PV staff
Military spending in Canada is poised to skyrocket. At the NATO meeting in Brussels in June, Mark Carney committed to the military alliance’s new target of five percent of GDP. For Canada, this means more than quadrupling the existing military budget to around $150 billion, based on 2024 GDP estimates.
If implemented in all of NATO’s 32 countries, this arbitrary guideline (it does not relate at all to projections for defence preparedness) would increase NATO’s overall spending to $2.7 trillion – equal to the entire world’s current military spending.
Canada’s increase will come at the expense of spending that working people urgently need: healthcare, education, childcare, job creation, environmental protection and climate action, housing, employment insurance and public pensions, social assistance, public transit and others.
For example, $150 billion could build around 430,000 publicly owned and delivered social housing units each year. That’s more than 2 million truly affordable units in the space of five years, which is precisely what is needed to confront the housing crisis across the country.
That amount could also be used to build around 3,600 new schools, or 60 new hospitals, each year. Or it could create in the area of 1.7 million full-time jobs paying $40 per hour.
But these considerations are ruthlessly pushed aside as Ottawa rushes to endorse and implement NATO’s demands. Instead of housing, jobs or healthcare, that money will go into new military hardware, ammunition and weapons of mass destruction (since NATO is a nuclear power), to fuel more aggression, more global insecurity, more war and more destruction.
In an effort to bring the voices of the people into the discussion about military spending – and government spending in general – the Toronto Association for Peace and Solidarity (TAPS) is organizing people’s hearings which will allow representatives of the labour and social movements across Toronto to present their views about what they could do with a bigger “peace” of the budget pie.
The “Peace of the Pie” hearings will take place on September 20, coinciding with the United Nations World Peace Day on September 21.
TAPS is inviting peace, labour, social justice and community organizations to attend the in-person hearings, where presentations will be interspersed with discussion among participants and the audience.
The organizers hope the hearings will also include a final resolution that participating groups endorse.
TAPS will compile a final report and prepare an introduction and conclusion, along with proposed actions which reflect the submissions received. It will be published in print and digital versions, for use in ongoing education, outreach and lobbying efforts. The report will be provided to all participating organizations and sent to local members of government. It will also be available at the TAPS website.
For more information on the “Peace of the Pie” people’s hearings, visit peaceto.ca
Support working-class media!
If you found this article useful, please consider donating to People’s Voice or purchasing a subscription so that you get every issue of Canada’s leading socialist publication delivered to your door or inbox!
For over 100 years, we have been 100% reader-supported, with no corporate or government funding.
