do with its investment dollars.
00:14:09.260and they already have a number of F-35s as well as F-22s
00:14:13.680and a much broader collection of air assets than Canada does.
00:14:18.200So I guess I'm a little cautious about how much inference
00:14:22.300has been taken for what Canada should do
00:14:23.920when we're making a decision about what modern airplane
00:14:27.400we should finally buy after two decades of dithering.
00:14:31.340The United States has already bought a number of a whole range
00:14:35.160So their decision space is pretty different than ours.
00:14:38.560I think that there's no question that the NORAD mission will continue along the same lines because we don't have very much discretion on that. We need to defend North America. The way that the whole system has been constructed has been for it to be integrated with our American allies. I don't think there's any reasonable scenario where that changes fundamentally, unless Canada is willing to probably add zero to our investment.
00:15:02.740You said, finally, buy a fighter jet. I just counted up six elections I've covered where the F-35 has been an issue to some degree or another. I've spoken with senior officials in the Canadian Armed Forces, spoken to senior officials in the Royal Canadian Air Force.
00:15:23.840they believe fully that it needs to be the F-35 and that the Gripen is a bit of a pipe dream.
00:15:31.140My understanding from cabinet is that David McGinty, the Minister of National Defense
00:15:36.160currently, is all in for the F-35. The officials are all in for the F-35, but there's a split in
00:15:43.880cabinet with some others, including Industry Minister Melanie Jolie wanting the Gripen. So
00:15:49.300So let's talk for a couple of minutes. We'll start with you, Christian. We do not have a big enough air force to be running two different types of fighter jets, in my view. And we've all seen the analysis. The F-35 is the far superior. I don't see how we turn around and buy the grip, and unless we believe this fallacy that it's going to create 10,000 jobs in Canada when it created 60 in Brazil.
00:16:15.800So, yeah, so let's, I think, understand this in context and how painful our American colleagues find this conversation. The five Nordic countries with 25 million people have 250 fighter jets here now operational.
00:16:34.760And we are having a 20-year debate about whether to buy fighter jets, what kind of fighter jet, and about buying 88 fighter jets.
00:16:43.580And then we keep making commitments and walking them back.
00:16:47.200And every time we make the commitment, we say, we are committed to NORAD.
00:16:53.700And then for political reasons, we walk it back.
00:16:55.460The damage that does to our credibility as an ally is very difficult to overestimate and seems to be impossible to explain to Canadians and to the political leadership in this country.
00:17:10.280And then we wonder why allies do not invite us to key meetings, will not have us on key press releases, do not coordinate with us, and leave us out in the cold on key decisions.
00:17:22.580because we're increasing scene is not serious.
00:17:25.700And as much as the prime minister is trying,
00:19:34.500And so that is a very tall order for an organization that has, by and large, lost many of its key
00:19:43.000areas of expertise that would be required to deliver in the current environment similar to
00:19:49.320the federal civil service as a whole but what do you say about the f-35 versus the grippen which
00:19:55.380one so this so look i mean my personal view as a professor and as a citizeness the f-35 is the
00:20:06.320obvious answer because it's not just about defending the continent it is about interoperability
00:20:11.960with NORAD, but it is also about the way Canada adds value with its equipment is by being fully
00:20:18.480interoperable with the U.S. So that if the U.S. wants to deploy its resources somewhere else in
00:20:23.360the world to contest whatever conflict, Canada can come in and say, we can backfill with our
00:20:28.580capabilities. We're talking about two completely different platforms. The Gripen is a fighter jet.
00:20:35.120The F-35 is a digital command and control platform that happens to fly and is a fully integrated intelligence and ISR reconnaissance platform.
00:20:48.000They deliver completely different capabilities.
00:20:50.360But if you're a politician, you look at the last 40 years, the missions we've run for the last 40 years, you could deliver with an F-18, with a Gripen.
00:21:00.180The issue, of course, is we don't know what the next 40 years look like.
00:21:03.740if we agree it's going to be much more volatile, we probably want to invest in the most capable
00:21:09.660platform that's going to give us the greatest bang for a buck. I'm not convinced the Gripen
00:21:14.320is going to be any cheaper in the end than what we've already lined up with the F-35.
