Dozens of political and military luminaries call on Ottawa to stop backsliding on national defence

More than 50 of this country's former top security officials, military commanders and politicians — along with a former top Supreme Court justice — have signed an open letter imploring the Liberal government to take national security and defence more seriously.

The letter was released Monday by the Conference of Defence Associations Institute (CDAI). It includes the signatures of five former Liberal and Conservative defence ministers, nine former chiefs of the defence staff, four former ambassadors, two former top national security and intelligence advisers, a former director of the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS), business leaders and former chief justice of the Supreme Court Beverley McLachlin.

"There is no more important responsibility for the federal government than protecting Canadians against all threats — foreign and domestic," says the letter, a copy of which was obtained by CBC News.

"Now is the time to fully discharge the commitments we have made to our allies and partners in sharing the burden of the collective security, commitments which are essential to safeguard our peace, prosperity and way of life."

While the criticism is mostly aimed at the current Liberal government, the letter acknowledges that successive governments since the end of the Cold War have reduced Canada's emphasis on defence and foreign policy.

"Among the most important responsibilities of the federal government is the need to protect the safety and security of its citizens, defend Canadian sovereignty and maintain our territorial integrity," says the letter. "However, in recent decades, issues of national security and defence are rarely treated as a priority other than in times of great peril."

Jens Stoltenberg, secretary general of NATO, recently signaled the military alliance's upcoming leaders summit in Vilnius, Lithuania would reset allied expectations about defence spending in light of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and rising tensions with China.

Stoltenberg said members are quickly coming to regard the NATO benchmark for members' defence spending — two per cent of the gross domestic product — as the "floor, not the ceiling."

The open letter says "Canada cannot afford to conduct 'business as usual'" and strongly encourages Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his cabinet to "lead and act with a sense of urgency" and accelerate the timelines for the purchase of new equipment.

Last month, NATO published an annual report that shows Canada's defence spending amounted to just 1.29 per cent of GDP in fiscal 2022-2023.

Critically, the letter said the federal government needs to invest in improving the ability of the Department of National Defence (DND) "to spend its budget in an expeditious and timely manner."

For years, DND has been unable to spend its full appropriation, with tens of billions of dollars going unspent since the end of the Afghan war. Under the former Conservative government, that money used to lapse back to the federal treasury. The Liberals changed the rules to allow the department to keep more of the cash until it's ready to spend it.

The Canadian Press recently uncovered an internal DND report that said roughly 30 per cent of the department's military procurement positions — 4,200 jobs — were vacant at the end of May last year.

Separately, almost a decade ago, an independent study by the Conference of Defence Associations Institute (CDAI) and the MacDonald-Laurier Institute said that cuts introduced by the Liberal government under Jean Chretien in the 1990s gutted the military's equipment-buying branch, while the Conservatives did nothing to fix the problem after winning power.