[Cowboy89]

Originally Posted by MarchHare

Re: military spending

Perhaps this topic should be its own thread, but how much do people think Canada should be spending on our Forces? In terms of global rank, Canada is the #13 country for defense spending, which feels about right for a country that's ranked #9 in GDP and #36 in population.

As a percentage of our GDP, we spend roughly the same amount on our military as Germany, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark -- those seem like appropriate countries to compare ourselves to, IMO, since we don't have the population nor the GDP to spend at similar levels as the US, China, UK, France, Russia, etc. without becoming a North Korea-esque military state.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...y_expenditures

None of those countries have even remotely close to the area to defend and maintain soveriegnty over. That's an issue that should be brought up when discussing this point. Spending more than those countries doesn't necessarily mean we would become a hawkish, jingoistic state.