Canada ranks 28th among 31 NATO allies in the share of defence budget devoted to equipment, according to a Macdonald-Laurier Institute analysis released this fall.
The finding comes as the government prepares to spend billions on new defence purchases, three decades after the radars monitoring Canada's Arctic were designed for a Soviet threat that no longer exists. The Royal Canadian Navy's frigates and Royal Canadian Air Force's fighter jets are nearing the end of their usable lives. France, Germany and Britain each field 126,000 to 202,000 military personnel; Canada has 71,000. The average equipment budget share for the U.S., Britain, France, Germany and Italy stands at 31.2 per cent—6.2 percentage points above Canada's allocation. Poland devotes 55.9 per cent of defence spending to equipment, Lithuania 46 per cent and Hungary 45 per cent. Only Italy, Croatia and Norway rank lower than Canada among the 31 allies measured.
Retired Vice-Admiral Mark Norman, former commander of the Royal Canadian Navy and vice-chief of the defence staff, said Canada's spending pattern reflects a long habit of cutting equipment to preserve payroll and base costs. 'Canada devoted just 11 per cent of its defence budget to equipment in 2015,' Norman said. 'The Armed Forces of Canada have basically been left to rot. I'm not overstating it.' Military training, maintenance and spare parts compete with equipment purchases when budgets contract, he explained, but salaries and installations are harder to reduce. The pressure to shift course is mounting. The Trump administration has pressed NATO allies to spend five per cent of GDP on defence, a demand that is reshaping how Ottawa allocates resources.
The gap between Canada's equipment spending and that of allied nations suggests the military will struggle to modernize quickly enough to meet current threats—particularly in the Arctic, where infrastructure built during the Cold War is now decades obsolete. The Forces face a dual challenge: catching up on decades of deferred purchases while maintaining personnel and operations. Officers like Norman signal that the current trajectory is unsustainable.
The Defence Department has not yet disclosed how aggressively it intends to reallocate budget shares toward equipment as defence spending increases.
