What do you think about " Canada promises to spend 5% of GDP on defence by 2035 in pact with NATO leaders "?

[MDP]

NATO leaders — including Canada — have approved a plan to dramatically increase defence spending across the Western alliance to five per cent of the gross domestic product over the next decade. It would cost the federal treasury $150 billion per year.  The 2025-26 main estimates present a total of $486.9 billion in budgetary spending.

https://ici.radio-canada.ca/rci/en/news/2175395/canada-promises-to-spend-5-of-gdp-on-defence-by-2035-in-pact-with-nato-leaders#:~:text=Politics-,Canada promises to spend 5% of GDP on defence by,in pact with NATO leaders&text=Now there's pressure on Trump,in exchange for funding boost.

Edited Wednesday at 06:36 PM by MDP

[MDP]

My suggestion: The United States should cut defense spending to 2% , even 1.5% of GDP

[Nationalist]

I am not convinced NATO will last the decade as it is.

[WestCanMan]

Is there supposed to be some kind of direct relationship between what Carney says and what he does now? 

Didn't think so. 

[blackbird]

Maybe put some of street people to work making military uniforms and other things for the military.  Find something for the less dangerous offenders to do too.  Force them to work for a living.

[Nationalist]

1 hour ago, WestCanMan said:

Is there supposed to be some kind of direct relationship between what Carney says and what he does now? 

Didn't think so. 

The Carney is just cowing to Trump again. 

Elbows Up.

Edited Wednesday at 10:20 PM by Nationalist

[LinkSoul60]

The world has changed and we have little choice, unless we want Canada to be on our own proverbial island. 

The 3.5% to direct military spending is long overdue. The 1.5% spend to infrastructure is the exciting part that will be dual purpose.  Both spend buckets lend themselves to more business, job and revenue creation. 

There obviously needs to be a proper accounting of projects and budget to come, but I see this as exciting for the country. It's just one more in your face reason why we need to get off our far loo long complacent asses and build our own self-reliant economy.

[CdnFox]

2 hours ago, LinkSoul60 said:

The world has changed and we have little choice, unless we want Canada to be on our own proverbial island. 

The 3.5% to direct military spending is long overdue. The 1.5% spend to infrastructure is the exciting part that will be dual purpose.  Both spend buckets lend themselves to more business, job and revenue creation. 

There obviously needs to be a proper accounting of projects and budget to come, but I see this as exciting for the country. It's just one more in your face reason why we need to get off our far loo long complacent asses and build our own self-reliant economy.

You understand this has to mean radical slashing to social programs right? I mean we currently spend somewhere in the neighborhood of around 30 billion a year of defense, Even playing certain accounting games like rolling our infrastructure spending into it a little and such we would still need to slash around about 100 billion in spending. And that's based on today's GDP which is going to be going up every year quite likely or at least most years.

I find it hard to believe the left is going to accept massive slashing to social programming and their favorite special interest groups

[Army Guy]

I thought Carney said that removing internal trade barriers will mean up to 200 bil more in GDP....And that bringing to life more National projects will also bring growth and add to future GDP...besides a lot of these social programs could be combined or trimmed down, even our welfare programs could be trimmed or combined, to save, 

Meanwhile in Europe they are preparing for war, as Russia builds it forces up along NATO borders, countries like the UK, France, Germany, are investing hundreds of billions before the new 5 % marker was introduced....they are in panic mode...here in Canada we are still on holidays, yes we announced 9 bil more in defence which will barely move any needles....if you look at where that money is going to go....Can you tell how excited the CDS is....not vary she knows this is mostly political and will anything change, she is as skeptical as the rest of the military is...which is very skeptical the forces have seen this before...over and over again....now maybe carney is going to fix all that, but if i was a betting man the odds are not very good...

[LinkSoul60]

2 hours ago, CdnFox said:

You understand this has to mean radical slashing to social programs right? I mean we currently spend somewhere in the neighborhood of around 30 billion a year of defense, Even playing certain accounting games like rolling our infrastructure spending into it a little and such we would still need to slash around about 100 billion in spending. And that's based on today's GDP which is going to be going up every year quite likely or at least most years.

