Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as keynote speaker for a NATO climate change event claimed Canada’s most "existential" threat is climate change. The statement comes while facing international scrutiny over defence spending failures. US senators slammed the Trudeau’s administration as “shameful” after its failure meet the minimum defence spending target of 2% of GDP. The pledge was made 10 years ago. Canada currently spends only 1.34% on defence. Speaking at the Canadian embassy in Washington, D.C., Trudeau delivered his keynote address at the NATO Climate Change and Security Centre of Excellence conference, which took place Tuesday, during the trans-Atlantic alliance’s annual summit. Trudeau insisted Canada is leading the way in the fight against the alliance’s greatest enemy. The only mention of actual enemies was the threat of adversaries in the “warming Arctic” capitalizing on resources, he said. “Canada and NATO have long recognized an undisputable threat. Climate change is not only an existential environmental threat, but one of the defining security issues of our time,” said Trudeau.“Rising sea levels and increasingly frequent and intense national disasters threaten security infrastructure of ports and military bases that keep our alliance safe.”“The warming arctic is opening a new arena of competition that our adversaries are eager to exploit, and climate-induced floods, famine and droughts exacerbate inequality, fuel conflict, and drive displacement across the globe, all of which disproportionately harm marginalized and vulnerable populations. “Overall climate change risks creating a less stable, less prosperous, less secure world. That is why we act. Back home our government has shown global leadership addressing the climate crises. We've placed a price on pollution, which simultaneously reduces our emissions and puts more money in the pockets of eight out of 10 Canadians. .Meanwhile, Canada’s allies are becoming increasingly frustrated with the nation’s failure to meet device spending targets NATO member countries pledged a decade ago. Of the 32 NATO countries, Canada ranks nearly at the bottom of the list when it comes to military spending, landing above only Slovenia, Turkey, Spain, Belgium and Luxembourg. The UK spends more than 2% of its GDP on military defence, and the US spends nearly 3.5%.US House Speaker Mike Johnson on Monday said the Trudeau Liberals’ failure to meet targets was “shameful.”“Talk about riding America’s coattails,” he said, per the Toronto Star. “When you have club rules, then you respect the rules and you expect that everyone will also respect the rules,” Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur said. Criticism of Canada’s weak defence spending is not new to this week. US ambassador to Canada David Cohen recently commented to Global News Canada is now “the outlier in the entire alliance.”In May, the prime minister received a letter signed by a whopping 23 bipartisan US senators expressing “profound disappointment” in his failure to fill the alliance’s criteria. “We are concerned and profoundly disappointed that Canada’s most recent projection indicated that it will not reach its two percent commitment this decade,” the senators wrote.Defence Minister Bill Blair at the Foreign Policy Security Forum on Monday promised Canada would soon share a “credible, verifiable plan” to improve military spending, per the Star. “I’m very confident that it’s going to bring us to that threshold,” said Blair. Blair’s department recently released its inflated budget projections. Nowhere in it was there any mention of spending 2% of GDP on defence, as Western Standard earlier reported. Trudeau on Tuesday commented in his speech that NATO members need to “step up” to strengthen its alliance. “NATO is the strongest military alliance in the world. To keep it that way, we must continue to step up individually and collectively to strengthen both our alliance and the collective peace,” he said.“The long peace after the Second World War is over … This is the sobering reality that we all must face.”Canada spends $27 billion on defence. Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland in her recently released budget promised it will hike defence spending to $50 billion by 2030, bringing the spending to a total of 1.76% of Canada’s GDP — still falling substantially short of NATO targets.
