By spending more on defence, the true north concedes it must be stronger if it wants to stay free

When federal governments make ambitious promises, Canadians are justified in their skepticism.

It took Ottawa 38 years, for example, to create a national child-care program, initially promised by Brian Mulroney's Progressive Conservatives, resurrected but never implemented by Paul Martin's Liberals, and finally made into something of a reality by Justin Trudeau's minority government and all 10 provinces.

Now Ottawa is promising something even more ambitious.

On Thursday, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland essentially formalized Canada's entry into a global conflict between open, pluralistic democracies and nationalist, authoritarian states.

"The world's democracies — including our own — can be safe only once the Russian tyrant and his armies are entirely vanquished," Freeland said during her budget speech in Ottawa, referring to President Vladimir Putin and the invasion of Ukraine.

"The world's dictators should never mistake our civility for pacifism. We know that freedom does not come for free, and that peace is guaranteed only by our readiness to fight for it."

Those are quite literally fighting words. Freeland's rhetoric has Canada, a relative spendthrift within NATO since the end of the Cold War, committed to combating continued Russian aggression and potential moves by other authoritarian states.

With its new spending plan, Canada is supposed to help the world's democracies win a global conflict while devoting 1.5 per cent of its gross domestic product to defence spending, a level that remains below the North Atlantic Treaty Organization target of two per cent.

Freeland announced an additional $8 billion in defence spending over five years. That money is supposed to help Canada meet commitments to NATO, bolster cybersecurity, improve intelligence gathering and continue the modernization of NORAD, which is responsible for North American air and maritime defence.

'A shift in attention to homeland security'

Winnipeg is a North American Aerospace Defence Command regional headquarters, but any investment in infrastructure or jobs — if that does end up here, rather than NORAD command in Colorado Springs, Colo. — would be years down the road, said Andrea Charron, director of the Centre for Defence and Security Studies at the University of Manitoba. 

First, Canada has to bolster its ability to monitor a vast swath of the Arctic, where the movements of Russian ships and aircraft have become far more critical to observe.

But the mere fact a federal government is putting more money into conventional and cyberdefence is significant, Charron said, considering the way Canada has kicked the defence-spending can down the road for decades.

"Most budgets are notable for the cuts they take to the defence budget, because it's one of the larger envelopes," she said, noting it's been tough for any Canadian government to sustain any focus on defence spending.

Mulroney, she noted, proposed the purchase of 12 nuclear submarines in 1987, only to see the Iron Curtain crumble two years later and the urgency for defence spending disappear. 

Canada spent the 1990s viewing its military as a global peacekeeping force and allowing defence spending to wither. Then came the 20-year war in Afghanistan, with its fuzzy objectives and disastrous outcome.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine, it's fair to surmise many Canadians no longer expect the military to serve purely as police officers overseas or as a component of disaster relief efforts here at home.

"There's always a balance that needs to be struck between defending Canada and North America versus assistance overseas, and sometimes you see sort of these shifts in attention," Charron said.

"So we are definitely in a shift in attention to homeland security because we now realize that North America is vulnerable."

That's not hyperbole in an era when cyberwarfare makes it possible for hostile nations to cripple critical industries half a planet away.

Healthy communities 'strongest defence in the Arctic'

Even conventionally, Canada's ability to assert its sovereignty over its vast Arctic archipelago is questionable. For example, Russia has six nuclear-powered icebreakers (with more on the way) capable of crunching through multi-year sea ice at speed.

The Canadian Coast Guard operates diesel-powered icebreakers, which can't move as quickly and have a far more limited range.

Still, hardware alone doesn't serve a deterrence function. Inuit leaders have spent decades impressing the need for Ottawa to view Arctic sovereignty outside of a purely military lens.

"It's vital that we include people in the Arctic, especially Indigenous peoples," Charron said. "The strongest defence in the Arctic is healthy, viable, sustainable communities, and so any increase in funding or infrastructure as a result of military capabilities should always see if it can be dual-use.

"For example, if you need to extend a runway for the military, let's make sure it also operates for commercial use and for being able to resupply local communities."

For some, the somewhat sudden urgency around beefing up Canada's ability to protect itself may seem jarring at a time when this country is still recovering from the economic shock of the pandemic, and has made relatively little headway in its commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

But nothing focuses public attention quite like an existential threat. The invasion of Ukraine woke many Canadians up to the consequences of an intensifying ideological, economic and strategic conflict between democracies and authoritarian states.