I find it hard to believe the left is going to accept massive slashing to social programming and their favorite special interest groups

Radical is to be determined but any trade-offs wouldn’t be until towards the end of this decade and into the next so ample time to see where the economy and revenues are. It’s 4 years until they review and a lot will change so it’s just estimated dollars until then. 

Not many choices with international and domestic pressure coming at him for the spend. Still need to see a strategy and plan but this is what we complained about not doing and why Carney got elected.  Go get em Dog!

[CdnFox]

1 hour ago, LinkSoul60 said:

 

Radical is to be determined but any trade-offs wouldn’t be until towards the end of this decade and into the next so ample time to see where the economy and revenues are.

No there isn't, it's based on GDP. If the economy is better GDP is up and we have to pay more, if the economy is in the tank the GDP is down but we still have to pay our percent. This problem literally scales with us. And it's 2025 the end of this decade is only 5 years away, which means you're talking in very short time it will have a major impact

Quote

It’s 4 years until they review and a lot will change so it’s just estimated dollars until then. 

In other words you're hoping that they'll cancel it at some point in the future and he won't have to keep his word. I will admit that the liberals are famous for canceling and breaking their words but if you take him at face value this is a problem.

And in either case you're answering the question by basically saying I'm perfectly fine with it as long as something changes and we don't have to do it. 

 

1 hour ago, LinkSoul60 said:

Not many choices with international and domestic pressure coming at him for the spend. Still need to see a strategy and plan but this is what we complained about not doing and why Carney got elected. 

Well it's a shame that we haven't taken the time to sit down and write out a plan where we could consider our likely revenues and look over our expenses and start having a conversation about how we're going to achieve that. What do they call that again? Oh yeah, a budget.

And no, carney was elected to fight trump.

I don't have a big problem with increasing spending on the military, And I don't even have a big problem with slashing the hell out of a lot of the government unnecessary services and spending. The so-called lesbian dance theory subsidies.

But my belief is that through political pressure he's going to be as successful achieving this as the liberals were achieving the Kyoto Accords or the paris agreement. And when that becomes apparent and all of these other countries are looking at us saying are we talking about your spending yet again? It could be bad for us.

I mean you know he's not going to deliver. There's zero chance he's going to deliver. So this is going to be another embarrassment

[LinkSoul60]

7 hours ago, CdnFox said:

No there isn't, it's based on GDP. If the economy is better GDP is up and we have to pay more, if the economy is in the tank the GDP is down but we still have to pay our percent. This problem literally scales with us. And it's 2025 the end of this decade is only 5 years away, which means you're talking in very short time it will have a major impact

In other words you're hoping that they'll cancel it at some point in the future and he won't have to keep his word. I will admit that the liberals are famous for canceling and breaking their words but if you take him at face value this is a problem.

And in either case you're answering the question by basically saying I'm perfectly fine with it as long as something changes and we don't have to do it. 

 

Well it's a shame that we haven't taken the time to sit down and write out a plan where we could consider our likely revenues and look over our expenses and start having a conversation about how we're going to achieve that. What do they call that again? Oh yeah, a budget.

And no, carney was elected to fight trump.

I don't have a big problem with increasing spending on the military, And I don't even have a big problem with slashing the hell out of a lot of the government unnecessary services and spending. The so-called lesbian dance theory subsidies.

But my belief is that through political pressure he's going to be as successful achieving this as the liberals were achieving the Kyoto Accords or the paris agreement. And when that becomes apparent and all of these other countries are looking at us saying are we talking about your spending yet again? It could be bad for us.

I mean you know he's not going to deliver. There's zero chance he's going to deliver. So this is going to be another embarrassment

My point is that it's time we get our sh*t together and get spending on our defence and infrastructure for our national security and economy. We have little choice in today's world or the state of our country and it's time to get in the game. It's what I'm sure you complained about when it wasn't happening and am sure it's what you'll complain about when it is.  My political biases are not such that I hope he fails, whereas yours clearly are.  To each their own....

