Trudeau the military big spender

Things are not quite as they might seem--oops! Just noticed that Babbling has already posted on this (first time for everything). I'll just give the full CDA rebuttal, received by e-mail:

The Conference of Defence Associations (CDA) would like to draw your attention to an article [front page, natch] by David Pugliese in the Ottawa Citizen today, 4 December 2007, entitled "Surprise: Trudeau was top defence spender."

Pugliese asserts that former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau "even outspent Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney, who brought in a hawkish defence policy in the late 1980s" and that Mr. Trudeau was not so dovish or "pinko" on the military as we might think. He cites a recent Senate defence committee analysis which covered defence spending as percentage of GDP from 1970 until now. He concludes that current government spending on the military has a long way to go to reach the levels of Trudeau.

While the CDA agrees with measuring defence spending as a percentage of GDP in order to compare expenditure under successive governments (see the link below to our letter to the Toronto Star), this comparison should be made between governments both before and after Trudeau's in order to draw any worthwhile comparisons. While, indeed, it is no surprise that Trudeau's spending on the military is high in comparison with successive governments', it is still much lower than spending by previous governments. To truly judge government spending, we must also compare it to what came before, not just after.

We would like to bring to your attention Canadian average defence spending figures,
as percentage of GDP (ref: NATO):

1949-1956 (Louis St-Laurent): 6.5%
1957-1962 (John Diefenbaker): 5.4%
1963-1967 (Lester Pearson): 3.8%
1968-1984 (Pierre Trudeau): 2.1%
1984-1993 (Brian Mulroney): 2.0%
1994-2003 (Jean Chretien): 1.3%
2004 - current (Paul Martin, Stephen Harper): around 1.2%

In conclusion, while we see that spending under Trudeau (2.1%) was more than today's government's spending (1.2%), it was still less than previous Governments's. Jack Granatstein has pointed out in his book, "Who Killed the Canadian Military?" successive governments have placed less and less emphasis on military spending. The Senate analysis, although useful, nevertheless hides this fact by leaving out history before 1970, providing an incomplete picture of a trend of neglect by successive Governments over a number of decades. The current Government has, thus far, kept its promises on defence spending, but to address decades of neglect will take a number of years, as highlighted in 2004 in the Doug Bland study "Canada Without Armed Forces?" (see link below):

"What is not as well understood by Canadians and Canada's political community is the national crisis of the 'future force'. It is a gathering crisis caused by insufficient attention to and funding support for the people, equipment, training establishments, and logistical support facilities, among other things, that are needed to provide credible military capabilities tomorrow."

Alain Pellerin, Colonel (Ret'd)
Executive Director, CDA-CDAI / Directeur exécutif, CAD-ICAD

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Relevant links... :

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Alain Pellerin. "Defence budget falls short." Toronto Star, 1 November 2007.
Available online at..

Jack Granatstein. "Who Killed the Canadian Military?" Summary available at:...

Edited by Douglas Bland. "Canada Without Armed Forces?" McGill-Queen's
University Press.

Update: A clarification received from the CDA:

Referencing our recent commentary, “Comment on ‘Surprise: Trudeau was top defence spender’” – the Conference of Defence Associations (CDA) would like to clarify that David Pugliese was quoting statistics and opinions made by the Senate defence committee and Senator Colin Kenny. In our commentary on Mr. Pugliese’s piece, we did not mean to attribute the comments and claims cited to the author himself. If this has caused any confusion, the CDA apologizes for that.

Upperdate: Seems Sen. Kenny was acting on his own (via Norman's Spectator):

Senator disputes military data

A Tory senator is taking issue with how the head of the Senate's defence committee has portrayed records that detail current military spending as well below expenditures of the Trudeau era in the 1970s. Senator David Tkachuk says the records, produced by parliamentary researchers, and outlined in a Citizen story Tuesday, are not an "analysis" done for the Senate committee, but a collection of figures produced for Liberal Senator Colin Kenny, chairman of the committee. "This was a study commissioned for and asked for by Senator Kenny as an independent senator," said Mr. Tkachuk, who is the deputy chairman of the Senate defence committee. "The chair does not speak on this or any other issue for the committee unless explicitly specified," Mr. Tkachuk said yesterday in the Senate.