00:21:19.540But it is a very important laboratory because it shows that while the government talks,
00:21:25.820for instance, about a defense industrial strategy, what we actually have is an industrial strategy
00:22:29.760Well, not in terms of the capability. I mean, as you said, we've looked at that mix. We've answered that question more than once. And I think the point of context, I think somehow we've forgotten about this, is that when we ran the competition that selected the F-35, it was run by the Trudeau government that campaigned on not buying that airplane.
00:22:50.580and beyond that campaigned on the incoherent set of promises that they would not select that
00:22:56.320aircraft but they would also run an open competition to pick one mutually incompatible
00:23:01.840but okay and then they spent a couple of years still adamantly pursuing the acquisition of
00:23:08.500aircraft other than the f-35 they looked at the purchase of super hornets from boeing on an
00:23:14.280interim basis long story they ended up walking all of that back and then the government that
00:23:19.800Again, they campaigned on not buying it, ran a competition, and selected it at the outcome.
00:23:24.580I think had there been any ambiguity or any margin of doubt about whether or not the F-35 was the best choice,
00:23:32.460from my vantage point, the government that had campaigned on not buying it would not have picked it.
00:23:38.020I think it was clear cut that that's the best outcome.
00:23:41.460I think a year ago I had a bit more of a sympathy for reflecting on the purchase.
00:23:48.060I guess the administration in Washington has left lots of room to question the extent of the United States relationship, but it's now been more than a year.
00:23:57.580I don't think we've actually really seen any substantiation of some of the concerns about whether or not the United States would be a reliable supplier of military equipment.
00:24:06.720I guess the analogy that I like to keep drawing is if we're going to be concerned about American supplied software, and then I think the government of Canada needs to spend an awful lot more time focused on its Office 365 account than on avionics and airplane software.
00:24:20.920If Microsoft, if we're concerned that the United States government will preclude American companies from supporting us through software, the government of Canada would cease to function if its Outlook account and Teams meetings were inoperable.
00:24:32.460That's a way bigger threat to Canadian government operations as well as defense
00:24:35.900than anything to do with an airplane of any particular type, in my view.
00:24:38.740Yeah, they'd be rushing to revive Corral and their WordPerfect platform.
00:31:27.640or that the government would like to hold.
00:31:31.020And so that inherent, that is sort of the proud sort of tradition in Canada
00:31:35.520is rather than having an open competition
00:31:37.800where we try to make sure we have the best and most efficient,
00:31:40.920most innovative enterprises win, we try to pick winners.
00:31:45.720So we're designers rather than gardeners.
00:31:48.520And the design thing never seems to work very well.
00:31:51.380It seems to cost us an exorbitant amount of money
00:31:53.640and gives us a relatively low rate of return.
00:31:56.940And my worry here is we're spending so much money on defense.
00:32:00.880If we can't actually deliver for Canadians with the investments that we're making, there's going to be a serious blowback.
00:32:08.360The precedent is what the previous social democratic coalition in Germany did after the invasion of Ukraine that put 100 billion euros on the table.
00:32:16.240What is there to show for in Germany for the money that was spent other than, interesting enough, a few fighter jets?
00:32:22.560And so there's a real risk associated with the spending that the government is making here.
00:32:26.940in terms of actually delivering real benefits to Canada and to Canadians.
00:32:33.140Is there too much pork barreling going on here, David?
00:32:36.560Is there risk of graft with all this money going out the door?
00:32:41.820I guess I have a bit of a different view from Christian.
00:32:44.840I think that what the government's doing with their industrial strategy is long overdue.
00:32:49.080I think our government, like every government anywhere,
00:32:54.020balances a mix of considerations when it's buying things for their military.
00:32:58.940You have the military capability piece, but I'm not sure that there's any jurisdiction on the
00:33:03.060planet that legitimately just has zero interest in getting domestic economic return when they're
00:33:08.220making the purchases. It gets expressed and configured differently, and Canada's got its
00:33:12.120own unique system. Our regional and political dynamics, federalism overlays on that in ways
00:33:17.760that manifest differently than they do in other jurisdictions, but it's the same basic concern
00:33:21.540that countries everywhere, all of our allies have.
