As we move closer to the U.S. election, CTVNews.ca will be examining the relationship between Canada and the U.S. in a series of features.
Canada has long faced criticism from the U.S. and other allies for failing to meet NATO’s defence spending target, which directs members of the security alliance to contribute at least two per cent of their GDP to defence.
After a torrent of criticism from its NATO allies, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau did say this week that Canada would reach that benchmark – but it won’t happen until 2032 and he offered few details as to the timeline.
And while Republicans and Democrats alike have long complained about Canada’s sluggish military spending, experts say Canada is more likely to suffer consequences under a second Trump presidency, which could also end U.S. support for Ukraine.
Aaron Ettinger is an associate professor of political science at Carleton University who specializes in U.S. foreign policy. He says while American presidents have complained about Canada’s defence spending since the end of the Second World War, Canadian leaders have long tried to “stickhandle” around the criticisms.
“Biden might be more forgiving as long as Canada continues to contribute to multilateral operations in eastern Europe, including supplying war materiel to Ukraine,” Ettinger told CTVNews.ca.
“Trump would return to his pattern of upbraiding Canada for not spending enough on defence, which would put a Canadian prime minister in a difficult position: spending more on defence comes with no political benefits in Canada and whatever Canada spends won’t be enough for Trump.”
Whether Trudeau’s promise to reach the two per cent benchmark in eight years will change the U.S.’s view of Canada – in Biden’s eyes, or Trump’s if he were to win the election in November – is still up in the air.
Canada spent an estimated 1.38 per cent of its GDP on defence in 2023, according to NATO data, putting it in 25th place out of 30 members.
Where Trump stands
During a February 2024 rally, former U.S. president Donald Trump recounted telling a NATO leader that he would let Russia have its way with members that don’t reach the military alliance’s minimum defence spending target.
“No, I would not protect you, in fact I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want,” Trump told cheering supporters. “You got to pay. You got to pay your bills.”
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks at a primary election night party at the South Carolina State Fairgrounds in Columbia, S.C., Feb. 24, 2024 (AP Photo / Andrew Harnik)
Trump has reportedly considered withdrawing the U.S. from NATO and has also purportedly floated the idea of creating a two-tiered military alliance, where countries that fail to meet the spending target are not fully protected.
“If you’re going to be part of an alliance, contribute to the alliance, be part of the alliance,” Trump national security advisor and retired lieutenant- general Keith Kellogg told Reuters in February. “If President Trump is re-elected, once the election is done, I would give everyone what we call a warning order.”
Former Trump national security adviser John Bolton previously said Trump “saw absolutely no point to NATO” and “would try to get out” if re-elected. Trump reportedly even considered doing so while president in 2018.
“The great fear is that Trump would use allied free-riding as a pretext to withdraw from major multilateral security initiatives,” Ettinger told CTVNews.ca. “This includes NATO, but it could also mean bilateral security arrangements with Canada.”
According to Ettinger, a Trump victory could also affect western support for Ukraine in its war with Russia.
“If Trump is elected, there’s a good chance that the U.S. would stop sending money to Ukraine. If that happens, every other country would likely follow suit,” Ettinger said. “This is exactly what happened in Afghanistan: the U.S. withdrew and every other western country that was part of NATO operations followed. We saw how that turned out.”
Where Biden stands
The message on Canada’s defence spending has been similar – but softer – from U.S. President Joe Biden’s team.
“Over the last 10 years, we’ve moved from three countries meeting that target to 18, with more to come, and those that aren’t meeting it right now have a plan to get there, except for Canada,” Julianne Smith, the current U.S. ambassador to NATO, told CTV Question Period earlier this year.
Ettinger also expects western support for Ukraine to continue under Biden.
“Should Biden be elected, the U.S. support program would likely continue on its current slowly escalating course,” he said.
U.S. President Joe Biden and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, right, welcome Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to the NATO Summit on July 10, 2024, in Washington (AP Photo /Evan Vucci)
Canada’s defence spending
While only 11 countries hit the NATO defence spending target in 2023 – led by Poland, the U.S. and Greece – more than 20 are expected to fulfil the goal this year, excluding Canada.
While the Liberal government did not provide details as to how it would reach the two per cent mark by 2032 aside from investments in new defence capabilities, including submarines, it did announce billions in new military spending that will see Canada reach 1.76 per cent by 2029.
In April 2023, the Washington Post reported on a leaked Pentagon document that alleged Trudeau privately told NATO officials that Canada will never meet the two per cent target.
“We recognize there’s more to do and we will be there to do it,” Trudeau said after a bipartisan group of U.S. senators recently urged him to increase defence spending.
As he committed Canada to reaching two per cent by 2032, Trudeau also defended Canada’s defence contributions and seemed to take a swipe at the benchmark set by NATO.
“We continually step up and punch above our weight, something that isn’t always reflected in the crass mathematical calculation that certain people turn to very quickly,” Trudeau said at the annual NATO summit in Washington on Thursday. “Which is why we’ve always questioned the two per cent as the be-all, end-all of evaluating contributions to NATO.”
MONCTON, N.B. – New Brunswick RCMP say two youths have been arrested after an emergency alert was issued Monday evening about someone carrying a gun in the province’s southeast.
Caledonia Region Mounties say they were first called out to Main Street in the community of Salisbury around 7 p.m. on reports of a shooting.
A 48-year-old man was found at the scene suffering from gunshot wounds and he was rushed to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
Police say in the interest of public safety, they issued an Alert Ready message at 8:15 p.m. for someone driving a silver Ford F-150 pickup truck and reportedly carrying a firearm with dangerous intent in the Salisbury and Moncton area.
