Former federal spending watchdog Kevin Page remains unconvinced by the prime minister’s explanation of why Ottawa hasn’t yet presented a fiscal road map to meet the new NATO spending commitments.
Page, who was Canada’s first parliamentary budget officer and now heads the Institute of Fiscal Studies and Democracy at the University of Ottawa, said Ottawa has been not fiscally transparent with its math. He said Canada must soon show how it plans to significantly ramp up defence spending through to 2035.
NATO members met last year in The Hague and agreed to spending the equivalent of five percent of GDP on defence by 2035. But federal fiscal updates have yet to chart the numbers that far out, past 2030—something Page said should be spelled out this coming fall in the next budget….