Quote:
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 |
The trouble is that Germany and the other countries have kept their military up to date. They aren't facing a rusting out due to neglect.
If Canada brings their systems up to date then you can spend at their levels and effectively maintain your forces in a modern way.
But because of neglect and not having a strong CDS who could push the issue we sat on our equiptment for too long and just tried to make due while continually deploying on every mission that made the government feel good about itself.
If you want to fix the problem you have to at least temporarily boost spending and put the increase to capital expenditures. Once you've rebuilt you can actually shrink the budget and start maintaining and improving instead of replacing everything at once.
Canada has also punched above its weight in terms of peacekeeping, NATO and other deployments compared to those other countries.
We also have a greater defense responsibility because of our size and our defense obligations that are required due to our relationship with the states.