Signal Former Canadian defence chief says international order is eroding and Canada's readiness is critically short

Summary

Former Canadian Chief of Defence Staff Wayne Eyre, writing in an opinion piece, argues that the international order established at the end of the Second World War is eroding. He says equipment serviceability for ships, aircraft and armoured vehicles hovered around 50 per cent, and ammunition stockpiles are critically low. At Ukraine's consumption rate, he writes, Canada would exhaust much of its ammunition within days. Canada is nowhere close to meeting the NATO pledge of 2 per cent of GDP on defence spending, he notes. He cites a 2023 cut of almost a billion dollars from the annual defence budget and a two-year gap between a March 2022 directive and the April 2024 policy, which dropped a mention of 14,500 additional regulars. This is the author's own assessment, and the piece does not offer independent verification of its figures.