[Army Guy]

8 minutes ago, LinkSoul60 said:

My point is that it's time we get our sh*t together and get spending on our defence and infrastructure for our national security and economy. We have little choice in today's world or the state of our country and it's time to get in the game. It's what I'm sure you complained about when it wasn't happening and am sure it's what you'll complain about when it is.  My political biases are not such that I hope he fails, whereas yours clearly are.  To each their own....

I agree , but we are well past needing to get our sh*t together, almost all our major weapon systems are in desperate need of replacing, not to mention all the capabilities we have already lost, along with the experience to operate them. even if we went into crises' mode it would still take a decade to catch up...

Carney talks a good game about building military equipment here in Canada, but we have let our military industrial complex erode more than our military has...not to mention how costly it is to build stuff in this country, just look at our frigate program and how prices have ballooned, The UK built an aircraft carrier for the price of just one of our frigates. S.Korea is building cruisers for only 2.5/ 3 bil a piece...

What our military needs is new equipment , not providing Canadian jobs, or demanding offsets from companies to spend equal amounts of money in Canada....or lastly having some politician pick military equipment out...kind of like sending your wife out to buy your power tools...The F-35 is a prime example we could have been flying them today, if we had just let the politicians set the amount of funding available and let the Military pick the equipment it needs.....politicians have a poor record on buying terrible equipment, books have been written about all of it and yet it has not changed....we continue to buy from the cheapest bidder, or company that has brided our government with the most offsets..

[CdnFox]

1 hour ago, LinkSoul60 said:

My point is that it's time we get our sh*t together and get spending on our defence and infrastructure for our national security and economy. We have little choice in today's world or the state of our country and it's time to get in the game. It's what I'm sure you complained about when it wasn't happening and am sure it's what you'll complain about when it is.  My political biases are not such that I hope he fails, whereas yours clearly are.  To each their own....

Yeah it's nice to say that.  And sure i agree, we've wasted too much time not funding the military. 

But MY point, which you seem reluctant to address, is that it's over 100 billion in new spending we don't have based on TODAY"S gdp. Even if we roll some 'infrastructure' spending into that it's still around 100 billion. 

And you can whine and cry about it somehow being all my fault to your heart's content, but if there isn't a plan to deal with it and come up with that money then what's going to happen is the same as every OTHER liberal promise ... it won't happen and we'll wind up breaking our word. Again.  and be an embarrassment on the international stage.  Again. 

So maybe he shouldn't have promised that. Maybe he should have made a comittment we can actually achieve and not made canada look like a lying sack of crap yet again. 

[LinkSoul60]

42 minutes ago, Army Guy said:

I agree , but we are well past needing to get our sh*t together, almost all our major weapon systems are in desperate need of replacing, not to mention all the capabilities we have already lost, along with the experience to operate them. even if we went into crises' mode it would still take a decade to catch up...

Carney talks a good game about building military equipment here in Canada, but we have let our military industrial complex erode more than our military has...not to mention how costly it is to build stuff in this country, just look at our frigate program and how prices have ballooned, The UK built an aircraft carrier for the price of just one of our frigates. S.Korea is building cruisers for only 2.5/ 3 bil a piece...

What our military needs is new equipment , not providing Canadian jobs, or demanding offsets from companies to spend equal amounts of money in Canada....or lastly having some politician pick military equipment out...kind of like sending your wife out to buy your power tools...The F-35 is a prime example we could have been flying them today, if we had just let the politicians set the amount of funding available and let the Military pick the equipment it needs.....politicians have a poor record on buying terrible equipment, books have been written about all of it and yet it has not changed....we continue to buy from the cheapest bidder, or company that has brided our government with the most offsets..

Spot on.... we've been complacent for far too long and now is the time to get this country headed in the right direction, militarily and economically.  Carney does talk a good game but also has the economic, financial and business acumen that is needed right now.  Whether he can get around the BS politics and make it happen remains to be seen.... He's only been in the seat 2 months, but I like the direction so far.

