Defense spending: Gross misrepresentation
More lies, damned lies, and statistics. Oh my god! We're spending as much as during the Korean War! The militarists are taking over! The Ottawa Citizen's David Pugliese regurgitates this by Bill Robinson and St. Steve Staples:
While these days (Feb. 2007):
After adjusting for inflation, Canada's defence spending today is 2.3-per-cent more than during its Cold War peak in 1952-53, according to the report, to be released today.I wonder why Mr Pugliese did not do a bit of research to provide context:
It was produced for the left-leaning Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
"Remarkably, the last time Canada spent more money on the military was when Canadians were fighting the Nazis," added the report.
"In 1952, Canada was at war in Korea and the first hydrogen bombs were being tested [actually, only one bomb was tested that year], supercharging the arms race. The irony is today, Canada is spending as much money fighting in Afghanistan and contributing to the 'war on terrorism' as it did at the height of the nuclear arms race against the Soviet Union."..
By 1953, Canada was allocating more than 8 percent of its GDP to defence spending...During the final year of the Korean War, Canada’s defence/GDP ratio was the fourth highest in NATO [reasonable given that most members were just recovering from the devastation of WW II]. Our defence budget that year accounted for 45 percent of all federal spending...Moreover, most military equipment today, even adjusted for inflation, costs an awful lot more than it did in 1953. Compare the costs of ships and aircraft, then and now, and it helps explain why we have comparatively so many fewer these days. In other words you have to spend much more now per piece of equipment in order to have even minimal strength (unless you only want a gendarmerie--see below).
While these days (Feb. 2007):
Well, guess what? We spend about 1.1 per cent now. Back in more reasonable times -- take the year 1991 -- we spent 1.6 per cent...So, by the only realistic gauge of the burden of defence expenditures, we are in fact spending considerably less than at the end of the Cold War. And guess what? We're in a war now so increasing defence expenditures seem reasonable. Unless you're Messrs Staples and Robinson who want the CF essentially reduced to a lightly-armed gendarmerie suitable only for non-combat, UN-only, peacekeeping missions. They certainly don't want this horrifying dollar measure of defence expenditures: "Double?" (but read the details in Babbling's post).
posted by Mark, Ottawa at 4:33 p.m.
2 Comments:
in their report Chart 1 says in 1980/81 Canada spent about $12B and in 2005/06 about $18B on defense.
If you go the Bank of Canada website
http://www.bankofcanada.ca/en/rates/inflation_calc.html
you can see that we would need to be spending $26-28 Billion now to maintain the same inflation adjusted rate of dollar value. So military spending power has gone DOWN
So how does Staples concludes what he does?
Marxist, peace at any cost arithmetic perhaps ??
Maybe some fair minded journalist will do some real work instead of up-chucking a press release from a highly biased organization.
Of course, the authors are trying to convey the impression that defence spending is sky-rocketing in comparison to more socially worthy expenditures in Canada.
Consequently, a far better indicator of just what priority successive Canadian governments have accorded defence would be to examine defence spending as a percentage of total federal budgetary expenditures.
From this perspective, defence spending in Canada is currently about 7.1% of total federal budgetary expenses, a figure that is down slightly from the 7.8% figure for 1986-87, and only up slightly from the 5.9% level of 2001-02.
This is the true measure of the economic opportunity cost of other expenditures foregone by defence spending.
Check out the figures here:
http://www.fin.gc.ca/frt/2007/frt07_e.pdf
which are Fiscal Reference Tables for September 2007.
Note as well the continued high level of federal expenditures on Major Transfers to persons which have held steady at about 25% of total federal spending since 1996-97.
In other words, health care, old age and other expenditures have not necessarily suffered at the hands of defence spending for much of the same period the authors are concerned with.
Note, too, the Canadian defence spending per capita has remained virtually unchanged for decades, according NATO figures.
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