Canadian Peace Alliance/l'Alliance canadienne pour la paix

Canada's largest umbrella peace group

For immediate release – February 29, 2000

Global security is the real casualty of this budget

"Contrary to how it looks, this is not a security budget", says Tryna Booth, Coordinator of the Canadian Peace Alliance (CPA). "While our war-fighting capacity has been maintained by boosting funding to the military, we do little to address the root causes of conflict."

The Department of National Defence has the largest budget of any federal government department. Last year, additional funding was provided to increase the wages of military personnel. A one-time cash infusion paid Canada's bills for its role in bombing Yugoslavia. Together, yesterday's budget announcement and the 1999 increases will mean that DND will have received an additional $2.3 billion in funding by 2002-2003.

On the other hand, the International Assistance Envelope (IAE), which includes Official Development Assistance (ODA) and assistance to countries in transition in Central and Eastern Europe, will receive a mere $435 million over the next three years.

"Security cannot be equated with military might. Canada can most effectively contribute to global security through increased overseas development aid, preventative diplomacy, and humanitarian relief efforts. These are the areas to which our security money should be targeted," comments Booth.

With the so-called end of the Cold War, Canadians expected to see a corresponding decrease in military spending. And even though Canadian military spending is higher that it was just prior to the last military build-up of 1980, the United States and NATO would have us believe that more money is essential. However, this is contrary to the trend of decreased military spending worldwide.

Canadians take pride in the highly publicized, people-helping-people roles the Forces undertake, like disaster relief and humanitarian support. However, it is not clear that they support continued high military spending for what NATO’s calls "humanitarian interventions", taking on an increasingly offensive role as the world’s police force and even violating international law.

"In a democracy, the military should undertake only those roles determined for it by civil society. The mandate of Canada’s military hasn’t been examined in over 5 years, and it’s high time for a public review," says Judith Berlyn, CPA Co-Chair.

The military could sustain significant reductions in its budget and still ensure that personnel are adequately compensated and that peacekeepers are properly trained and equipped. The main change would be to abandon the doctrine of multi-purpose, combat-capable forces in all three military branches and to focus on certain core competencies, such as traditional peacekeeping.

"Before allocating more money there should be a public review of the role of the Armed Forces. Only after it has been determined what role the military should play, in accordance with our foreign policy objectives, can the necessary resources be directed to those ends," Berlyn notes. "But the Government has chosen war over peace in this budget. Our contribution to global security should have been to provide for the real security needs of all people, and address the root causes of conflict," she continues.

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