00:33:24.100So it's balancing out those overall objectives
00:33:27.420from the government of which economic return
00:33:49.060And people have pointed out limits and criticisms with the economic offset policies, formerly the industrial regional benefit policy, which changed about a decade ago to industrial technological benefit policies.
00:34:00.680And now with the submarine deal, as you're saying, we're adding on a new category and we'll see whether or not it's a one-off or whether or not it's stick going forward.
00:34:08.240of beyond just the formula and the set of industrial technological benefits, which have
00:34:14.580been part of our procurement landscape since 2014, we're now looking at a wider strategic
00:34:20.220value to be gained through the submarine purchase.
00:34:23.960And I'm not clear about whether or not that feature is going to stick around or whether
00:34:27.100or not the submarine deal was so unique for a couple of reasons why it was applicable.
00:34:31.340I think some of the reasons why it was so unique and why it's an opportunity for the
00:34:34.760countries. Like this is the largest international defense purchase that I'm aware of outside of
00:34:41.480AUKUS and what Australia is doing with those submarines. These are incredibly expensive
00:34:45.920pieces of technology. And this would be the largest conventional submarine buy that I'm aware of
00:34:50.520on the international market if we do select up to 12. So it's a huge opportunity for either country.
00:34:57.180And at a time when the prime minister, I think rightly is looking to try and diversify our
00:35:01.800economy as much as we can and try and reinforce some of our manufacturing ability and certain
00:35:07.700types of production in particular. I think it's smart and atypically un-Canadian for us to try1.00
00:35:13.820and be doing this in a savvy way. We've got it down to a bake-off between two giant market
00:35:18.480economies that happen to align reasonably well with Canada's, and I think we're trying to get
00:35:23.600the best deal possible. I can tell you that Vic Fidelli, the cabinet minister in the Ford
00:35:28.560government here in Ontario, he's tasked with trying to attract investment, and he's been
00:35:34.720trying to get Hyundai to locate here for some time. So this is potentially a big bit of help
00:35:41.060for the Ford government from the Carney government, if they're successful at that. And I guess that
00:35:45.820would require the contract to go to the South Korean manufacturer. But we're watching a war
00:36:21.940And scalability, flexibility is absolutely key.
00:36:24.560And I think, you know, David is very much right, like that the defense industrial strategy, it gives a direction of where we want the investments to go and what we're trying to build out.
00:36:33.300And that's really important, both for the markets and for government spending and sort of what is it that we're actually trying to achieve with those investments on the scalability and flexibility side in a rapidly changing security environment.
00:36:50.560because if we're simply learning how to scale building submarines, for instance,
00:36:55.620that's not going to be particularly useful in the world that we live in.
00:37:00.620But it comes down also to, I mean, you talked about,
00:37:04.060I see the submarine, but there's people who disagree with me on this,
00:37:06.800similar to the Gripen and the F-35, right?
00:37:09.560I mean, so what's on offer from South Korea is we can deliver quickly
00:37:13.700on a product that is a very conventional product
00:37:16.940that is an entire generation behind where the German product is
00:37:20.880that is far too large, in my view, for Canadian needs,
00:37:24.680that is essentially built as a submarine primarily for deterrence
00:37:57.500Now I think it's thinking about splitting the purchase for exactly the reasons that
00:38:00.320you point out, because it's getting pressure from different provincial governments.
00:38:04.160So the politics here, I worry, are superseding the need to think about the future security environment and the rapidly changing nature of warfare and our ability to deliver both mass and class that serves and is going to serve not just Canada's best interests,
00:38:30.640but the Canadian government's ability to take the initiative.
00:38:35.180This is what, for me, the investment is really about.
00:38:41.160As Canadians, we complain bitterly about the international security environment we live in,
00:38:45.520and we don't take responsibility for the fact that it is our undercapitalization
00:38:51.540that is in part responsible for an environment that we left to the United States
00:38:56.920in terms of international security, and now we don't like the result of what we're getting.
00:39:00.640And so what we got to invest in is the ability to take the initiative, both now and in the future, in this environment.
00:39:08.660And I'm not sure that we're really, as a country, invested in, as we were during the Second World War, at the end of the Second World War, during the Suez Crisis, having the capabilities that allow us to shape that security environment rather than to fight it.
