3 ms·

I have no desire to vouch for the sibling comment (currently dead), but not being Canadian I was curious about their claim (I don't generally track budget detai

I have no desire to vouch for the sibling comment (currently dead), but not being Canadian I was curious about their claim (I don't generally track budget details of other countries, sorry). https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.CD?end=2021&locations=CA&start=1960&view=chart https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.CD?end=2021... - Military spending in current USD https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS?end=2021&locations=CA&start=1960&view=chart https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS?end=2... - Military spending as percent of GDP Trudeau has been the Canadian PM since 2015 (end of year) and other, than 2016 and 2019, military spending has gone up every year. Over his time as PM there has been a net increase in military spending. The biggest jump was $4.5 billion in 2017, from $17.74 billion to $22.27 billion. It's interesting to see claims targeting a particular politician show up that are so easily shown to be false. What's the point?

mardifoufs 4y ago
I think the point is that the Canadian military has been due for tons and tons of upgrades and needs a lot of new equipment. That goes for the navy, but especially for the airforce. Just maintaining a constant spend (relative to GDP) is not enough when you have tons of 40-50 year old equipment (ships, airplanes, vehicules) all reaching their end of life at the same time. He also slashed some procurement programs (a new F-35 fleet, some ships) very early on that would've turned out to be very, very useful in retrospect. (I personally don't think we should spend anything but the bare minimum in defense here in Canada, since we obviously depend on our neighbors anyways. But that's the argument for saying that Trudeau neglected the armed forces, as far as I understand it).
- Jtsummers 4y ago
  The claim was Trudeau had defunded the military. Mismanaged is a different claim. A 25% budget increase in one year is hardly defunding.

mardifoufs 4y ago

I think the point is that the Canadian military has been due for tons and tons of upgrades and needs a lot of new equipment. That goes for the navy, but especially for the airforce. Just maintaining a constant spend (relative to GDP) is not enough when you have tons of 40-50 year old equipment (ships, airplanes, vehicules) all reaching their end of life at the same time. He also slashed some procurement programs (a new F-35 fleet, some ships) very early on that would've turned out to be very, very useful in retrospect. (I personally don't think we should spend anything but the bare minimum in defense here in Canada, since we obviously depend on our neighbors anyways. But that's the argument for saying that Trudeau neglected the armed forces, as far as I understand it).

Jtsummers 4y ago
The claim was Trudeau had defunded the military. Mismanaged is a different claim. A 25% budget increase in one year is hardly defunding.