Members of the Canadian Forces in Ukraine in 2018.
Members of the Canadian Forces in Ukraine in 2018. Credit: Ministry of Defense of Ukraine / Wkimedia Commons Credit: Ministry of Defense of Ukraine / Wkimedia Commons

A recent CBC article is entitled “Everyone agrees Canada should spend more on defence. How do we pay for it?”.

A more important question is “What will we get for that increased spending?”

As a NATO member, Canada agreed in 2014 to allocate two per cent of our GDP to defence spending. A new report prepared by NATO puts our current allocation at only 1.37 per cent.

Defence minister Bill Blair says we’re on track to meet the two per cent target by 2032, based on actions outlined in an April 2024 defence policy update, Our North, Strong and Free. But under pressure from incoming U.S. President Donald Trump and his Republican allies, several provincial premiers and the Business Council of Canada are calling for faster action.

Spending our tax dollars on over-priced, war-fighting hardware made by the U.S. military-industrial complex would appear to provide few benefits to Canadians. Visionary thinking about what constitutes defence spending could yield positive results.

Canada’s military is already heavily engaged in disaster response. This included fighting wildfires in Alberta, Nova Scotia, Quebec, British Columbia, and Northwest Territories in 2023; and evacuating communities threatened by those fires.

In addition to responding to disasters, Canada’s armed forces could also play an important role in preventing them. As Benjamin Franklin observed, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

The defence policy update, Our North, Strong and Free, says that Canadian Armed Forces responses to storms and wildfires “have roughly doubled every five years” since 2010. It calls for “recapitalizing and renewing aging military infrastructure across Canada to support training and operations and bolster our resilience to the effects of a changing climate.”

Impacts of  floods, landslides, fires and droughts can be limited by strengthening and restoring infrastructure – both natural and built. Canada’s military personnel, with their on-the-ground training and experience in disaster response, are well equipped to implement risk reduction measures. Besides renewing built infrastructure, they could “fireproof” communities, reduce flood risks by constructing wetlands and stormwater ponds, restore natural stream channels, and plant trees to stabilize slopes, reduce runoff, improve water quality, and sequester carbon.

Canada once had a single national agency that made plans to prevent and respond to both wartime and peacetime disasters. Plan for tomorrow… TODAY! provides a fascinating and instructive account of Emergency Preparedness Canada. In the face of growing Cold War tensions, a national civil defence organization was created in 1948. It operated under various names for half a century, survived repeated budget cuts, and bounced around from department to department. An initial focus on nuclear war preparedness (think Diefenbunker) was expanded to include managing peacetime emergencies. It was disbanded in 2003 with the creation of Public Safety Canada.

In the wake of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, Public Safety Canada was given a broad mandate to deal with national security, borders, crime, and terrorism. It is charged with “coordination across all federal departments and agencies responsible for national security, and the safety of Canadians.” Even though emergency preparedness is among its responsibilities, the Department of National Defence is not one of its partner agencies,

A strong civil engineering capacity within National Defence could help prevent, mitigate, and respond to the climate-related disasters that are being aggravated by fossil fuel burning and destruction of natural ecosystems. The U.S. provides a model.

My father worked for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. He was a lead engineer on the Fort Peck Dam on the Missouri River, chronicled in Ivan Doig’s novel, Bucking the Sun. Admittedly, Corps projects such as that one had negative impacts.

Today, however, one of the Corps’ three business lines, “civil works,” includes navigation, flood and storm damage protection, and aquatic ecosystem restoration and environmental stewardship.

In contrast, the role of Canada’s military engineering corps is limited to combat readiness. A strengthened civil engineering capacity in Canada’s military would provide added benefits domestically, and for peacekeeping operations in foreign lands as well.

The 2024 defence policy update emphasizes an increased presence in the Arctic. It notes that “By 2050, the Arctic Ocean could become the most efficient shipping route between Europe and East Asia. Canada’s Northwest Passage and the broader Arctic region are already more accessible, and competitors are not waiting to take advantage— seeking access, transportation routes, natural resources, critical minerals, and energy sources through more frequent and regular presence and activity.” It says that defending the Arctic “requires full community engagement.”

Inuit people would be best able to advise on creation of infrastructure that has dual military-civilian benefits, including new navigation and port facilities. Unfortunately, a September 2023 House of Commons study, Addressing Port Infrastructure Expansion in Canada, treated port infrastructure exclusively as a trade issue, overlooking its defence implications, particularly for the Arctic.

As most Inuit speak Inuktut, language training for military personnel should be prioritized. Links between defence spending and climate adaptation measures in Canada’s National Adaptation Strategy could be explored, such as strengthening the Indigenous Guardians Networks. Land-based activities and new monitoring systems for detecting underwater sounds and weather conditions could be designed to provide both military and environmental data.

Now is the time to explore positive ways to increase Canada’s defence spending.

Ole Hendrickson

Ole Hendrickson

Ole Hendrickson is an ecologist, a former federal research scientist, and chair of the Sierra Club Canada Foundation's national conservation committee.