Growing the Defence Budget: What Would Two Percent of GDP Look Like? /

W ith the presentation of next year’s budget to Parliament expected in the coming weeks and the various items in the media over the past few months about the Canadian Armed Forces and defence spending, it seems timely to discuss what an increased defence budget might mean.1 What would increasing the defence budget to the NATO target of two per cent of GDP mean in terms of size and the discussion a [...] Thus, the NATO target of two per cent of GDP would require Canada to have a defence budget in fiscal year 2015/16 of approximately $40 billion.3 Even growth to 1.5 per cent of GDP, which a number of individuals identified in the Defence Policy Review submissions as perhaps suitable for Canada, would require a defence budget of approximately $30.3 billion, significantly larger than the existing $18 [...] The definition allows for the inclusion of other forces such as “Ministry of Interior Troops, border guards, national police forces, customs, coast guard, etc.” and those “that are trained in military tactics, are equipped as a military force … and can, realistically, be deployed outside national territory in support of a military force.”5 The inclusion of this as part of the definition raises the [...] For example, adding the costs of the Coast Guard and the RCMP information from the Public Accounts to the defence data would increase the budget from $18.6 billion to $23.6 billion ($2.2 billion and $2.8 billion for the Coast Guard and RCMP respectively) or 1.4 per cent of GDP. [...] In other words, the defence budget would grow from 0.9 per cent of GDP to either 1.0 per cent or 0.095 per cent in the next year followed by a budget of 1.1 per cent or one per cent the subsequent year until the two per cent target is achieved.