Upgrading our military with new equipment can and/or will create jobs. Be that with ships, drones, technology or maybe even planes.  Gather we're still going to stay with some F-35's but also looking at Saab Gripen who had indicated that if awarded they could be built in Canada.  I'm not knowledgeable enough to know which plane is better for the requirements but agree with Carney that our defence spend of 0.75 on every dollar for US made equipment is too much.  That needs to be diversified better....be that Europe or domestically.

[WestCanMan]

16 hours ago, LinkSoul60 said:

The world has changed and we have little choice, unless we want Canada to be on our own proverbial island. 

The 3.5% to direct military spending is long overdue. The 1.5% spend to infrastructure is the exciting part that will be dual purpose.  Both spend buckets lend themselves to more business, job and revenue creation. 

There obviously needs to be a proper accounting of projects and budget to come, but I see this as exciting for the country. It's just one more in your face reason why we need to get off our far loo long complacent asses and build our own self-reliant economy.

Listen to the leftards suddenly be all about defence spending just because an LPOC PM said it 😂

F'n cultist 🤡's.

If Poilievre said that then all of your ret4rds would be saying it was the first step towards fascism.

Quote

The 3.5% to direct military spending

I wonder how much of that is gonna be for gender-transitioning surgeries, pink outfits, men's high heels, gender-neutral bathrooms, minority/female officer training, and what % of officers will have to be from minority groups. 

NVM the fact that 98% of the troops and our war dead were white cisgender men, I'm fully expecting a policy of "40% of officers have to be minorities or women" coming down the pike. 

Edited Thursday at 03:54 PM by WestCanMan

[LinkSoul60]

5 minutes ago, CdnFox said:

Yeah it's nice to say that.  And sure i agree, we've wasted too much time not funding the military. 

But MY point, which you seem reluctant to address, is that it's over 100 billion in new spending we don't have based on TODAY"S gdp. Even if we roll some 'infrastructure' spending into that it's still around 100 billion. 

And you can whine and cry about it somehow being all my fault to your heart's content, but if there isn't a plan to deal with it and come up with that money then what's going to happen is the same as every OTHER liberal promise ... it won't happen and we'll wind up breaking our word. Again.  and be an embarrassment on the international stage.  Again. 

So maybe he shouldn't have promised that. Maybe he should have made a comittment we can actually achieve and not made canada look like a lying sack of crap yet again. 

I have no idea what you're talking about, and hazard to guess neither do you. I'd have to think you understand that today's gap is not going to be the gdp next year or the gdp in ensuing years if in fact he can get our economy going in the right direction.  The spend annual spend he's talking about is a lot less than what we spent to combat the covid epidemic and proved economic supports. The dollars he's talking about is doable if made a priority.

I'll say it again.... my politics isn't such that I hope he fails. I'd say the same thing if it was PP sitting in the PM seat.  Wouldn't be politics though if peeps like you didn't b*tch for the sake of b*tching.  Enjoy....

3 minutes ago, WestCanMan said:

Listen to the leftards suddenly be all about defence spending just because an LPOC PM said it 😂

F'n cultist 🤡's.

If Poilievre said that then all of your ret4rds would be saying it was the first step towards fascism.

F*ck are you stunned....  

[CdnFox]

4 minutes ago, LinkSoul60 said:

I have no idea what you're talking about, and hazard to guess neither do you.

It's extremely plain English. Which means you probably do understand it but don't have an answer so you're going to yet again pretend that it's my fault that you don't know what's going on

 

5 minutes ago, LinkSoul60 said:

I'd have to think you understand that today's gap is not going to be the gdp next year or the gdp in ensuing years if in fact he can get our economy going in the right direction.

I address this but it seems to have gone over your head.

What I'm saying is that right now we would have to spend over $100 billion dollars more than we are currently spending on our budget to meet this based on today's GDP

If as you say our economy did well in the future and The disaster that the liberals have left us with after 10 years somehow magically reverses itself then while our ability to pay will go up our costs will also actually go up. If GDP were to go up 50% for example we would then have to come up with $150 billion dollars in new spending.

