For years, the U.S. repeatedly criticized Canada for 'freeloading' and urged its northern ally to pull its weight. Unfortunately, those warnings were ignored.
When it comes to sending Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says that his government is"not there yet." As it turns out, the reason why Canada may not be"there" is that of a decade of neglect. Canada's tanks are mostly broken and unusable.
This is yet another example of how chronic under-investment in defense has made Canada an unreliable security partner. Despite repeated warnings, successive Canadian governments have simply freeloaded off of the United States and other NATO allies. Canada’s meager tank fleet is a relic of the War in Afghanistan. In 2007, Ottawa deployed its old Leopard 1 tank fleet to the Middle East but quickly realized that new equipment was needed. It subsequently purchased over 80 lightly-used Leopard 2s from the Netherlands, which were essentially abandoned after Canadian combat operations in Afghanistan concluded in 2011. In a stupendous error, Ottawa had assumed that Leopard 2s would have the same maintenance needs as Leopard 1s.
Canada’s fighter jets are not much better. In 2010, the previous Conservative government announced plans to replace Ottawa’s aging fighter jet fleet with new F-35s. When the Trudeau Liberals were elected in 2015, they canceled the F-35 procurement on partisan grounds and instead acquired 18 second-hand F-18 fighter jets from Australia.
The Canadian military is falling apart. Only 65.4% of the army’s hardware and 60.8% of the air force’s fleet are fit for service. Only the navy has bucked this trend: 98% of its ships and equipment are ready for deployment.Canada currently only invests 1.5% of its GDP into defense, which falls far short of NATO’s 2% minimum GDP target.
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