OTTAWA - Stephen Harper’s Conservatives like to boast about their commitment to Canada’s military, that they restored the Canadian Forces after the “decade of darkness” under Jean Chretien’s Liberals.

Maybe.

Things in the military certainly improved when Harper took over in 2006 but now, nine years and tens of billions of dollars later, it’s an arguable point that Ottawa is putting its money where its mouth is when it comes to military spending.

As Liberal MP Joyce Murray noted when Defence Minister Jason Kenney appeared before the House of Commons defence committee last week, spending on defence, as measured by a percentage of the size of Canada’s economy or gross domestic product (GDP), will bottom in a few years under the Conservatives at 0.89%, the lowest level of defence spending by any federal government since the 1930s.

“That would be comical if it wasn't so disappointing and disrespectful to the Canadian Armed Forces,” Murray said.

I agree with Murray.

Canada and all of its NATO allies must do what they have agreed to do at any number of NATO summits and raise defence spending to 2% of GDP.

But do you know when Canada last spent 2% of its GDP on defence? You might be surprised: It was the government of Pierre Trudeau in 1971-72. We’ve never been above 2% since and the trend line now, under the Conservatives, is going in the wrong direction.

Defence spending in Harper’s first budget in the spring of 2006 totalled 1.1% of GDP. For the fiscal year that ended in March 2014, defence spending was 1% of GDP. Heck, even in the worst years of the Jean Chretien era, when Chretien was struggling with mountains of red ink, defence spending was 0.9% of GDP.

But unfortunately for those who are rightly concerned that we are starving the Canadian Forces of the personnel and materiel they need to protect our vast country, it’s not clear if the Liberals are ready to step up and increase spending on the Canadian Forces.

I asked Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau last week what we might expect from his party’s platform on military spending, but his answer was vague and unhelpful. That’s not surprising. In an election year, each party will put details about defence spending into their platform and they will want to make sure the numbers add up.

I’m prepared to wait to see what the Liberals have to offer. It was Wilfrid Laurier, after all, who went down to defeat in 1911 largely on the promise he would spend a fortune to build a Canadian navy rather than do what Robert Borden’s Conservatives wanted to do which was to simply send a cheque to let Great Britain build battleships and Canada would hope for the best.

And I’ve seen no evidence we can count on Thomas Mulcair’s New Democrats to champion increased defence spending.

In the meantime, Canada now ranks 22nd among NATO’s 28 countries when it comes to military spending. Our peers are Latvia, Belgium and Spain.

Our southern neighbour, the U.S., will spend 3.8% of its GDP on defence. Our northern neighbour, Russia, will spend 4.2%.

Meanwhile, our navy no longer has a ship that can refuel our frigates at sea. Search-and-rescue missions on our West Coast rely on planes built in the 1960s. The CF-18 fighter planes — now bombing ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria — were acquired in the 1980s. We’ve been trying to replace our Sea King helicopters since 1983. And don’t even get me started on new trucks for the army.

The Harper government promised a deep-sea naval port in the high Arctic. And ships that could get through Arctic ice in any conditions. We’re still waiting.

It was a big deal when it was announced earlier this year that we had the money to replace 6,500 rifles used by the Canadian Rangers, the largely aboriginal force that acts as Canada’s eyes and ears north of the 49th parallel.

Do you know how old the Rangers’ Lee-Enfield rifles are that we’re finally replacing? We bought them in 1947!

This election season, let’s make this an issue. We need a plan to boost defence spending. Which party will take our defence needs seriously?