Social programs outgunned

With Ottawa expecting a budget surplus of more than $14 billion this year, the debate is on in earnest: Should there be tax cuts ... or tax cuts?

As federal surpluses have ballooned wildly in recent years — theoretically increasing our options as a country — in reality, most of the options have been quietly removed from the table.

A front-page headline in the Globe and Mail last week declared: “Swelling surplus heightens tax cut hopes.”

Nowhere in the article does it even mention the possibility that any portion of the swelling surplus could be invested in social programs — such as health care and education — despite the fact that polls have consistently shown Canadians strongly favour this sort of social investment over tax cuts.

While the Harper government avoids putting surplus funds into social programs, it has found a new favourite place to direct our surplus tax dollars: the military.

One of the most dramatic changes — and one that has received surprisingly little attention in public debate — is the way Canada's military has been on the receiving end of almost all of Ottawa's new spending.

Canada will spend $19.4 billion on the military by 2010 — an increase of $3 billion a year over our 2007 military spending, and the highest level since World War II, notes Steven Staples, a defence analyst for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

All this is the product of heavy lobbying by Washington and by corporate and pro-military groups in Canada, such as the influential Calgary-based Council for Canadian Security in the 21st Century, whose founders include well-heeled members of the Canadian elite like Fredrik S. Eaton and Sonja Bata.

While clearly pleased with Ottawa's higher military spending, the pro-military set sees these extra billions as just a prelude to still bigger military budgets. For instance, another Calgary-based pressure group, the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute, is advocating pushing our military spending to 1.5 or 1.6 per cent of GDP, which would divert an additional $6 billion a year or so to the military.

These groups argue Canada spends less on its military than our NATO allies — a conclusion they reach by measuring military spending as a percentage of GDP. Using this measure, our military spending looks smaller than that of Latvia or Slovenia or Estonia. But that's only because Canada has a much bigger GDP than any of these tiny NATO countries.

If we measure actual dollars spent, Canada spends vastly more — well over 10 times more — than these three little nations combined. In fact, Canada is now the sixth largest military spender in NATO, notes Staples.

Canada's increased military spending is of course funding our combat mission in Afghanistan — a mission that a majority of Canadians oppose but that the Harper government is keen to continue. On a CTV broadcast last April, then defence minister Gordon O'Connor explained why Ottawa needed 120 new tanks: “Afghanistan and these types of engagements are the future for 10, 15 years.”

The Harper government has managed to cultivate a media image as moderate and well within the Canadian mainstream. But its spending priorities tell another story. While it has lavished money on the military, it has been miserly when it comes to social needs, even cancelling the fledgling national child-care program.

It's hard to imagine that, if Canadians really understood the choices available, they'd favour spending an extra $3 billion a year on the military — rather than on their own children.

Comments