Peace dividend needed now more than ever

Brief to the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development

Defence and Foreign Policy Response Campaign

Canadian Peace Alliance

December 1994

The Canadian Peace Alliance, Canada's largest umbrella organization of peace-related groups, believes that a significant cut in military spending is both possible and needed to free resources for social programs spending, environmental protection and overseas development funding. Some proposals by peace groups are for a cut of $4.3 billion by 1999-2000, annual 10% reductions for five years, or simply a 50% cut.

The following examines the social and fiscal costs of Canada's huge military budget, ignoring for the most part that it is also contributing to a continued and dangerous arms race.

It is important to stress that Canada’s and global security depends more on solving the social, development and environmental problems facing the majority of the population, rather than on continued high military spending.

Military budget still bloated

The Department of National Defence (DND) budget is the largest discretionary item in the federal budget, comprising 40 per cent of discretionary federal spending.¹ Military spending is an important cause, therefore, of the government's current fiscal difficulties. No review of social programs spending can be complete without examining this large item in the budget.

Military spending grew faster than almost any other federal program from 1980-81 until now. And in the last budget, the $3.5 billion cut to military spending over three years is disproportionately smaller than other cuts; for example, the $5.5 billion cut to unemployment insurance benefits over the same period. Or the cuts to overseas development assistance, which declined 26 per cent since 1988-89, compared to an "official" ten percent decline in the defence budget in the same period.²

In fact, military spending is still at least 41 per cent higher in 1994-95 than in 1980-81, in current dollars. The official ten per cent decline is misleading, since it does not account for two annual $400 million cuts, in taxes paid by the DND, and in pension accounting rules.³

Cutting obsolete base personnel ...

Moreover, the last federal budget and recent white paper on defence both plan to cut personnel costs, largely from the bureaucracy and from obsolete military bases. The 16,000 people and bases targeted for permanent layoff or closure will receive no special training or redevelopment funding, contrary to promises by the Liberal Party before the election to convert, not close bases. Entire communities will be devastated in the years ahead.

Conversion of bases and military jobs to peaceful uses would be less of a drain on the economy and social programs spending, than the current plan to do nothing. Spending on conversion would be much less costly than spending on unemployment and social assistance benefits, since it would be an investment in productive facilities that would pay off in the future. John Treddenick, an economist at the Royal Military College in Kingston, estimates that Canada could create 30,000 to 40,000 permanent jobs if its defence budget was spent in different ways.⁴

to pay for expensive weapons

The military budget for new weapons is largely intact. The so-called cuts are making the future Canadian army smaller but more deadly The new white paper on defence proposes the purchase of new hunter-killer helicopters and four submarines, a doubling of the submarine fleet from our current two. Each submarine could cost as much as the entire annual budget of Environment Canada.

No major weapons system proposed by the previous government has been dropped by this current government, and the submarines have even been added. Capital spending as a percentage of the DND budget is currently around 25 percent,⁵ and will increase as personnel are laid off. This spending must be cut as a priority.

Canada's military industrial complex

It should be noted that many of Canada's weapons purchases are inconsistent with Canada's real defence needs, and are a result more of a desire to subsidize Canadian weapons manufacturers, keeping them competitive on the world market and helping to promote their weapons exports. For example, many of the Canadian EH-101 helicopter subcontracts were conditional on the sale of more helicopters outside of Canada.⁶ And the Canadian navy made a tour last summer of Korean and Japanese ports to show off our new made-in-Canada frigates, openly acknowledging they were trying to help sell them.⁷

Defence Minister Collenette's comment on the February budget that "We cut in a way that preserves the sharp end"⁸ is truthful, but dangerous. The cuts to bureaucratic and nonmilitary personnel will simply allow the increase of spending on weapons for the remaining military. Canada already spends three times as much per soldier on equipment as the average European member of NATO.⁹

Peacemaking: a cheap way to glorify the military … a new way to invade and pacify

Peacekeeping cannot justify the current high level of operational military spending. Peacekeeping operations comprise only 5.8 percent of the DND budget,¹⁰ and the DND receives back all but 1.8 percent of its peacekeeping expenditures from the United Nations.¹¹ The DND is also trying to justify equipment purchases because the new United Nations "peacemaking" strategy requires a more interventionist and dangerous operational style.