00:39:24.640You know, it's always easier to shape the terrain than to fight the terrain, as any military officer will tell you.
00:39:30.800And I'm not sure we're thinking about the capabilities we want to shape the terrain.
00:39:36.040David, I was speaking with someone recently about how the political climate is changing our industrial abilities.
00:39:47.180The ability to export automobiles south of the border.
00:39:52.380um clearly uh donald trump wants to see auto jobs in the united states not here joe biden wanted
00:39:59.560that before and i don't think the next u.s president will be different and and what this
00:40:05.760person was saying to me is that we should look at some of these plants that are there now
00:40:11.600as the potential to just retool them and have them designing things like the drones and building
00:40:19.540Things like the drones that are being used in the war in Iran, the war in Ukraine. Is that a smart move? Is that something Canada could do and then become a net exporter of military equipment?
00:40:32.500Well, becoming an increased exporter, the industrial strategy set a target of increasing those exports by 50%. I don't think that that would realistically push us to on net be a net exporter, but they've got a desire to do more exports in the defense space out of this country.
00:40:53.940And I've been pleasantly surprised with how much effort they put into doing a bunch of things to support that in a better way than we have in the past.
00:41:02.260I think maybe kind of circle back to some of the previous comments Christian was making and the question you asked about the industrial production.
00:41:09.200I think like across the West, we've become incapable of producing enough defense material to fight wars.
00:41:16.300We can't even produce enough to help Ukraine fight a war.
00:41:19.420I think the Western system right now, based on the last month of what's happened in the Persian Gulf, is going to be completely maxed out on its ability to build and deploy and restock air defense systems. In the future, I think what's most likely is we're going to have a mix of conventional systems and more modern technology as part of a mix.
00:41:37.860I think it's important to keep in mind that a lot of what Ukraine is doing with some of their innovations being driven by an inability on the rest of the Western alliance to supply them with the things that they had asked us for.
00:41:49.760And so that does circle back to the question about the production out of the auto sector.
00:42:00.260So just a few days ago, there was an announcement about making investments in ammunition facilities in this country to increase capacity.
00:42:07.340We haven't yet seen a contract to buy more ammunition yet. So we don't actually have full engagement of the actual defense industrial base in this country as it exists. And I think we need to look to maximize what we're asking from the people that already know how to do this stuff, that know how to handle the security requirements, which are extensive in this space, to know how to deal with the government of Canada contracting process, which is, I can't imagine that my car would cost what it does today without a hugely dissimilar process.
00:42:37.340of those people working together, then the federal government engages the defense sector.
00:42:41.460Your average car would probably be about a half million dollars if it had to go through a
00:42:44.800contracting process, anything like the one that the government of Canada has used for decades to
00:42:49.260buy defense material. So adapting to all of that is not something you can just do on the fly.
00:42:55.320I understand the appeal of that, and there's some potential to do that, no question. But I think we
00:43:00.520should first look to get our existing industry that makes a whole bunch of relevant things,
00:43:04.620in some cases sells it all around the world, but doesn't sell to its own military.
00:43:08.580Let's get that fully engaged first before we see whether or not you can get underutilized
00:43:12.740auto manufacturing capacity reconverted. Because it's not like the Second World War. People aren't
00:43:18.120going to roll over and start banging together Sherman tanks the way they did in the 1940s.
00:43:22.820The pace of technology has expanded a lot. The production is fundamentally different than it
00:43:28.560was back when that was doable. And there's a whole bunch of other aspects of the contracting regime
00:43:34.600This part goes back to the discussion about urgency, which has not yet been reflected in a change in procurement process, other than a change in structure in the creation of a new investment agency.
00:43:45.580So for lots of reasons, I think we need more industrial production, but we need defense industrial production, not just more industry that's necessarily going to get dragged into defense until we get more of the defense goods on the line.
00:45:23.080counting towards the same as European components.
00:45:25.800So you can technically now build European defense hardware with 80% Canadian components is because of the complementarity of what Canada can offer.
00:45:37.280So I think if we're smart, there's significant, especially high value, high tech complementarity that this country can build out that would add considerable value, not just to Europe, but to the United States, to allies in the Indo-Pacific.
