Canada Embraces Its Inner Defense Hawk

OTTAWA — Patrick Taylor is the first to stand, raise his right hand and swear an oath to king and country.

An 18-year-old high school graduate who hails from an Ottawa suburb, Taylor is among eight new recruits to the Canadian Armed Forces being sworn-in on this day in April. They’re joined by parents, siblings, boyfriends and girlfriends.

“There’s obviously a lot of conflict going on right now, and I’d love to be able to help and be part of that and just be on the right side and help people,” Taylor, who aspires to be a military engineer, said after the ceremony, which took place in the basement meeting room of a downtown federal office building named after a Canadian economist.

The no-frills setting belies the fact that it’s part of a momentous shift taking place across Canadian society: As the world gets darker and more uncertain outside their borders, Canadians are increasingly embracing the need for a more muscular national defense.

These new recruits are among the rising number of young Canadians contributing to a 13 percent increase in enrollment in the country’s understaffed military over the past year — the highest recruitment rate in three decades. The growing interest in military services comes amid the “elbows up” mentality fueled by U.S. President Donald Trump’s belligerence, including his suggestions that Canada become the “51st state” and his imposition of stiff tariffs on a host of Canadian products.

The bump in recruitment also complements Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s plan to boost defense spending by tens of billions of dollars and pull Canada even with NATO’s defense spending target, after decades as a laggard in the alliance. He’s released a comprehensive industrial defense strategy to rearm the military — envisioning new fleets of submarines and destroyers, a new class of fighter jets and a national ammunition stockpile. And he has sweetened the pot for servicemembers with 20 percent pay raises and promises of better military housing and social services.

Carney was hailed across the globe for declaring a “rupture” had taken place in the international order, but it has not been hard to convince Canadians that their relationships with the United States and the rest of the world have changed.

A POLITICO Poll conducted in February shows the Canadian public offering overwhelming support for defense spending, at a level not seen in decades.

By a 63-22 percent margin, Canadians agree on the need to spend more on defense than they already do. Two-thirds of respondents also agree that Trump’s approach to foreign policy makes a global conflict more likely.

It seems as if America’s northern neighbor — whose people adopted the beaver as a national symbol — is transforming into a nation of hawks.

Defense Minister David McGuinty, the point man for Carney’s military revitalization, isn’t quite ready to go that far, even as he acknowledged Canadians believe the world has changed.

“They understand that a warm, good, democratic, rule-of-law-based country like Canada will take you a certain distance, but it’s not going to stop a hypersonic missile,” McGuinty said in a recent interview. “That’s not hawkish. That’s being more open to being more responsible to reality and responding to an unfortunate new normal.”

But the new normal also means new trade-offs.

If Canada is boosting defense spending, it almost certainly means budget cuts in other areas. Perhaps foreign aid gets hit, which might not raise too many eyebrows; trims to the social safety net like health care would most certainly be unpopular.

One way or another, the country’s very conception of itself is going to be tested. Is Canada sacrificing something quintessentially Canadian as it becomes more militaristic?

Canada is no stranger to war, or to wartime sacrifice.

After the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, Canada quickly joined the international coalition to root out al Qaeda from Afghanistan. Over the next dozen or so years, 158 Canadian service members died, the most combat deaths for the country’s military since the Korean War and one of the highest per capita among America’s NATO allies.

One of those killed was Master Cpl. Francis Vernelli who was hit by a roadside bomb in March 2009 outside Kandahar, in the heartland of the Taliban insurgency, on one of Canada’s bloodiest days of the Afghanistan war.

He met his daughter Oliva only once, when she was three months old and he was home for Christmas. Today, at 17, she’s an army cadet in her father’s unit, the 3rd Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment.

“It’s just amazing to see photos of him in the buildings. I meet friends of his, and just kind of get a taste of what his career was about,” Oliva Vernelli told POLITICO Magazine in May as she attended the ceremony at the Canadian War Museum for the construction of a new and long-awaited monument to a war that is fading in the minds of many Canadians.

Though Canadians fought alongside Americans in southern Afghanistan where the Taliban insurgency was fiercest, Trump has disparaged the American allies who fought in that war. Here today, Canadians remember.

“As we break ground and mark the start of construction of the monument, we also find ourselves at a pivotal moment as a nation, with the international order shifting and global uncertainty on the rise, the importance of service and of remembering that service takes on a renewed importance,” Veterans Affairs Minister Jill McKnight, told several hundred dignitaries, veterans and students. “Commemoration is not only about the past.”

Lt. Gen. Erick Simoneau, commander of military personnel, noted at a recent press briefing that Canada saw a surge of military recruitment in 2008-09 amid the war in Afghanistan, with an increase of 7,700 troops.

