Canada is now “a laughingstock in NATO”

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This is a conversation series by Donna Kennedy-Glans, writer and former Alberta cabinet minister, featuring intriguing newsmakers and personalities.

“Canada, you are taking advantage!” This is how Canadian businessman and former soldier Lawrence (Larry) Stevenson interprets last week’s letter from 23 US Democratic and Republican senators to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. U.S. lawmakers urged Canada to honor its commitments to NATO and accelerate efforts to increase defense spending to two percent of GDP.

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A NATO summit is scheduled for July in Washington. It is unusual for US senators to publicly deliver such a strong message to a NATO ally and neighbor before a summit; I’m more than a little curious to understand its timing and meaning.

Larry is a military expert: he graduated at the top of his class from the Royal Military College of Canada in 1978, serving on peacekeeping tours in Cyprus before leaving the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) as a captain to pursue an MBA at Harvard and go into business. and continues to work with military reservists.

The 67-year-old man who chats with me from downtown Toronto – a dark navy vest over his neatly pressed white shirt with meticulously rolled cuffs – is charming. But I remind myself that he is not a pushover. As founder and former CEO of Chapters bookstores, Larry went toe-to-toe with Gerald Schwartz and Heather Reisman when the duo launched a hostile takeover bid in 2001. And in 2015, when SNC-Lavalin became embroiled in a serious bribery and ethics scandal. Larry was the person hired to reform the company’s management team and board of directors.

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And Larry is no expert at pontificating; My question is deeply personal. He knows well two of the senators who signed that letter to Trudeau: Republican Senator Mitt Romney, Larry’s former boss at Bain and Company, and Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth, a combat veteran who was seriously injured. “When two serious people like (Romney and Duckworth) write us a letter,” Larry says, “you have to pay attention and stop worrying about the United States interfering with Canada. Where have you been for the last 100 years? Yes, the United States interferes in Canada. “If we were carrying our weight, I would back off.”

But we are not. They see us as freeloaders, Larry says, crossing his muscular arms and leaning back in his chair. “We committed in 2006 to reach two percent (of GDP) and here we are at 1.33 percent almost 20 years later, with no plan to reach two percent by the end of the decade… . We’re basically saying that the Americans would never let anyone take over us, so we don’t have to invest in our own defense.

“There are only a few things that Democrats and Republicans agree on,” Larry continues. “One is that they are paying more than their fair share.” And then he explains: “If everyone really believes that Ukraine should be helped, why do they (the Americans) have to do most of the heavy lifting? I think Ukraine was probably the straw that broke the camel’s back.

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“And then they look at China and Taiwan,” Larry speculates grimly, “and they say, ‘Okay, we have to send a signal.’ We are not going to fight that battle alone.’ If we are alone, Taiwan will be part of China.”

He pauses for a moment to take it in and continues.

“Unfortunately, we have become a laughingstock in NATO. You know there is no mission they can give us because either we can’t get the troops there, or the troops don’t have the right equipment when they get there, or the avionics on the planes aren’t up to date so they can We won’t fly in formation with the other members. of NATO.”

And what is most disturbing, Larry explains, is the growing nuclear challenge. “Now we have crazy people in North Korea who have nuclear weapons. We will probably have madmen in Iran who will have nuclear weapons. And, you know, we will have non-state actors who I think will have access to nuclear weapons. And even if it is a nuclear weapon aimed at Calgary, Vancouver or Toronto, to say that we have no defense against some lunatic is quite sad,” he concludes. “I think we have to develop it. We can’t rely on: ‘Oh, the Americans and Norad will do it.’”

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The implications of what Larry is sharing leave me momentarily speechless. Is patriotism really dead in Canada? The inevitable result of a Prime Minister declaring our country to be a post-nation nation-state, I mutter in frustration.

Last week I was in Detroit, honoring the passing of a favorite aunt; It was wonderful to see how enthusiastically Americans prepare for Memorial Day. Larry nods: “I was on a plane from Philadelphia to Chicago…in business class,” he shares, “and an American soldier got on the plane. The man across the aisle stood up and said to the soldier, ‘Here, have a seat.'”

It’s such a beautiful gesture. However, in Canada, instead of honoring our military and finding better ways to defend our country, we are focused on tearing down long-standing institutions. Can we turn this conversation around? It’s not easy, Larry answers, once again crossing his arms. Yes, he is enthusiastic about building the capacity of reservists, offering education and training as recruiting tools. But most military people don’t talk about it, Larry reports; His dinner conversations are absorbed in finding ways to stop further erosion of military institutions.

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In 2022, when former Supreme Court Justice Louise Arbor published an independent report on sexual misconduct in the CAF, Larry took issue with Arbor’s assessment that “military universities resemble institutions from a different era, with a model of obsolete and problematic leadership.”

And he has intervened in the decision of Bill Blair, Minister of Defense of Canada, to create a mostly civilian Military College Review Board, chaired by Dr. Kathy Hogarth, former dean of Social Work at Wilfrid Laurier University, to decide the fate of the two Royal Colleges of Canada. Military Colleges. This makes me nervous, too: Wilfrid Laurier is my alma mater, and I’ve watched with disgust as the university moves deeper and deeper into woke territory.

We take comfort in our history; In a crisis, Canadians step up. “Whether it’s Korea or World War II, we step up,” Larry concludes. “The difference, this time, is that there will not be six or nine months of mobilization; The war could have ended at that time. I think it was Donald Rumsfeld who said: you go to war with the weapons he has, not with the weapons he wishes he had.”

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