The Communist Party of Canada condemns the recent announcement of Prime Minister Trudeau that Canada would spend 2% of its GDP on military spending by 2032. This announcement, made at the NATO summit on July 11, is a commitment to cut healthcare and public services and promises to escalate the growing danger of global war and nuclear annihilation.
In the past sixty years, never has the world been closer to an exchange of nuclear weapons, while the peace movement globally remains relatively weak and unable to contain the march towards world war. The announcements made at July’s NATO summit in Washington DC escalated these dangers and brought the world closer to climate catastrophe.
The world is rapidly militarizing with global military spending growing by 20% over the last decade. The United States, as it’s economic power is declining in several places around the world, is leading this trend towards militarism and war with an annual war budget now approaching a trillion dollars, accounting for 39% of the total global military spending.
Canada’s military spending reached $36.7 billion last year, with the 2% of GDP commitment to NATO demanding that Canada spend $70 billion by 2032. This would mean doubling Canada’s current defence spending, which has already risen by 40% in less than 10 years, and which doesn’t include the $70 billion to buy and service 88 fighter jets, the $300 billion tagged to buy and service 15 warships, or the unknown billions to be spent on the planned purchase of new submarines. Or the more than $10 billion spent for the Ukraine war.
For months there has been an unrelenting campaign in the corporate media to soften the public on the need to increase military spending and for Canada to “do its fair share” within NATO. The Business Council of Canada, representing Canada’s largest corporate monopolies’ interests, has weighed in calling for a timeline to reach NATO’s 2% benchmark. After the announcement, the CEO’s of the Business Council declared that the announcement does not say how the “new defence investments will be fiscally sustainable” but called for the timeline to be sped up further.
The new funds for war will be made “fiscally sustainable” through cuts to healthcare, education, EI and CPP. This funding will block urgently necessary funding from going to alleviate the housing crisis and the climate crisis. These expenditures have nothing to do with defence, and everything to do with imperialism’s drive to war.
The Canadian military is the largest source of all government carbon emissions. The US military is the number one consumer of oil on the planet. How quickly could we reduce carbon emissions and have a just transition from fossil fuels if the same amount of resources was being put towards publicly owned green energy as opposed to gearing up for mass destruction and death?
The Trudeau government has been instrumental in fanning the flames of the NATO proxy war in Ukraine against Russia as well as sending billions of dollars in lethal military aid to ensure that the war is fought down to the last Ukrainian. This showdown between the two owners of the world’s largest nuclear arsenals could mean the end of the world tomorrow.
In March, the Secretary-General of the United Nations warned the Security Council that the risk of nuclear warfare was at its highest point in decades. In May, both the United States and Britain, authorised Ukraine to use their weapons to conduct military attacks inside Russia. Ukraine then attacked Russia’s ballistic missile warning system, a key piece of infrastructure to defend Russia from a strategic nuclear attack. NATO has announced that it is opening a headquarters for operations in the Ukraine war in Germany, and France has said that it will send troops to Ukraine to “train” Ukrainian forces, meaning that a key NATO member will have troops openly on the ground in Ukraine.
Russia is making threats more frequently about deploying nuclear weapons and has recently conducted military drills to deploy so-called “tactical” nuclear weapons. NATO too has made threats by talking about taking more nuclear weapons out of storage and placing them on standby.
This shows the urgency of reaching a negotiated peace. We must use every opportunity to win over and mobilize the labour movement and other mass democratic forces to take concerted actions for peace.
Instead of Canada cutting social programs and services in order to fund militarization, Canada must cut military spending, leave NATO and adopt a foreign policy of peace and disarmament. In the era of nuclear weapons and global warming, peace is the only path to a future for humanity.
Central Executive Committee, Communist Party of Canada