Is Canada beating ploughshares into swords with its NATO 5% pledge? Not likely

By anyone's measure, $150 billion a year is an eye-watering amount of money to spend on anything — let alone defence.

While it pales in comparison to the inflation-adjusted appropriations of the Second World War, it is potentially, for this generation, the very definition of beating ploughshares into swords.

Or is it?

Following all of the political sound and fury and sticker shock of last week's NATO summit in The Hague, the question of what Prime Minister Mark Carney's government wants to accomplish with all of that money — on an annual basis — is coming into even sharper focus.

On the surface, the Liberals have pledged to quickly and efficiently rearm the Canadian military.

"We are protecting Canadians against new threats. I wish we didn't have to, but we do have to and it is our core responsibility as government," Carney said at the summit.

"The people who have been making sacrifices have been the men and women of the Canadian Armed Forces because they have not been paid to reflect what we are asking them to do. They haven't been operating with the right equipment in many cases.

"We're making up for that."

But the reflex is strong within federal institutions to use military procurement as a tool of economic development. It has been thus for decades.

At the same time, we keep getting told — by the prime minister nonetheless — that we are in extraordinary times and a "national emergency."

Much was made, both in the run-up and in the aftermath of the NATO summit, about the signing of a security and defence industry partnership between Canada and the European Union. Politically, it has been cast since last spring's election as a vehicle — if not the vehicle — to realize rearmament.

There are a few steps to go before Canada can unlock the potential of buying military equipment in bulk with its allies. But when you look at the framework of the partnership, the rearmament potential is dwarfed by the economic opportunity for Canadian defence contractors to sell into Europe under the $1.25-trillion ReArm Europe plan.

The approach seems to be that Canada wants both its guns and butter. Neither, outside great wars of the last century, has ever been mutually exclusive and they don't have to be.

However, the material state of the Canadian military is such that the guns — to extend the metaphor — were needed yesterday.