Defence spending is a major line item in the 2025 federal budget.

Prime Minister Mark Carney has pledged to hit a NATO target of 2% of GDP this year and 5% by 2035.

Does this sizeable investment make sense? What kind of difference will it make for our armed forces?

I asked Richard Shimooka, senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and contributing writer at The Hub, and Stephanie Carvin, associate professor at Carleton University.

Richard, Stephanie, welcome to the program.

Richard, I'm going to start with you.

This marks 80 years since the end of World War II.

Does warfare today look anything like it looked to the Canadian soldiers who fought back then?

If you just think about the parallel in our day to day lives, warfare just reflects how societies, technologies and all that improve over generations.

Certainly, our lives are completely different today, and warfare is no different.

I think some of the major developments in telecommunications, like phones, are a good example.

Back then, the decision-making cycle—the decision to bomb something—might take a week or so, much like a business decision requiring time to gather information.

Today, target identification and related processes are done within minutes or even seconds.

At the same time, some of the core strengths or ideas that Canadians are known for, such as ingenuity and how we operate in our daily lives, are still reflected in the military.

So, while it is a challenge, we now have a new technological and societal backdrop that affects how war is waged.

Many core values and ideas still exist, but the technological environment of the military is completely different.

Stephanie, what advancements or technologies would you say have changed the game the most?

I think indisputably, if we're talking since 1945, it's nuclear weapons.

Nuclear weapons have really had a huge impact on the way we think about warfare, on the strategy of warfare.

To a certain extent, with the advent of these nuclear weapons, a lot of the aim now is to deter force as opposed to use force.

The threat of violence is really latent in the sense that you're basically threatening massive retaliation if an adversary does something we don't like, as opposed to actually having to go and use force and then stop once they agree to our terms.

So I think that's been a large part of that.

But at the same time, we have also seen advancements in other kinds of warfare.

It's not like there hasn't been war since 1945; there obviously has been.

Many of them have been very different in the sense that they are conflicts between states and non-state actors.

We had, of course, the wars of decolonization in the 1950s, 60s and 70s.

In those cases, armies with tremendous lethality and large numbers of troops struggled against well-organized, well-motivated forces—ragtag groups, yet supported by states—who were able to inflict enough cost that these large militaries were unable to advance.

So it shows that technology isn't always the answer; it's the way it's used.

And I think this was very much a part of Richard's answer: your ability to make those decisions quickly, to integrate those technologies into how you think, but also your ability to win hearts and minds, which is part of this information warfare that is also rapidly changing how states have to think about armed conflict.

So with that, Richard, what does a military need to do in order to adapt and keep up with the times when we talk about technology, specifically.

The critical element is flexibility.

Consider the rapidity of technological change occurring right now.

Think about India in the space of bioethics or biotechnology.

That's an area where you see rapid development in new, novel forms of pathogens and related fields.

The military must keep focus on this because that's a potential vector one of our adversaries may use.

It's a niche area, certainly, but it's just one of many.

Consider人工智能（AI: Artificial Intelligence: 模拟人类智能的机器系统） right now—the difficulty governments and societies are having dealing with this absolutely novel form of technology that really didn't exist a decade and a half ago.

The military is viewed as basically being the new commanding heights, in the sense that if we are not on the cutting edge of this, at least to understand its effects and possibilities, then a society like China, which is a huge investor in this field, may cause us to fall behind.

So certainly, the ability to be flexible, to have a reservoir of knowledge within the department or the military itself to identify trends, things we need to watch, and things we need to avoid—these are the critical areas of flexibility that are absolutely required within the department and everywhere else.

Stephanie, what kind of capabilities do other militaries have that the Canadian Armed Forces don't?

It's a really interesting question.

On some level, it actually gets down to bullets.

We've heard stories that Canadian armed forces haven't been able to train with bullets because there's an ammunition shortage.

So that's the level we're dealing with right now, and we can get back to that more in the budget part of the conversation.

But to a large extent, we do have some really advanced capabilities.

The Canadian Armed Forces recently started up a cyber command, I think it's called CAF Cybercom.

We have space-based abilities, although we're looking to enhance them, and we have really good capabilities in the Arctic—certain capabilities there that even our NATO allies are interested in and are working with us on developing further.

So it's not to say we don't have capabilities, but one of the things the Canadian Armed Forces is looking at right now is how warfare has been changing, particularly in just the last three to four years.

They're looking at the lessons of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and they're seeing how quickly adaptation takes place.

The challenges both sides are having in terms of manpower and how to integrate force and technology together in order to basically survive in the case of Ukraine, or simply some of the brutality that still continues to exist.

If we think back to the Syrian conflict over the last ten years, which is thankfully largely resolved, although there's still some fighting in that region.

The Russian armed forces were using barrel bombs—simply metal containers full of junk dropped from large heights with dynamite—causing huge, immeasurable suffering.

So this isn't exactly an advanced technology, but it is a willingness to use brutal force on civilian populations, which has definitely been a characteristic of the wars we've been seeing over the last couple of years, whether in Sudan, Ukraine, Gaza, or anywhere.

It's manifold.

You have to remember that most of our allies started a major modernization cycle around 2014, 2015.

That aligns with the Wales summit, the NATO Wales summit, where the 2% guidelines were first instituted.

Since then, they have observed developments in Ukraine and other conflicts to identify major trends and determine how to address those issues.

For example, in the Army, air defense is seen as an absolutely vital enabler.

We've seen what's happening in Ukraine today with the sheer number of drones, which have taken up a huge part of the Army's existing capabilities.

It's not a replacement, but it's certainly a supplement, for long-range artillery, for the ability to identify targets, and for reconnaissance—which is probably the most important development in this area.

