Plan to slash defence spending criticized

Minister says proposal to find $1 billion in savings is not meant to be a budget cut

The country’s top soldier and outside experts say that finding almost $1 billion in savings in the Department of National Defence budget will affect the Armed Forces’ capabilities, although the defence minister insisted Friday the budget is not being cut.

Deputy minister Bill Matthews told MPs on the House of Commons defence committee that the department is identifying “proposals for spending reductions” that total more than $900 million over four years, while trying to minimize the impact on military readiness.

“We have to prioritize those decisions so that there is the least amount of impact possible, acknowledging that there will be impact,” Matthews said Thursday.

The chief of the defence staff, Gen. Wayne Eyre, said top military leaders were meeting to discuss what that will mean.

“I had a very difficult session this afternoon with the commanders of the various services as we attempt to explain this to our people,” Eyre said. “There’s no way that you can take almost a billion dollars out of the defence budget and not have an impact.”

Yet in a statement on Friday, Defence Minister Bill Blair’s spokesperson Daniel Minden said: “Any claim that Canada is ‘cutting’ defence spending is not accurate, because overall defence spending has increased and will continue to increase.”

The most recent federal budget projects that the department’s budget will be $39.7 billion in 2026-27, up from $26.5 billion in the current fiscal year. Most of the budget for the next several years is tied up in long-term spending commitments — for example, the purchase of 88 F-35 fighter jets.

In the same budget, the government announced plans to find more than $15 billion in savings over five years by cutting consulting, professional services and travel by 15 per cent and departmental spending by three per cent.

Anita Anand, who was shuffled from defence to become president of the Treasury Board over the summer, told her colleagues they need to start making those decisions by October.

Blair told the committee Thursday that Canada may need to push off some major procurement projects, such as the shipbuilding strategy, and make do with older equipment for now.

The defence budget is about 1.3 per cent of Canada’s GDP.

David Perry, president of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, said Friday there is a disconnect to see Anand “being the person to agree to spend more, to then be wielding the budget knife that’ll make that mathematically impossible.”