Michael Taube;

It never made sense that Trudeau, a classic tax-and-spend Liberal who wasted hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars on pet projects, couldn’t meet the NATO defence-spending target.

After the previous Liberal government doubled the national debt in a few short years, one would have hoped that Carney would have taken steps to get federal spending under control, especially while looking to increase defence spending by a whopping $9.3 billion this year.

Yet his massive spending plan, detailed in the government’s main estimates, which were tabled late last month, shows he plans on spending at least $486.9 billion — more than Trudeau spent in his final year. And that number will likely increase when it’s updated to include the $24 billion worth of spending promises Carney made during the election.

Making matter worse, Carney told an audience at Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs that, “We will ensure every dollar is invested wisely, including by prioritizing made-in-Canada manufacturing and supply chains,” and that, “We should no longer send three-quarters of our defence capital spending to America.”

While the Liberal Kool-Aid drinkers will lap up this political rhetoric, his strategy will only serve to increase costs and ensure we get less bang for our buck. After all, the U.S. is far more advanced militarily, and its defence industries have significant economies of scale.

And fewer opportunities for graft.

Update, complete with body language tells: Watch Mark Carney not answer the question regarding if Canadians will see tax increases to cover his excessive spending.

Bait and Switch.

While McGuinty’s recent public commitment to grant the Canadian Armed Forces a “20 per cent pay increase” won praise within the defence community, it has also led to confusion — and some experts are saying they want to read the fine print.

Military pay scales are complicated and are based on rank, profession, deployment and other conditions. There are many ways to roll out a boost in compensation.

Charlotte Duval-Lantoine, a fellow at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, said she thinks this will not amount to an across-the-board pay hike.

“What is clear to me from this statement is that they are looking at all the options,” she said. “We’re still in that big question about what it looks like because a pay raise versus specialty pay versus an adaptation of the compensation package overall — not in salary — are not the same thing.”[…]

If CAF members don’t see a 20 per cent pay bump after the minister’s announcement, he said, it will be “déjà vu all over again” for military personnel who have been let down in the past by lofty promises followed by implementation that “sucks big time.”