Canada to spend $30 billion to counter Russia, China says Defense Minister Anita Anand

Over the next twenty years, the Canadian government will invest more than U.S. $30 billion to modernize its defense in order to protect Canada from new and emerging threats from the Arctic North, namely from Russia and China. The plans were announced this week by Anita Anand, the defense minister.

“This is the most significant upgrade to Canadian…(defense) capabilities in almost four decades,” Anand, 55-years-old, noted in a tweet to her 55,000 followers. “We need to make sure…to keep Canadians safe – and that the women and men who serve our country have the tools they need,” tweeted Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Canada, part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), spends 1.4% of the country’s gross domestic product on military spending. NATO wants its members to spend at least 2% of GDP on defense. President Joe Biden of the U.S. and his officials have been asking the Canadian government to raise its defense spending.   

Evidently, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine changed the threat environment. “This has required us to devise and develop this new chapter in continental defense,” with most of the focus being on the Arctic, “and the proximity of Russia to Canada’s north,” Anand said, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Canada’s goal is to modernize both the Canadian Armed Forces and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, jointly run by Canada and the U.S. “As autocratic regimes threaten the rules-based international order, as the security and defence impacts of climate change increase, and as our competitors develop new technologies like hypersonic weapons, there is a pressing need to modernize the North American Aerospace Defense Command…that has kept us safe for over 60 years,” Anand said in a statement..

The plans include a new surveillance system that will expand the awareness of who and what is entering Canadian airspace from the North; modernize command and control information systems and enhanced satellite communications in the Arctic to replace radars from the 1980s; procure new air-to-air missiles that can engage threats from short, medium and long-ranges; add new infrastructure and support capabilities, including additional air-to-air refueling aircraft; and create a science and technology program that will assess new and emerging threats, and access and co-develop technological solutions to address them, alongside the United States.

Earlier, from 2019 to 2021, Anand served as the Minister of Public Services and Procurement. In this role, she oversaw the Canadian government’s response to the COVID-19 threat, including quickly finding multiple suppliers of vaccines, swabs, tests and other medical supplies. By August 2021, Canada had the highest vaccination rate against the virus in the world.

She was first elected to the Canadian parliament in October 2019 from the Oakville constituency in Ontario Province, as a member of the Liberal Party. She defeated two candidates to win the nomination from the Liberal Party. In the parliamentary election, she secured 30,265 votes, about 5,000 more than her Conservative Party opponent. Roughly two thirds of the 90,000 voters in Oakville took part in the election. In 2021, she was re-elected to parliament from Oakville. She was appointed Defense Minister replacing Harjit Sajjan who is now the Minister of International Development. Sajjan moved to Vancouver, Canada from Punjab, India, with his family when he was five.

Born and raised in rural Nova Scotia, she moved to Ontario in 1985. She was a Professor of Law at the University of Toronto; and taught law at Yale, Queen’s and Western universities.

Anand has done research on the regulation of financial markets, corporate governance, and shareholder rights. She was Director of Policy and Research at the Capital Markets Research Institute, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto.

She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Political Studies from Queen's University, a Bachelor of Arts in Jurisprudence from the University of Oxford, a Bachelor of Laws from Dalhousie University, and a Master of Laws from the University of Toronto. Anand was called to the Bar of Ontario in 1994. She and her husband, John, raised their four children in Oakville.

When Anand took over as the Defense Minister, one of her top priorities was tackling sexual misconduct in the Canadian Armed Forces. In November 2021, she accepted the recommendation from a former judge of the Supreme Court of Canada that cases of sexual misconduct be investigated and prosecuted by the country’s civilian justice system.

Anand’s announcement about Canada’s expanded defense spending does not disclose how it will be fully funded. Also, there is no timeline on when the new systems will “address what senior Canadian and American military officials have been warning for years is a dangerous gap in their ability to detect and stop an incoming attack on the continent,” Canada’s CTV News reported.

“Canada is content to shelter beneath the American umbrella,” wrote John Ibbitson in a column for Canada’s Globe and Mail. “NATO partners are entitled to something better than a Canadian military that is equipped on the fly…Our forces rely far too heavily on the kindness of allies.”

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