There’s multiple reason why Canada needs to ramp up its military spending and its becoming more obvious as time goes by.
NATO agreement
Canada has an agreement with NATO partner nations to maintain guaranteed 2% of its GDP to military spending budget and unfortunately we have not met that goal in many years. Canada has been a failure to uphold its duty.
The GDP is the countries Gross Domestic Product and Canada’s is around $1.4 trillion and the United States is about $20 trillion.
Since the 1960’s Canada’s military funding has dropped from around 4% GDP to 1.2% GDP. In comparison the united states spends 3% to 4% of their GDP on their military.
The spending dollar figure if we look at current times in USD, Canada is on average spending $18 billion to $22 billion where the United States is spending about $800 Billion on their military.
Canada has about 70,000 active personnel.
This graph only shows Canada’s GDP and spending.
Lots of land
Canada is also the second largest country in the world by land mass, total area of 9,984,670 km2, including 891,163 km2 of freshwater. According to Libraries over 90% of Canadians live within 150 miles of the US border despite having such a large land area.
World Atlas says Canada – U.S. land boarder is the longest “unprotected” border in the world, measuring 8891.626 kilometers / 5,525 miles long.
Fortunately our unprotected border isn’t really that big of a risk because to gain access from our southern border you must be in the U.S.A.
Our southern neighbors are our biggest allies on the planet which is why we benefit. We don’t need to worry about an invasion because how similar our cultures are.
Our aircrafts are out of date and not stable enough for modern structural load upgrades. “Inspections found cracks in 21 out of 23 aircraft in the fleet” of Cyclone helicopters after electronic support measures and satellite communication antenna mounts were added.
According to stats Canada there is 52,455 Islands and thousands of these are in the arctic circle, our northern waters. Canada’s Arctic Archipelago is home to more than 36,000 Islands and most of it belongs to Nunavut and the other portion is North West Territories. The islands themselves have been incontestably Canadian since the UK transferred title over them in 1880. We must be on guard for a challenge now because of melting ice making it more accessible.
Large coast line and thousands of Islands
According to Stats Canada we have the longest costal shoreline in the world measuring 243,042 km (includes the mainland coast and the coasts of offshore islands). This wraps from western Canada, B.C. coast up north across the territories heading east then south to form the eastern coast line.
The North West Passage, even though Canada surrounds the passage, it is recognized as a International passage. No one is require to get permission from Canada to use the passage. In this area unlike traditional waters inside the borders, submarines are allowed to go through fully submerged.
The ice in the North is stating to melt more and making the waters more inviting to other nations looking to expand their natural resource projects and challenge Canada over its claim to the area.
Foreign military at our borders
Russia has been getting near Canada’s and United States borders quiet a bit in shows of trying to flex its muscles. We have seen incidents where foreign military is getting to close for comfort secretly. NORAD has reported Canadian and American fighter jets intercepting Russian bombers and escorting them away from our land in 2019. There is documentation for 2020 where 2 more Russian bombers were intercepted by U.S. and Canadian fighter jets. They were also escorted away from Alaska. In 2021 there was 5 Russian jets that buzzed by Alaska entering the Alaskan Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ). More Russian war submarines have even been spotted on the East Coast where Canada monitored a pair of “nuclear-powered Russian submarines” in the area
Russia even put in a application to stretch imaginary borders and extend the limits of its Continental Shelf further in to the Artic Ocean seabed.
The Arctic has always been an interest for China notably in the 1990’s when it tried to claim a so-called “near-Arctic state” which it is not. But Russia has partnered with China on many projects in the Arctic since 2016.