That's how percentages work. This is a percentage of our GDP. I know math can be challenging but I'm sure even you realize But any improvement in our economy will result in an increase in GDP which means an increase in how much we would have to pay to meet our commitment. In other words the better we do the more expensive this gets

8 minutes ago, LinkSoul60 said:

I'll say it again.... my politics isn't such that I hope he fails. I'd say the same thing if it was PP sitting in the PM seat

Well it's pretty obvious you're a liar about that. It's pretty obvious you haven't spent the last 10 years screaming and crying about why the liberals didn't spend money on military. Now that Carney's talking about it you're a massive fan.

It isn't a question of whether or not you hope he fails. The reality of it is that it's not really achievable. Certainly not in the time frame that we're discussing. That's a sad reality no matter who is in power. We simply don't have an extra 100 billion kicking around that we can afford to spend on anything no matter how valuable. As it is we're already borrowing about 100 billion dollars a year just to get by with the spending we have now

So if he's promised something that realistically he can't deliver it's going to make us look even worse within four or five years and leave us in a worse position with our allies then we are today.

 

Now do you think you can address that point or are you just going to admit that you are a lying liberal stud bag supporter with no actual opinion?

And that's an issue. I would rather see him promise something deliverable instead of just lying about it

[WestCanMan]

40 minutes ago, CdnFox said:

Yeah it's nice to say that.  And sure i agree, we've wasted too much time not funding the military. 

But MY point, which you seem reluctant to address, is that it's over 100 billion in new spending we don't have based on TODAY"S gdp. Even if we roll some 'infrastructure' spending into that it's still around 100 billion. 

And you can whine and cry about it somehow being all my fault to your heart's content, but if there isn't a plan to deal with it and come up with that money then what's going to happen is the same as every OTHER liberal promise ... it won't happen and we'll wind up breaking our word. Again.  and be an embarrassment on the international stage.  Again. 

So maybe he shouldn't have promised that. Maybe he should have made a comittment we can actually achieve and not made canada look like a lying sack of crap yet again. 

If the $100B was for Ukraine, Gazans, to fight global warming in a muslim country, or to relocate some vampire death cult here we'd find it, but because it's for Canada's benefit, just consider this another LPOC promise that's doomed to remain unfulfilled.

It's yet another fake silverback moment from Mr tits-down, arse up. 

We'll spend hundreds of millions on consultations, there will be fights in the HoC about what to spend it on, cronies of the LPOC's down-sawth cuzzins - Demmies - will have some money showered on them for nothing but no one will care and CBC will ignore it, and at the end of the day we'll get a handful of 2nd-rate fighters and some used equipment from countries like France and Britain that's right at the end of its combat viability, with ongoing issues that will keep it on the sidelines most of the time. 

Edited Thursday at 04:11 PM by WestCanMan

[WestCanMan]

20 minutes ago, LinkSoul60 said:

F*ck are you stunned....  

Everything that you've ever posted here has been a lie, stupid, or pure cultist trash. You can't even admit that "being the chair of the board when moving Brookfield was voted on" equals "playing a role in moving Brookfield's HQ". 

If Carney hands the keys to the HoC to Trump the next time he's "humming The Star Spangled Banner in the oral office" you'll say "He played no role".

[CdnFox]

20 minutes ago, WestCanMan said:

If the $100B was for Ukraine, Gazans, to fight global warming in a muslim country, or to relocate some vampire death cult here we'd find it, but because it's for Canada's benefit, just consider this another LPOC promise that's doomed to remain unfulfilled.

It's yet another fake silverback moment from Mr tits-down, arse up. 

We'll spend hundreds of millions on consultations, there will be fights in the HoC about what to spend it on, cronies of the LPOC's down-sawth cuzzins - Demmies - will have some money showered on them for nothing but no one will care and CBC will ignore it, and at the end of the day we'll get a handful of 2nd-rate fighters and some used equipment from countries like France and Britain that's right at the end of its combat viability, with ongoing issues that will keep it on the sidelines most of the time. 

