Ottawa is buying eight hundred million dollars worth of joint strike missiles from Norway for future Royal Canadian Air Force fighter jets.
Prime Minister Mark Carney announced the Kongsberg contract at the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, just days after advancing a multibillion-dollar submarine procurement project.
The alliance gathering comes under heavy pressure from Washington for member states to shoulder more of the collective defence burden. "It's not just he's winning the argument, he's won the argument," Carney told reporters on Wednesday. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte praised the U.S. president during his closing news conference for transforming the alliance, while President Donald Trump pointed to member nations agreeing to raise spending targets to five per cent of GDP by 2035.
Our air force gets new missiles for the F-35 fleet while Ottawa signs on to rapid rearmament cycles dictated from abroad. We are committing billions we haven't budgeted to deployments we haven't debated.
Ottawa knows what Washington wants. Ottawa has not asked us if we agree.