The Canadian Peace Alliance rejects this justification, and recommends such equipment not be purchased. A less interventionist policy by Canada would help stop the militarization of world politics, make such equipment purchases unnecessary, and help preserve the most basic principles of international law, which are flagrantly and increasingly violated in this post-Cold War period.

Military corporate welfare, Star Wars

The annual Defence Industry Productivity Program budget of well over $100 million, which has increased in the same period, must also be included in Canada's military spending. The Canadian Peace Alliance calls on the Canadian government to eliminate this huge, wasteful and dangerous corporate giveaway as a priority, and to use the money as an incentive to convert from military to civilian production.

Another cut that must be made is to direct government funding of the Ballistic Missile Defence program, the renamed Star Wars, which is continuing despite promises by the Canadian government.¹²

Canada and global military spending today

Turning to global military spending, Canada is one of the few countries which has increased military spending since the end of the Cold War.¹³ In 1992, Canada's military allies in NATO and in NATO's new Partnership for Peace were respectively responsible for 64 per cent and 8 per cent of world military expenditures. Russia is responsible for only 7 per cent of world military spending, and other PFP countries one percent.¹⁴ Russia's military expenditures were only five times larger than Canada's, and were only 3 per cent of U.S. military expenditures.¹⁵ Canada itself is still the 11th largest military spender in the world.

NATO, the arms race and Canada's new defence policy

Despite this huge dominance of military spending by NATO and its allies, in May 1993 NATO called on Canada and other members to cease reductions in military expenditures.¹⁶ But the fact is, no credible threat exists to Canada or to its military allies, such as from Africa, Japan, India or China.

The relationship between high Canadian military spending and the continuing global arms race is clear and dangerous. As the current disarmament treaties achieved between the former Soviet Union and the U.S. become an increasingly distant memory, the new white paper on defence tries to protect the military from cuts by creating fear and distrust of other nations.

Peace dividend and Post Cold War failure

What is sorely lacking in the post-Cold War period is leadership, including from Canada, on the issue of arms control and disarmament. The almost fifty member organizations of the Canadian Peace Alliance that gave briefs to the parliamentary defence policy review committee this year, and the Alliance as a whole, will continue to call for a smaller military budget, which is causing so much pressure on social and environmental programs.

Notes

1. Geoffrey York, "Rejecting the peace dividend" Globe and Mail, March 31, 1992.

2. "Myths and realities about the Canadian defence budget," Ploughshares Monitor, September 1994, p.15.

3. Ibid.

4. York, op. cit.

5. John Best, "Billions of dollars worth of major projects still on the books," Ottawa Citizen, June 23, 1994.

6. Interview with John Brewin, M.P., November 6, 1992.

7. "Canada's high-tech arms industry takes to sea," Globe and Mail, July 2, 1994. See also "Canadian defence spending leads to export sales," Ottawa Citizen, June 23, 1994.

8. Taped interview, CBC TV News, May 2, 1994.

9. Project Ploughshares, Federal Election 1993 Questions for Candidates, p.2.

10. "Myths and realities about the Canadian defence budget," op cit.

11. Federal Election 1993 Questions for Candidates, op cit.

12. "Canada's role in Star Wars," Toronto Star, October 13, 1993.

13. York, op. cit.

14. International Institute for Strategic Studies, Military Balance 1993-1994, Washington: 1993.

15. Ibid.

16. Ruth Savard, World Military and Social Expenditures 1993 (Washington: World Priorities, 1993), p.8.

Recommendations

1. Cut Department of National Defence spending by between $4 3 billion by 1999-2000 to an immediate cut of 50 per cent, and create tens of thousands of permanent, useful jobs which are now lost through spending on expensive military employment.

2. Convert closed military bases and provide conversion retraining for laid off military personnel to (1) save the cost of unemployment and social assistance benefits, (2) invest in the future and (3) create peaceful, socially useful jobs.

3. Reduce the proportion of DND spending on new weapons; stop the purchase of submarines and new hunter-killer helicopters; stop the purchase of heavy equipment for interventionist, "peacemaking" operations.

4. End the Defence Industry Productivity Program corporate giveaway, and use the money to convert military to civilian production.

5. Stop direct government funding of the Ballistic Missile Defence program, or "Star Wars."

6. Oppose NATO's decision to cease reductions of military expenditures; lead efforts to reduce military spending in NATO countries; end our membership in NATO or any other organization that opposes a reduction in military spending, or commits Canada to a dangerous, expensive nuclear weapons war strategy.