HOW TO FIGHT BACK

Trump's tariff war was a wake-up call for Canada to abandon its gentle complacency and take some big swings. Here are eight gutsy, radical ideas to secure the nation's future.

- 

Pour Money Into the Military

The armed forces need a radical influx of cash to bring in more soldiers, buy new equipment and defend Canada from global threats

BY AUREL BRAUN, PROFESSOR OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO

FOR DECADES, CANADA LIVED a charmed existence. We assumed the U.S. would always defend us, that NATO would last forever, that Russia was a manageable threat and that China's interest in the Arctic was largely benign.

We believed that the long peace in Europe would continue. So, despite being a G7 country, we let our military languish. Canada spent the last decade inching up our defence budget from a grossly inadequate one per cent of our GDP to a still-dismal 1.37 per cent, landing dead last in the G7. Ottawa has always had faith in international institutions and a rule-based international order, centred principally on the UN. Our attention remained fixed on international summits, diplomatic charm and humanitarian foreign aid.

That fantasy came crashing down when Donald Trump returned to the White House. Suddenly, the country we had always relied on made clear it might not return the favour. At the same time, China and Russia have drawn closer, with Beijing bankrolling Russian energy projects in the Arctic and indirectly helping to fund its military build-up. China has declared itself a “near-Arctic state.” The region, once considered remote and secure, is now a strategic front line. Our borders are not as distant as they used to be.