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They commended Harper’s exhortations to Canada’s allies to mobilize to counter Russian expansionism – to activate NATO and to impose economic sanctions to make Putin think twice about throwing his weight around. All good.

But these words are fluff unless Canada is willing to put its money where its mouth is when it comes to standing up to the Putins of this world.

This government – which swaggers around in fatigues, pretending to be a friend of the Canadian Forces – has a lot to answer for when it comes to maintaining a military that can play its role in the world when these kinds of crises arise.

Canada’s defence budget as a percentage of GDP peaked at 2.0 percent under the Trudeau government. It went into steady decline under the Chrétien Liberals, looked like it would expand long-term when the Harper government came to power, then plummeted. According the World Bank, it dropped from 1.4 per cent in 2009 to 1.0 per cent in 2013. Based on a number of signals that the government is going to keep tightening its military spending, that downward spiral is just going to continue.

Canadians don’t expect their governments to spend as much on their armed forces as countries like Russia (4.2 per cent of GDP) and the United States (3.8 per cent). But when non-combative countries like Norway (1.4 per cent), Denmark (1.4 per cent) and Sweden (1.2 per cent) are spending more, you know you have a government that’s putting the squeeze on our military.