Well that is one of my other concerns. He will say, with some validity, but before we spend all of this money we need to study where to best spend it. You don't just go out to Canadian Tire and buy a hundred billion dollars worth of military hardware

But then he will higher consultants and third parties and blow 25 billion dollars a year for the first few years on his buddies to do studies that will never be acted upon. When he gets out of politics he'll be rewarded with nice big fat directorships where he gets massive amounts of money for doing nothing

And this is the pattern we've seen with the liberals. He has already increased third party consultant spending to $25 billion this year, and with no budget to live up to he can easily slap another $25 billion dollars on top of that

And we will wind up with egg on our face internationally, we still won't have much of a military, our economy will have suffered as a result, and he'll write off into the sunset pocketing tens of millions of dollars a year for having stole our money

I find that mildly irritating

[LinkSoul60]

7 minutes ago, CdnFox said:

It's extremely plain English. Which means you probably do understand it but don't have an answer so you're going to yet again pretend that it's my fault that you don't know what's going on

 

I address this but it seems to have gone over your head.

What I'm saying is that right now we would have to spend over $100 billion dollars more than we are currently spending on our budget to meet this based on today's GDP

If as you say our economy did well in the future and The disaster that the liberals have left us with after 10 years somehow magically reverses itself then while our ability to pay will go up our costs will also actually go up. If GDP were to go up 50% for example we would then have to come up with $150 billion dollars in new spending.

That's how percentages work. This is a percentage of our GDP. I know math can be challenging but I'm sure even you realize But any improvement in our economy will result in an increase in GDP which means an increase in how much we would have to pay to meet our commitment. In other words the better we do the more expensive this gets

Well it's pretty obvious you're a liar about that. It's pretty obvious you haven't spent the last 10 years screaming and crying about why the liberals didn't spend money on military. Now that Carney's talking about it you're a massive fan.

It isn't a question of whether or not you hope he fails. The reality of it is that it's not really achievable. Certainly not in the time frame that we're discussing. That's a sad reality no matter who is in power. We simply don't have an extra 100 billion kicking around that we can afford to spend on anything no matter how valuable. As it is we're already borrowing about 100 billion dollars a year just to get by with the spending we have now

So if he's promised something that realistically he can't deliver it's going to make us look even worse within four or five years and leave us in a worse position with our allies then we are today.

 

Now do you think you can address that point or are you just going to admit that you are a lying liberal stud bag supporter with no actual opinion?

And that's an issue. I would rather see him promise something deliverable instead of just lying about it

You clearly should have went to and stayed in school....  Percentages don't change, only numbers do.  Whether it's $5B or $500B dollars that percentage is the same which means the net dollar spend is static and does not cost us more....it's a 5% spend. That's not difficult to understand, is it?  In simpler terms Carney and other economists who have weighed in have forgotten far more about finance and economics that you've ever known. I'll defer to their math.

I've only been here a short time and you seem to know my past 10 years and today's political leanings. Guess away kid...

Go play divisive politics with one else.  I have little interest in it, and far less interest in your view of the world.

[CdnFox]

Just now, LinkSoul60 said:

You clearly should have went to and stayed in school....  Percentages don't change, only numbers do.  

LOLOL  I literally just had to explain that to you. You were the one that was unable to understand that concept that if the percentage stays the same the numbers are going to change. Congratulations, I'm happy you now understand this concept even though you're pretending to explain it to me after you just learned it    

Quote

Whether it's $5B or $500B dollars that percentage is the same which means the net dollar spend is static and does not cost us more..

Yes. Which is why your claim that maybe will be doing better in the future doesn't make any sense. If we are doing better then we are still going to have to pay a higher amount of money so the fact that we're doing better will not help us because it would still be that much in new spending

What kind of Twat needs this explain to them and then turns around and pretends they're explaining it to someone else   I love that you're doubling down on the stupid

3 minutes ago, LinkSoul60 said:

I've only been here a short time and you seem to know my past 10 years

It takes about 5 minutes to see the level of stupid that you've got going on. It's not hard to extrapolate the rest. Go read my sig line  

 

So let's recap. As I said initially it doesn't matter if we're doing better or worse, this scales with us. So it's unaffordability is going to be the same no matter what happens.

