The Ottawa Citizen’s top defence reporter David Pugliese crunches the numbers today and finds that ‘pinko’ PM Pierre Trudeau spent relatively more on national defence than any of his successors including ‘hawks’ like Brian Mulroney or even Stephen Harper.
The Conference of Defence Associations — an advocacy group whose membership, by and large, includes retired military types as well as the country’s military historians — doesn’t disagree with Pugliese’s analysis but notes that Trudeau’s spending ought also to be compared to his predecessors. On that score, Trudeau spent the least. Here’s the CDA’s comment:
We would like to bring to your attention Canadian average defence spending figures, as percentage of GDP (ref: NATO):
1949-1956 (Louis St-Laurent): 6.5%
1957-1962 (John Diefenbaker): 5.4%
1963-1967 (Lester Pearson): 3.8%
1968-1984 (Pierre Trudeau): 2.1%
1984-1993 (Brian Mulroney): 2.0%
1994-2003 (Jean Chretien): 1.3%
2004 – current (Paul Martin, Stephen Harper): around 1.2%
The only time I ever had to qualify on grenades using rocks was during Trudeau's reign. The Canadian Forces has faced many fierce enemies over the years and prevailed but there was no greater enemy of the Canadian Forces than Pierre Elliot Trudeau, take it from one that was there. Under Uncle Brian we got our distinctive uniforms back which started the road to pride and recovery. Then the Liberals under Uncle Jean picked up where Trudeau left off and quietly hacked away at us again. Stats mean nothing more than numbers to illustrate a political point, period. They bear no true resemblance to what actually happened.