This past year, he said, 7,310 applicants were formally sworn in as full-time, paid service members, along with 800 reservists who transferred to full-time status — driving the full number above 8,000 in the latest fiscal year.

That means the current surge amounts to at least a 30-year high, with the military not maintaining full data beyond that.

In between those two peaks, recruit numbers declined rapidly and Canadian defense spending was hugely unpopular. Global turbulence didn’t disappear — witness the civil wars in Syria and Libya, Russia’s annexation of Crimea, the Brexit shock and ascendancy of Trump, the Covid-19 pandemic, all the way to the current Iran war — but Canadians could always count on having oceans on three borders and a benign ally to the south to insulate them.

Not anymore.

“People understand that our geography doesn't necessarily protect us like it might have in the past,” McGuinty said in the March interview.

The POLITICO Poll underscores what McGuinty is seeing: 52 percent of respondents agreed Canada “is poorly prepared to defend itself,” with 61 percent attributing that to “not enough military forces or troops.”

The respondents were also in step with Carney’s goal of making Canada less reliant on the U.S. for military hardware. By a 53-27 percent margin, respondents said Canada should be buying military equipment from Europe rather than the U.S.

Meanwhile, 52 percent of Canadians favor “producing defense equipment domestically to make our country more self-reliant, even if that means it costs more.”

The surge in new recruits is also being driven by something else: the rising costs of food, housing, fuel and everyday necessities that is driving the affordability crisis in Canadaas it is across the globe. For young people, this is making home ownership a pipe dream, while fueling fears of facing a mountain of debt once they graduate from post-secondary education.

Conservative MP Cheryl Gallant, whose Ontario riding includes Canadian Forces Base Petawawa, told a recent Parliamentary committee hearing that bad economic times translate into more interest in a military career.

“That always accompanies a severe drop in the economy: There’s nothing else to do but join the military,” Gallant said.

McGuinty disagreed, telling POLITICO Magazine the recruits he’s heard from are patriotic, and believe in Canadian sovereignty and security and “what it stands for.”

Simoneau, the military personnel chief, was also asked at his recent briefing whether Trump’s aggressive annexation rhetoric was a factor in the jump in recruits.

“Is it the economy? Is it the relationship with our partner to the south? Is it the critical occupation recruiting allowance? It's probably all of those answers,” he replied.

For 23-year-old Hannah Hawker, who aspires to be a military nurse, the decision to serve is a combination of not wanting to fall behind, while standing up for her country.

“It gives me the best opportunities for myself now and in the future,” she said after swearing her oath of allegiance. “Being able to potentially be a homeowner, having paid maternity leave, being able to build a pension, these are all things that are very important to me that I do not see with some other careers.” Pursued nursing studies outside the military would mean she’d graduate with “immense debt.”

Hawker, who comes from a military family in Gallant’s riding in Petawawa, Ontario, is also well aware of the world outside her country’s borders, and the forces bearing down on it.

“It’s a scary time,” she said. “Truthfully, with everything that’s happening in the political climate.”

Carney prefaces nearly every major policy announcement by touting it as Canada’s response to a “dangerous and divided world.” But he has also positioned the current disruption as a moment for Canadians to control their own destiny.

Embracing its inner hawk could have some real benefits for Canada. With more troops and tanks, Canada would be able to better defend itself, including by working more closely with NATO allies in Europe. As Carney argued in his January speech in Davos, middle powers such as Canada have an opportunity to band together with like-minded allies and leverage their shared strength against coercion by the big power “hegemons.”

Perhaps Canada also needed a kick in the pants on defense spending, if it wanted to be a more active global citizen rather than simply preach about good intentions.

For all of Trump’s longstanding complaints about NATO allies not pulling their weight, it’s his periodic threats to sever ties with the transatlantic alliance and pull back from the global stage that have really spurred Canada, like other NATO allies, to make itself less dependent on the United States for its security.

At an event in April, McGuinty allowed that Canada’s relationship with its American neighbor might have something to do with the record rise in recruits to the Canadian Armed Forces.

“There have been a lot of changes in the last two years. People know that our relationship with our partner in the south has changed,” McGuinty said, choosing his words carefully and speaking in French, which ensured it would not travel too far south in the media. He did not mention Trump by name.

But for all the public enthusiasm for a newly hawkish stance, there’s also no getting around the fact that it isn’t free.

Carney estimates that reaching NATO’s defense spending target of 5 percent of GDP will cost as much as C$150 billion a year by 2035.

Something’s gotta give.

Any conversation around tradeoffs in public spending begins and ends with Canada’s universal health care system.

The idea of universal health care was born in the early 1960s, spurred on by Saskatchewan Premier Tommy Douglas. It became reality in the early 1970s across Canada, and rolling back the clock would be political poison.