00:45:52.040And of course, we talk about NATO, but what are key advantages that Canada has in NATO, that we have effectively a very comprehensive supply chain in this country.
00:46:02.300If you think about hydrocarbons, you think about critical minerals, you think about our human skills and our relatively highly skilled workforce and our diverse workforce, that we have energy security right here.
00:46:16.100So I always think we think too narrowly about alliances. What can Canada provide other than defense to alliances?
00:46:21.540Well, what Europe has been asking for and what Japan and other countries have been asking for for a decade, energy security, liquefied natural gas, oil, critical minerals, that supply chain security, all those things that are missing, for instance, in Europe and the Indo-Pacific, they're just as important as what we're actually building out on defense.
00:46:42.780But beyond that, Christian, beyond that, there are, you know, European allies who don't believe that the United States is a reliable partner. The prime minister has said that. And you've got Donald Trump saying, well, maybe I'll leave NATO. So that's my question is, does NATO survive or are we at a fracture point?
00:47:03.720I don't think the US is going to pull out of NATO. Look, I mean, the joke is that NATO stands for needs Americans to operate. There's considerable value. Nowhere else in the world does the US spend less on defense and get a higher rate of return than in Europe, because it has 31 countries around the table with whom it can coordinate.
00:47:22.120The U.S. could only dream of that sort of efficiency and economies in the Indo-Pacific
00:47:37.760Keep the Russians out, keep the Americans in and the Germans down, which is also about0.79
00:47:41.940an alternative world where you can turn all of that around, that it was always going to0.87
00:47:46.160be difficult to work with the Americans, that the Americans have historically not gotten
00:47:49.640involved in entanglements, that is to say in alliances. And I think what we're hearing,
00:47:53.640what the U.S. president is making clear, we all, if we value America's participation,
00:47:58.720we need to show that we value that participation by working a lot harder to keep the United States
00:48:05.500in. And what we're seeing from the United States president is, if you don't do that,
00:48:09.360that's fine. But America is just going to do it on its own.
00:48:12.900David, what are your thoughts on NATO's survival?
00:48:15.180I think it's going to perpetuate in a much different form. I think I disagree with a couple of things that Krishna outlined there. I mean, I think the president is doing much more than just saying, we all really need to step up. I think that would have been entirely fair ball.
00:48:30.580I think he is taking seemingly almost every opportunity to run down allies when he has also taken every single opportunity to not do the same thing with the Kremlin and Vladimir Putin, which is the reason, like the defending Europe and the North Atlantic against the Soviet Union and now Russia was the reason the alliance was created.
00:48:52.460And you've got the leader of the largest ally, which now seems to have a completely different take towards the principal adversary for which the alliance was constructed than everybody else in the alliance. That's a huge shift.
00:49:06.280The issue, though, as Christian was saying, though, is that the alliance doesn't work the way it does now without the United States.
00:49:13.360There's been progressive shift in focus on the United States in recent years, but we still collectively rely on them to do all the hard stuff.
00:49:22.360All of the intelligence, all the command and control background, all the high-level logistics, a lot of the industrial supply.
00:49:27.880And I think the other allies need to figure out quickly how we can do as much of what we currently rely on them to do without the Americans, because I think that they are not so quietly quitting the alliance.
00:49:41.160The fact that the U.S. lawmakers had to put in place a provision to make it legislatively more difficult for the American president to withdraw from the alliance without engaging Congress, I don't know how anybody can look at that and be reassured that the Americans are going to be there reliably the same way they were before.
00:50:40.680They knew that nobody was effectively hunting them.
00:50:43.320They knew they had escaped justice, that they were going to die in their beds.
00:50:47.740When I give talks at law schools, it's that the charter ultimately is empowering a minority.
00:50:51.560And it's empowering a minority that's a guild across the country.
00:50:54.560And it's a fairly elite guild, and the guild is lawyers.
00:50:56.360Families who were split by a referendum and brothers and sisters who never talked to each other for years after the referendum because they were so angry at each other because of the emotions on both sides.
00:51:09.340The reason he was assassinated was not because he was trying to put a satellite into space, but because the gun that he was creating had other applications that made him and the gun very dangerous.