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Scott Taylor: Collective defence required against Trump’s threats 

In mid-February, Prime Minister Mark Carney unveiled the Liberal government’s new Defence Industrial Strategy, which promises to spend nearly half a trillion dollars on defence and security within the next decade.

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While the official thrust is to “build, partner, buy,” the emphasis is essentially to prioritize Canadian defence companies for that massive investment. So, where Canada has the capability, we would “build” the weapons systems.

Where we do not currently have the capability, we would “partner” with a foreign firm.

And only when absolutely necessary would we simply “buy” from a foreign supplier.

Given that we currently spend about 75 per cent of our defence acquisition budget on U.S.-supplied weapons systems, and Carney’s stated goal is to change that to 70 per cent of defence dollars spent domestically, that is bound to affect the Canada-U.S. trade balance.

While U.S. President Donald Trump has been chastising all NATO member states, and Canada in particular, to increase defence spending, it seems he is bent on that strictly benefitting U.S. arms manufacturers.

The State Department and U.S.Defence Department quietly warned the European Union against implementing their new defence policy........

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