Ottawa is framing the defence investment more as an economic plan than as a plan to defend the country.Chris Young/The Canadian Press

Eugene Lang is interim director of the School of Policy Studies at Queen’s University, where Brigid Waddingham is research assistant to the director.

The conventional wisdom is in. Budget 2025 did not meet the high bar the Prime Minister and Minister of Finance set in their prebudget posturing. Most commentators judged the budget underwhelming on productivity, weak on housing and vacant on affordability.

On national defence, however, the budget could be transformative, though not in the way the current discourse suggests. Defence spending commitments are poised to remake the role of the federal government in the years to come.

There hasn’t been a budget in living memory that focuses more of its numbers and narrative on the defence file. To begin, the budget makes good on the Prime Minister’s pledge to reach the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s annual defence spending target of 2 per cent of gross domestic product, adding more than $80-billion in new spending over five years.

But that is just the down payment.

A fighting chance: How Canada can beef up its defences and grow its economy at the same time

At NATO’s summit last June, Canada endorsed spending 3.5 per cent of........

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