Boosted defence spending 'nowhere near what we need,' former top DND official says

OTTAWA — Days after she retired in January, the former top bureaucrat at the Department of National Defence warned that the billions in additional defence spending promised by the Carney government is “nowhere near what we need” and will only serve to “plug in the holes in the wrong way”.

Stefanie Beck, the deputy minister at DND until her retirement on Jan. 23, shared a surprisingly blunt assessment of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s record defence investments during a conference on Feb. 2.

“First of all, if I can just say very bureaucratically, it’s nowhere near what we need,” Beck said, in comments first reported by La Presse .

“So the initial investments for the armed forces, while they look like phenomenal numbers… Really, all we’re doing with that is plugging the holes in the wrong way,” she added.

“Like, literally trying to repair barracks to make sure we have enough training ranges to actually recruit the number of people annually that we are supposed to be recruiting.”

The former top bureaucrat at National Defence was speaking at a conference about “catalyzing Canadian sovereignty” just days after retiring from the public service.

Her comments come as the Carney government is ramping up the government’s military spending in the hopes of hitting five per cent of the country’s GDP by 2035 as part of a new NATO pledge.

In her previous position, she oversaw how DND and the Canadian Armed Forces would spend $48 billion this fiscal year alone.

The government as a whole is expected to spend $63 billion in total on defence this fiscal year as part of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s pledge to hit the NATO two per cent spending pledge.

Later in her comments, Beck noted that the new military spending has been “fantastic” but the effects will only be seen in years. In fact, she argued, it will be “very difficult” to show Canadians the value for their money in the near future.

“Will they see all of that new ammunition we’ve ordered? No. Will they see all of the new uniforms that are on track to come. Not yet,” she said.

“You will have seen announcements about the new assault rifles. Great, but they have to produce them.”

Defence Minister David McGuinty’s office did not immediately respond to questions on Beck’s comments.

On Tuesday, two weeks after Beck’s comments, Carney announced a new defence industrial strategy that commits $6.6 billion over five years to reduce Canada’s dependency on the U.S. military industry.

The strategy has lofty goals, including increasing the share of defence acquisitions awarded to Canadian firms from 30 per cent to 70 per cent, growing defence revenues for Canadian small and medium-sized businesses by more than $5.1 billion annually and increasing Canada’s defence exports by 50 per cent.

During her Feb. 2 comments, Beck noted that the current U.S. administration under President Donald Trump is extremely “transactional” when it comes to military operations and defence.

She noted that the lately, the Americans have one main consideration now when deciding to join a war: “If there’s money to be made.”

“From a very transactional perspective, with what’s going on in Ukraine right now, the Americans are still there; we’re just all paying more for it. One billion dollars a year to buy into the packages of armaments and of other equipment that’s going into Ukraine,” she said.

“If that’s the cost that we have to pay to keep the Americans in, that’s something I suspect we’ll see a lot more of in the future.”

So, the government’s boost in defence spending is important because if Canada can’t defend itself, “somebody else is going to come in and do it for us,” she said. She did not specify who she was referring to.

Beck’s comments at the conference went largely unreported because at the same event, former Chief of Defence Staff Wayne Eyre argued that Canada should keep its options open when it comes to developing a nuclear arsenal.

Without one, the former top general said, Canada would always remain dependent on other countries to defend itself.

National Post, with files from Jordan Gowling.

cnardi@postmedia.com

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