Democracy in Uniform — Canada’s Defence Shift and the Debate Over Militarization
At the 2026 Victoria Forum, CIC Victoria President Chris Kilford argues that Canada’s defence shift is not a turn toward militarization.
Canadian military paratroopers walk past a C-17 Globemaster on a sunny day at an airport.
Editor’s note: The Victoria Forum took place in Victoria, British Columbia, from August 22–25, 2026. During the panel “Defence and the Militarization of Democracies: The Military Turn in Canada,” Dr. Chris Kilford delivered a five-minute opening commentary addressing whether Canada has embarked on a path toward the militarization of its society.
Thank you for the opportunity to offer a few reflections this afternoon.
I think we can all agree that the international security environment has changed profoundly over the last few years. And with Washington’s call for NATO members to dedicate 5% of their GDP to defence spending by 2035, our government has become more focused on defence and security issues.
Of course, our leaders need to, because any government’s first responsibility is to protect its citizens from the threats we face today and the ones we may face tomorrow.
When it comes to threats, a question whenever defence spending is raised, is who are we actually defending ourselves against? It’s a reasonable question and one we have the luxury in our democracy of asking.
And we should not forget that it is a luxury that has been earned through sacrifice.
Some 60,000 Canadian soldiers were killed in the First World War and another 40,000 in the Second World War. 516 were killed in the Korean War. And I’m mindful of the 159 soldiers who lost their lives during the Afghanistan war, and the 130 Canadian peacekeepers who lost their lives trying to bring to others the freedoms that we cherish.
It is, always, hard to imagine us at war, at some point in the future, certainly in the conventional sense.
We do know that our economy is under assault. We defend ourselves every day from cyber threats, and we are very mindful of foreign interference in our elections and among our diasporas. We do recognise that our security services work silently to thwart would-be terrorists. And, one could argue that we are actually engaged in a conventional war against Russia, albeit indirectly, through the extensive support we provide to Ukraine. No doubt we have plenty of enemies if we care to look.
Despite the challenges our armed forces face in terms of personnel needs and ageing equipment, most Canadians don’t know that we are already one of the highest defence spenders in the world. We have been for many years.
But do the recent defence spending announcements mean that we are now on the path of militarisation?
The simple answer is no.
When I was commissioned as an officer in the Canadian Armed Forces in 1982, the regular force (the army, the navy, and the air force combined) stood at 85,000 members. Today, we have about 68,000 personnel, with plans to inch up to 71,500 by 2029. Yet Canada’s population has grown from 25 million to over 41 million during this period.
Indeed, in 2029, it will be 53% harder to find someone in a military uniform in Canada than it was in 1982.
On the economic front, NATO allows 1.5% of the 5% defence spending target to go towards dual-use infrastructure.
But let’s be honest. Many of the so-called “dual-use” projects recently announced appear, to me at least, to meet long-overdue civilian infrastructure requirements that have been rebranded under ‘defence’ for convenience.
Last fiscal year, we did meet defence spending targets. But how is the question? In part, by moving the Canadian Coast Guard under the Department of National Defence, a paper transfer that bumped the defence budget up by almost $3 billion with the stroke of a pen, plus there was a much needed $2 billion for a pay and benefits package.
Of course, the list of military equipment on order is very long. But this list, I would argue, mostly addresses the decades of neglect suffered by our armed forces at the hands of successive Canadian governments who were willing to outsource a good deal of our defence and security to the United States. One is hard pressed, apart from a very important focus on drones, to find any capabilities that we didn’t have at one point in the past.
In closing, we need not be concerned with the militarisation of our society. There is no dramatic social or cultural pivot taking place. Instead, we are finally holding ourselves accountable for the defence and security of Canada, which is long overdue.
