Prime Minister Mark Carney says Ottawa’s plans to massively increase defence spending is not to please “NATO accountants” but to protect Canadians against new threats.
“With advanced missile capacities, we can no longer rely on our geography to protect us as the global landscape shifts,” Carney said during a press conference after the conclusion of the NATO summit in The Hague on June 25.
The prime minister cited the need for Canada to assert its sovereignty in a changing Arctic, and to meet the challenge of rapid advances in cyber capabilities, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing.
Carney spoke to reporters after meeting with other leaders of NATO countries, who agreed at the summit to raise the military alliance’s defence spending target from 2 percent to 5 percent of GDP. The alliance has set the requirement to reach the target by 2035….