So air defense systems are absolutely vital to ensure that armies can remain protected, mobile, and undertake operations.

The Canadian military has identified a small number of systems, but it's nowhere near the comprehensive systems our allies have brought in.

We don't have any real effective long-range artillery.

Our tanks are starting to get old, and we don't have many because we've actually donated a fair few to Ukraine.

I could go on and on.

But the one part that I think is really lacking and needs to be addressed with accelerated progress is the networking component.

Just like in our society today, as I mentioned before, phones and other social media systems bind us and make us more effective in much of our work.

The military has been very slow to adopt this due to funding cutbacks, and that's a real core area we need to address and move forward on.

You talk funding. Let's talk budget.

The Liberal government's budget laid out more than $80 billion over the next five years to rearm and reinvest in the military.

There is money set aside for recruitment and retention, for infrastructure and training and for new equipment.

Stephanie, we know that we want a line there for bullets, but what else do you want to see the money go to?

One of the most interesting things in the budget is that of that 84 billion, 25% is earmarked simply for raises—just paying people who have joined the armed forces, improving their salary.

Hopefully, that will help improve recruitment and retention, and I think that's a good thing overall.

We want our soldiers to be well paid because they are in many ways making sacrifices that many of us in the civilian world aren't making on a regular basis.

So I think that's a very good thing.

There's another $18 billion aimed at some of the weapons Richard was just mentioning.

If we look at the document the Army has been putting out, they've identified a number of capabilities they need—things to help them generally do better warfighting.

So things like better precision, becoming harder to detect and deny—that's part of the lessons of Ukraine for sure.

Being able to target better, target faster—I think that's a large part of it.

They've also identified the need to engage in long-range capabilities.

So a lot of that long-range precision is part of that $18 billion.

And then finally, long-term, I don't think this is in the $84 billion, but it is in the budget generally: the ability to help develop the Arctic.

If you want to be up there, you need strong, safe, healthy communities in the Arctic.

So having things like roads that exist year-round is going to be very important, particularly if you're going to emphasize the Army and military's ability to have persistence in the north.

Simply building up those capabilities so we can put numbers of people up there in the Arctic. This document, and all recent documents—whether the defense policy update or the 'Inflection Point 2025 Army' document—really emphasize the Arctic as a central area of importance in the future.

Richard, I want to get your take on that as well. But overall, what do you make of the budget's plans for defence spending?

I think it's perhaps the first initial blueprint, to use some of their language, but it still requires a lot more detail to actually get a full appreciation of what it may entail.

And I also generally believe that because we've been so delayed on actual modernization compared to our allies, we probably need more investment, or significantly more investment.

The problem is there's just not enough capacity within the department to actually execute on some of these ambitions.

So it definitely provides a great rundown of those aspects.

The only area I might add is that there is $6.6 billion for Canada's defence industrial base, an area truly required to obtain the munitions, ships, and other items needed to execute the broad policy ambition.

And even there, I would argue that the amount is simply not enough.

The other important aspect to consider is that much of this was put into a five-year timeframe, and we don't know the exact details or the sequencing.

Will it be backloaded, like many other previous policy documents or budgets, or is it frontloaded or evenly distributed?

Those are big questions.

So we need to see a bit more, in my opinion.

And we probably need to spend more as well.

If I could just complement that point, I would say that the word 'submarine' doesn't really appear in the budget.

So we know that's something that's coming—a decision down the road.

I wouldn't exactly call it a blueprint, but rather the faintest of blueprints; a lot more detail will have to come out in the next couple of years.

But clearly, the military is seeing this as a generational opportunity.

And hopefully, we will see that plan come to fruition.

A friend of mine recently put it this way: it's as if the government has invited the military to a buffet but hasn't given them any dietary restrictions.

So we're going to have to wait to see how that works out.

Richard, the budget strategy seems to have two purposes: rearming the Canadian military and, at the same time, economically developing the Canadian defence industry.

On paper, some people might view that as a 'two-for-one' benefit.

Is that the right strategy?

It carries a fair bit of risk.

The Ministry of Finance's comments just after the budget, stating it has to support the Canadian economy, reflect its potential risks.

If you look at defense industries in most other countries, they are subservient to defense policy; it's a direct line towards it.

One of the ironies is that Canada actually exports about as much as it produces for its own domestic utility in the defense industry.

So we actually have a highly globalized industry.

But the reality is that the Canadian Forces have basically been starved of some pretty critical investments for 20, if not 30, years.

If you start diverting resources to look for what can provide the most domestic benefit for Canada, without actually addressing the most fundamental concern the government has in terms of its foreign policy or sovereignty, you are not going to get value for your money.

You may actually get less capability at much higher costs.

And you wouldn't even get great economic output because it's not really hinged on what the forces need, nor what would be sustainable in the long term.

This is because you're just making economic bets rather than sustained bets on what is required for the national sovereignty of the country.

It's hard to say simply because we don't have enough detail.

We've spent a lot of time talking about defense.

We're also waiting on a national security strategy, which will hopefully be coming out sometime this year or early next year; we've been waiting for one for four years now.

So, what the vision of defense is going to be for this country is going to be really, really important.

Richard talked about all these important aspects of the defense industrial base.

But we are also now faced with the decision of how close we want to be with the United States, particularly regarding interoperability.

We're going to be part of this golden dome, which is not an actual dome but several military systems for missile defense.

These are some really important decisions.

And Canadians have some very strong feelings about who our allies are right now.

So how the government navigates this, on top of all the procurements we're going to be making, is going to be something I will be paying very close attention to over the next couple of months.

Stephanie, Richard, it looks like we're going to have this conversation in a few months' time.

And thank you for your insights.

Thank you.