Prime Minister Mark Carney is set to make a key announcement in Toronto today regarding Canada’s defence and security priorities, with pressure mounting internationally for the country to boost its military spending. The announcement, scheduled for 10 a.m., comes ahead of a planned tour of a local military facility and a subsequent press conference at 1 p.m.
This move follows last week’s meeting of NATO defence ministers in Brussels, where discussions centered around raising the alliance’s defence spending benchmark to as much as five per cent of GDP. The current target sits at two per cent—a goal Canada has yet to meet since it was introduced in 2006.
Carney, who campaigned on strengthening Canada’s role in NATO, has vowed to accelerate the country’s timeline to meet the two per cent defence spending target, pushing the deadline from 2032 to as early as 2030. However, no concrete plan has yet been laid out to achieve that commitment.
NATO’s most recent annual report, released in April, estimated that Canada’s defence spending reached only 1.45 per cent of GDP in 2024. With NATO leaders set to reconvene later this month in the Netherlands, all eyes will be on how Canada positions itself in the alliance’s evolving defence landscape.