‘Cost of drama is too high’: NATO leaders meet in Turkey for annual summit


Prime Minister Mark Carney and U.S. President Donald Trump speak at the G7 working luncheon in Evian-les-Bains, France, on Tuesday, June 16, 2026. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Christopher Katsarov – The Canadian Press

OTTAWA — Prime Minister Mark Carney is jetting off Monday to the two-day NATO summit in Turkey’s capital city Ankara, where world leaders will seek to avoid diplomatic friction with U.S. President Donald Trump.

Massive hikes to military budgets are expected to feature prominently as NATO members remain under heavy U.S. pressure to spend much more on defence. But in the background, divisions remain over how much of a threat Russia poses and the chaotic foreign policy of the Trump administration.

Gaëlle Rivard Piché, the head of the Canadian defence think-tank CDA Institute, said this summit will be about alliance members proving their spending is on track and will result in stronger militaries.

“It’s going to be about showing that (we’ve put) our money where our mouth is. Beyond just announcing investments and moving money around, it’s actually using that money to acquire new capabilities,” she said.

In 2014, the same year that Russia invaded and annexed Crimea, alliance members agreed to meet a target of spending two per cent of national GDP on defence.

NATO says Canada, which had long struggled to reach two per cent, is finally meeting that target through tens of billions of dollars in new military spending. But two per cent is now the floor, not the ceiling.

The July 7-8 NATO summit is the first since nearly all member states endorsed a bold pledge at The Hague last year to each spend five per cent of GDP on defence by 2035.

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has said that while allies can celebrate the alliance reaching the two per cent target, they must now present “credible” plans to hit the higher benchmark.

At a talk put on by the Washington-based Atlantic Council think-tank last month, Rutte said the five per cent figure is “deeply rooted” in estimates of what the alliance needs to develop its capabilities.

“That (two per cent figure) was a bit plucked from the air,” he said.

The Carney government is expected to talk up its efforts to boost defence spending and investment in the defence sector. Government officials said at a background briefing on Friday that Canada projects its defence spending will hit 2.13 per cent of GDP for the 2026-2027 fiscal year, and five per cent by 2035.

The government has not publicly revealed how it plans to reach the 2035 target and has not officially booked it into the fiscal framework.

Kerry Buck, a senior fellow at the University of Ottawa and Canada’s former ambassador to NATO, said Canada goes into the summit in “fairly good order” on the accounting front — something that has seldom been the case in the past.



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