So perhaps it’s not surprising that Carney’s government has found an easier target: foreign aid. Canada’s C$12 billion foreign aid budget would get a 15 percent cut under the latest budget proposal.

Trimming Canada’s overseas development assistance won’t come close to matching the sums being discussed for increased military spending, but for now it’s a convenient start that creates far fewer political ripples than slicing health care.

Nonetheless, the proposed cut in foreign aid is striking some as very unCanadian.

In fact, it was former Prime Minister Lester Pearson who first proposed the current global benchmark of spending 0.7 percent of GDP on foreign aid more than six decades ago at the United Nations.

Canada has often failed to reach that target and it perennially occupies the bottom rungs of the OECD’s annual survey on foreign aid. But now development spending is declining in key areas under Carney where Canada was actually holding its own: international health and food security.

The people who help deliver those programs in poor countries question how Carney can square confronting a world that is “dangerous and divided” with cutting back money earmarked for medicine and food, when that will only fuel further destabilization.

“I'm a big believer you have to give where you live, with an eye to the world. And Canada has always been an active participant in the world abroad. It’s not only for global health and eradication of HIV, TB and malaria, but also for being a good global citizen,” said Dr. Hayley Wickenheiser, an international development advocate who is also a four-time Canadian gold medalist in women’s hockey.

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is viewed as a prime example. Since 2002, this collective effort by governments across the world has helped inoculate poor children from preventable diseases that would otherwise kill them if left untreated. The organization says 70 million lives have been saved because of the international effort.

Canada’s contributions have never waned, until now.

Under the Carney government’s plans, Canada’s next multi-year commitment would be C$190 million less than its last three-year pledge of $1.2 billion. This breaks a two-decade precedent of maintaining current spending levels, including under Conservative Stephen Harper and the previous Liberal government of Justin Trudeau.

It’s the same story on Canada’s funding of food security, according to Ismahane Elouafi, executive managing director of CGIAR, the world’s largest publicly funded agricultural research organization. Elouafi was recently in Ottawa to speak to government officials and urge them to rethink their plans for a 15 percent cut to Canada’s contribution to her organization.

“Food security is part and parcel of global security,” Elouafi said. “It’s very important for all countries to make sure that people are well fed and that they are satisfied. Otherwise, you get migration, you get displacement, you get conflict, and it affects everybody.”

Two decades ago, U2 frontman Bono pushed Canada very publicly to spend more on international development as one of the founders of the anti-poverty organization, The One Campaign.

Bono coined the phrase, “the world needs more Canada,” which he meant as a velvety, inoffensive call to arms — and more spending.

Today, One’s North American spokesperson is blunter.

“You cannot build real security if preventable disease, malnutrition, and lack of basic education are still weakening societies and driving instability,” Justin McAuley told POLITICO Magazine. “Even generals have said it plainly: if you underfund development, you end up buying more ammunition because the minor development problems come back as major military crises.”

In the basement meeting room, after swearing their oaths, Taylor, Hawker and their six fellow recruits are back in their seats. They are officially members of the Canadian Armed Forces family. Basic training, and then the world awaits.

As he departs the ceremony with his parents, 17-year-old Olivier Blanc of Gatineau, Quebec says he’s looking forward to the next step, but he realizes it will be hard.

“There’s also the state of the world,” he adds. “Right now, it’s somewhat worrying, but I hope things will change, and I want to be a part of that.”

Wickenheiser knows the feeling. Her now-26-year-old son joined the military at 18, and she experienced the mix of pride and fear that most parents are confronting on this day.

“I love that my son went into the military. It was the best thing that he ever did. I kind of believe that every Canadian kid should experience basic training,” she said. “As a mother, it’s horrifying to think if he was ever put into battle. I would hope that no child ever has to go into war.”

Last year, as part of the global hockey festival for girls she founded called Wickfest, Wickenheiser brought a hockey team of 20 Ukrainian girls, aged 11 to 13, to Calgary, Alberta to participate. They’d come from eastern Ukraine, near the front line of the war with Russia. Early in the war, a Russian missile blew a hole in their hometown arena.

At one point, Wickenheiser asked the youngest girl, aged 11, what the best thing was about coming to the hockey festival.

“Her answer was that ‘I can sleep through the night without worrying the sirens are going to go off,’” Wickenheiser recalled. “That really affected, I think, all of us deeply. And the hardest thing was that we had to send them back.”

She has a hard time seeing military might and soft power foreign aid as an either-or proposition.

Perhaps, she says, Canada’s answer can do both.

“Our military needs an upgrade, and that’s very important,” she says. “But at the same time, if we take care of people and people are healthy and functioning well in parts of the world that are risky, there's less likely going to be conflicts.”