Parliamentary Budget Officer says defence costs ‘unsustainable’ over next decade
OTTAWA - The Harper government has built a military that it cannot afford and will be forced to make tough choices about in the future, if it sticks with the current funding envelope, the country's budget watchdog said Thursday.
The new assessment by the parliamentary budget office came as debate kicked off in the House of Commons about an expanded and extended war against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, a conflict that opposition MPs were warned this week will last more than a year.
Jean-Denis Frechette, the parliamentary budget officer, says the federal government will need to either pour more money into its defence budget, scale back its ambitions, or do a mixture of both in order to put Canada's military on a sustainable footing.
The Harper government currently spends $21.5 billion on defence — or 1.1 per cent of the gross domestic product.
In order to sustain the existing number of troops, bases, tanks, planes and ships, the budget office says the Conservatives will have to spend about 1.6 per cent of GDP, which would be an increase of at least $3 billion annually.
The Conservatives rode to power in 2006 with a promise to dramatically increase the size of the military and to provide it with stable funding after years of lean Liberal budgets.
The defence budget did grow during the Afghan war, but starting in 2011 the Conservatives attacked the federal deficit through its strategic review process and the separate Deficit Reduction Action Plan — or DRAP. The effect of most of those cuts kicked in last year.
"Our modelling shows that until 2014, there were sufficient funds to maintain the program," said the report.
READ MORE: http://www.nationalnewswatch.com/2015/03/26/parliamentary-budget-officer-says-defence-costs-unsustainable-over-next-decade/#.VRRSamx0zIW
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