Roundup: A tough day for the Alliance

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The talk of the day is NATO, as well it should be, as the alliance is in danger of falling to tatters as Donald Trump picked fights (and this is without mentioning the problems of increasingly autocratic governments in Turkey, Hungary and Poland), though Trudeau apparently managed a side-meeting with Trump to talk trade. Trump did have a point about Germany getting natural gas from Russia (a point that Canada agrees with, though he didn’t necessarily articulate the concerns accurately), but the rest of it, particularly his new demand that NATO partners start contributing up to four percent of GDP on military spending? It’s ludicrous, because he doesn’t actually understand what he’s talking about, especially when he tries to frame it as though they’re paying into some kind of NATO fund that the US pays the lion’s share of – that’s not how the Alliance works, and very little of the US’ military spending goes toward NATO operations.

Canada, meanwhile, announced that we’ll be taking on a new role in Iraq to “train the trainers,” with more personnel and helicopters in the region, something that Trudeau may be hoping will be a bit of a distraction to Trump to show that even though we’re not meeting our GDP spending targets, we’re doing more than our share in contributing (particularly if you look at a country like Greece that meets the target because of salaries and benefits, but doesn’t contribute to missions or meet its equipment goals). IT’s partially why percentage of GDP is such a poor measure of contribution, because outputs are better measures than inputs. Nevertheless, Trudeau did reaffirm our commitment to the 2 percent of GDP goal, even though we’re not going to double spending to meet it anytime soon (though on a practical level, we’re having trouble getting DND to spend the money fast enough, so more money wouldn’t help with that capacity issue). Incidentally, Trudeau elaborated on some of this in his Q&A session, the highlights of which can be found here.

Meanwhile, Andrew Coyne lists Trump’s falsehoods and insults to the alliance while keeping an eye on next week’s meeting with Putin. Paul Wells takes a careful review of how Canada’s relationship with the Trumpocalypse have progressed from good to utter meltdown, and while he looks into Trump’s psyche, Wells also notes the disturbing trend toward authoritarianism that is creeping into more Western democracies, and that Trump is on the “winning” side of this trend – something that should absolutely be alarming to everybody because it signals the decline of liberal democracies.

Good reads:

  • Paul Martin says that common sense will win out in a trade war with the United States. Here’s hoping.
  • Transport Canada wants seatbelts on highway busses made mandatory by 2020.
  • Some federal departments are being cagey in reporting on meetings with Facebook (that may not count as lobbying, to be clear).
  • Given the number of MPs who are opting not to run again in 2019, there is talk of a “snowball effect,” and that some MPs may be unhappy with their parties.
  • Jagmeet Singh has asked the prime minister to “develop federal funds” for Greyhound (rather than nationalize it outright, which is unlike the NDP).
  • Former senator Mac Harb has been cleared of mortgage fraud, and has a few choice things to say about the Conservatives running the Senate during his ordeal.
  • Here’s a long read about the fiscal situation (and potential insolvency) of Newfoundland and Labrador.
  • Kevin Carmichael walks us through the interest rate hike, noting that the economic picture from the Bank of Canada’s data is not the one of mainstream doomsayers.
  • Colby Cosh offers his own take on the Greyhound situation, as a frequent traveller on the service himself.

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