National Defence committee  I haven't personally done research in this area. My colleague Charlotte has. I would offer that recruiting seems to be working quite well. We're getting tens of thousands of Canadians and permanent residents interested in joining the military. We just can't get them in and employed.

National Defence committee  I would say it's in procurement and personnel reform. There's plenty of money on the table. If we could spend that more efficiently and effectively, our numbers could increase significantly. That's the most meaningful thing we could do in the short term.

National Defence committee  I would offer that I think it's the most pressing threat to Canada. If we want to look at where to focus, we should be focusing there more, because we're not spending enough to do everything. We should protect our own backyard first and foremost, and the Arctic is our backyard.

National Defence committee  I would say that at present we can do very little, since we have almost no modern military capability we can send to our north. Hopefully we'll get some soon.

National Defence committee  My translation is not working, but I think I caught the gist of that. I think we have been far too slow to actually put in place real mechanisms to leverage Canadian domestic production for a whole number of things, including ammunition. We've been spending a lot of time talking about that, and we need to get contracts in place.

National Defence committee  I think that noting things are needed but not actually providing any money to acquire them is a significant problem. The policy does make a number of actual commitments of funding—enhanced maintenance, more spending on infrastructure and some investments in some new capabilities—but as I said, I think it's highly problematic to say that we need these things and then provide zero dollars to actually acquire them.

National Defence committee  I'd say yes, but it's very unclear for the army.

National Defence committee  I don't think that's actually accurate, because I understand that there's an agreed-upon NATO framework. You don't just get to choose your own adventure in terms of what you submit and what you don't submit. You submit expenditures that are part of an eligible pool. NATO reviews all that.

National Defence committee  I would offer that we're simply not spending enough to keep doing everything that we previously committed to. One thing I would commend in the new policy that it at least articulated some choices. Unfortunately, I think a lack of any kind of meaningful commitment on peacekeeping is one of those choices, and we're simply not resourcing enough to do that, absent making a decision not to do something else.

National Defence committee  I think that's part of the dynamic. There are a number of things that we need to improve with our defence procurement system. The policy mentions several different initiatives, which might all end up being great if they're actually implemented. I'd note that the last defence policy had a number of good initiatives around defence procurement reform, and I'm not sure what actually happened with a lot of them.

National Defence committee  I would offer that if we could convey a better message about our anticipated spending, we would have presented it. If there were a better indication of spending beyond 2029, we would also have presented that. I don't think we can actually meaningfully include anything else at present unless NATO redefines what we can include.

National Defence committee  I think they would appreciate all the things we've pointed out as an assessment of the world, what should be done about it and what we've enumerated in terms of things we need to acquire to be in a better position to operate in that world. Where they have expressed a lot of concern and skepticism is in our identifying a whole lot of things we need and providing no funding for them.

National Defence committee  In terms of how we'll be perceived, I think it's no simpler than 1.76%. Even if we hit that, it isn't the 2% we committed to. I think there are serious implications when we don't live up to what we said we would do. In terms of what that money would be spent on and what would come with it, despite it being a generational investment and the low start state, “Our North, Strong and Free” is only funding to keep some of the lights on.

National Defence committee  We will fall short of 1.76% of GDP by 2029 unless more money is committed to defence and conditions are created to actually spend that money. Not only are we heading into the Washington summit with no intention or plan to spend 2% of GDP on defence, as we told our allies we would; we are also falling short already of the spending mark we said we would reach just two months ago.

National Defence committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. Thanks for the opportunity to appear today to speak about Canada's new defence policy, “Our North, Strong and Free”. In my opening remarks, I'm going to talk about the policy itself, considerations for its implementation and how I think it's being viewed by our allies as we await the Washington, D.C., NATO summit celebrating the alliance's 75th anniversary in three short weeks.