How are we feeling about this?
The cost of failing to deter aggression is incredibly high, look at Ukraine. We are in a similar situation, but we are even worse off. There is much less conventional parity between us and the hostile dictatorship next door. As an example, Ukraine started the war with a layered air defense network and thousands of interceptors to keep it in the fight, that led to Russian caution with their air assets and allowed a front to form. Canada has precisely 0 air defense batteries.
Ultimately there is no reasonable amount we can spend to gain conventional deterrent against the new United States. The money needs to yield a fast track to nuclear deterrence.
Unfortunately for us Canadians, we are staring at the choice between spending and sacrificing financially to hedge against the risk of invasion. If we don’t, and the worst happens, we’ll spend much, much more, and a lot of the cost will be blood.
This is not for military defense against the US. All the investment is focused on the Arctic and on deepening military alliance with Arctic states and states that border Russia.
Which border do we share with the US? Any hardening of that? Nope.
We are basically all-in on supporting the US defense strategy. We are part of the team to face Russia so the US can focus on China. Also, we are basically investing in defense infrastructure to provide security for the resource supply chain between our far north and the US.
We may not love them right now, but we’re still team USA. We are still basically a resource colony, and we are doing as the empire’s strategy demands of us.