And we can't afford it. The only way we could possibly afford it other than borrowing insane amounts of money would be to Massively slash a lot of programs that are extremely popular with people on the left. I'm probably a number of them that are popular even with those on the right. 100 billion dollars and you spending, not total spending mind you but new spending, is just not something we're going to be able to put on the table in the next 5 years

So what that leads me to believe is we're going to not achieve what he's promising. And that has problems.

Now can you stop pretending that the stuff I just taught you 5 minutes ago is actually something you're trying to teach me and address that issue? You've been dodging it like a madman so far

[LinkSoul60]

17 minutes ago, WestCanMan said:

Everything that you've ever posted here has been a lie, stupid, or pure cultist trash. You can't even admit that "being the chair of the board when moving Brookfield was voted on" equals "playing a role in moving Brookfield's HQ". 

If Carney hands the keys to the HoC to Trump the next time he's "humming The Star Spangled Banner in the oral office" you'll say "He played no role".

Don't forget about him not updating you daily on the trade negotiation conversations and embellishing that he listen to ACDC during Jr hockey warm ups.  I'm surprised the nation isn't in an absolute uproar over this....

I think I said it earlier...?  But f*ck, you are stunned.....

[Army Guy]

48 minutes ago, LinkSoul60 said:

Spot on.... we've been complacent for far too long and now is the time to get this country headed in the right direction, militarily and economically.  Carney does talk a good game but also has the economic, financial and business acumen that is needed right now.  Whether he can get around the BS politics and make it happen remains to be seen.... He's only been in the seat 2 months, but I like the direction so far.

Upgrading our military with new equipment can and/or will create jobs. Be that with ships, drones, technology or maybe even planes.  Gather we're still going to stay with some F-35's but also looking at Saab Gripen who had indicated that if awarded they could be built in Canada.  I'm not knowledgeable enough to know which plane is better for the requirements but agree with Carney that our defence spend of 0.75 on every dollar for US made equipment is too much.  That needs to be diversified better....be that Europe or domestically.

True we have already paid for 16 F-35, of which Canada does produce parts for as part of the contract we signed to become a partner. 

The Gripen has been involved in 3 competitions to replace our F-18's, and has placed last in all 3 of them, behind the super hornet, Eurofighter, french rafale, F-35. on the last competition it placed second only because the Euro fighters dropped out because we wanted to much in offsets, and their price tags were eye watering.....and Justin was pissed at Boeing because of a dispute with bombardier. 

Grippen does not have many of the capabilities the F-35 has, it is great in a knife fight , but modern air combat is happening at range, and with stealth, 2 of the things the gripen lacks...F-35 excels at stealth, EW, long range radar, sensors that allow it to engage at range, or drop weapons on target without waking up enemy radar. Historically look at the missions our F-18 have been asked to do over the last 20 years including those missions we were not able to do, and the F-35 covers it all...not to mention the airforce and all it's expertise has said it is the one they want to strap themselves into to go into combat 3 times in a row.......something Carney and other MP won't be doing....he may excell at banking , but i think he lacks the expertise of a fighter jock... 

Again hard to blame the US when we have allowed our own defence industry to wither on the vine due to lack of any interest in our own military. in the meantime the US defense industry build the best in most weapon systems. nobody can produce Aircraft or ships like the US does, some of our Army kits is built by the Europeans. like our leopards, Carl Gustafs anti tank,and a few others, but the rest all built in the US because it was the best at the time...It is one thing to have a lip on for the US or trump to be more correct....but not to buy our own soldiers the best equipment available is to let our soldiers down because of a grudge that will be gone in 3 years...and whatever equipment we do end up purchasing we will have for 40 years...or more...