Prime Minister Mark Carney says NATO’s new defence spending requirements will add up to around $150 billion per year for Canada.
Speaking in an interview with CNN ahead of the NATO leaders’ summit at The Hague, Netherlands, Carney said that Canada will meet this price tag with the help of expanded development of Canada’s critical minerals, which he described as “one of the biggest and most varied.”
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has proposed that member states hike defence spending to 5 percent of GDP in the next 10 years, specifically 3.5 percent of annual GDP on core defense needs and 1.5 percent on defence-adjacent industries and technologies. Rutte says increased military spending is necessary to meet potential threats to NATO in the future, particularly from China and Russia. …