Two youths were arrested without incident later in the evening in Salisbury, and the alert was cancelled just after midnight Tuesday.
Police are still looking for the silver pickup truck, covered in mud, with possible Nova Scotia licence plate HDC 958. They now confirm the truck was stolen from Central Blissville.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
MISSISSAUGA, Ont. – Golf Canada has set an impressive stretch goal of having 30 professional golfers at the highest levels of the sport by 2032.
The World Junior Girls Golf Championship is a huge part of that target.
Credit Valley Golf and Country Club will host the international tournament from Sept. 30 to Oct. 5, with 24 teams representing 23 nations — Canada gets two squads — competing. Lindsay McGrath, a 17-year-old golfer from Oakville, Ont., said she’s excited to be representing Canada and continue to develop her game.
“I’m really grateful to be here,” said McGrath on Monday after a news conference in Credit Valley’s clubhouse in Mississauga, Ont. “It’s just such an awesome feeling being here and representing our country, wearing all the logos and being on Team Canada.
“I’ve always wanted to play in this tournament, so it’s really special to me.”
McGrath will be joined by Nobelle Park of Oakville, Ont., and Eileen Park of Red Deer, Alta., on Team Canada 2. All three earned their places through a qualifying tournament last month.
“I love my teammates so much,” said McGrath. “I know Nobelle and Eileen very well. I’m just so excited to be with them. We have such a great relationship.”
Shauna Liu of Maple, Ont., Calgary’s Aphrodite Deng and Clairey Lin make up Team Canada 2. Liu earned her exemption following her win at the 2024 Canadian Junior Girls Championship while Deng earned her exemption as being the low eligible Canadian on the world amateur golf ranking as of Aug. 7.
Deng was No. 175 at the time, she has since improved to No. 171 and is Canada’s lowest-ranked player.
“I think it’s a really great opportunity,” said Liu. “We don’t really get that many opportunities to play with people from across the world, so it’s really great to meet new people and play with them.
“It’s great to see maybe how they play and take parts from their game that we might also implement our own games.”
Golf Canada founded the World Junior Girls Golf Championship in 2014 to fill a void in women’s international competition and help grow its own homegrown talent. The hosts won for the first time last year when Vancouver’s Anna Huang, Toronto’s Vanessa Borovilos and Vancouver’s Vanessa Zhang won team gold and Huang earned individual silver.
Medallists who have gone on to win on the LPGA Tour include Brooke Henderson of Smiths Falls, Ont., who was fourth in the individual competition at the inaugural tournament. She was on Canada’s bronze-medal team in 2014 with Selena Costabile of Thornhill, Ont., and Calgary’s Jaclyn Lee.
Other notable competitors who went on to become LPGA Tour winners include Angel Yin and Megan Khang of the United States, as well as Yuka Saso of the Philippines, Sweden’s Linn Grant and Atthaya Thitikul of Thailand.
“It’s not if, it’s when they’re going to be on the LPGA Tour,” said Garrett Ball, Golf Canada’s chief operating officer, of how Canada’s golfers in the World Junior Girls Championship can be part of the organization’s goal to have 30 pros in the LPGA and PGA Tours by 2032.
“Events like this, like the She Plays Golf festival that we launched two years ago, and then the CPKC Women’s Open exemptions that we utilize to bring in our national team athletes and get the experience has been important in that pathway.”
The individual winner of the World Junior Girls Golf Championship will earn a berth in next year’s CPKC Women’s Open at nearby Mississaugua Golf and Country Club.
Both clubs, as well as former RBC Canadian Open host site Glen Abbey Golf Club, were devastated by heavy rains through June and July as the Greater Toronto Area had its wettest summer in recorded history.
Jason Hanna, the chief operating officer of Credit Valley Golf and Country Club, said that he has seen the Credit River flood so badly that it affected the course’s playability a handful of times over his nearly two decades with the club.
Staff and members alike came together to clean up the course after the flooding was over, with hundreds of people coming together to make the club playable again.
“You had to show up, bring your own rake, bring your own shovel, bring your own gloves, and then we’d take them down to the golf course, assign them to areas where they would work, and then we would do a big barbecue down at the halfway house,” said Hanna. “We got guys, like, 80 years old, putting in eight-hour days down there, working away.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
NEW YORK (AP) — Fenway Park has the Ted Williams seat. And now Citi Field has the Grimace seat.
The kid-friendly McDonald’s character made another appearance at the ballpark Monday, when the New York Mets unveiled a commemorative purple seat in section 302 to honor “his special connection to Mets fans.”
Wearing his pear-shaped purple costume and a baseball glove on backwards, Grimace threw out a funny-looking first pitch — as best he could with those furry fingers and short arms — before New York beat the Miami Marlins at Citi Field on June 12.
That victory began a seven-game winning streak, and Grimace the Mets’ good-luck charm soon went viral, taking on a life of its own online.
New York is 53-31 since June 12, the best record in the majors during that span. The Mets were tied with rival Atlanta for the last National League playoff spot as they opened their final homestand of the season Monday night against Washington.
The new Grimace seat in the second deck in right field — located in row 6, seat 12 to signify 6/12 on the calendar — was brought into the Shannon Forde press conference room Monday afternoon. The character posed next to the chair and with fans who strolled into the room.
The seat is available for purchase for each of the Mets’ remaining home games.
“It’s been great to see how our fanbase created the Grimace phenomenon following his first pitch in June and in the months since,” Mets senior vice president of partnerships Brenden Mallette said in a news release. “As we explored how to further capture the magic of this moment and celebrate our new celebrity fan, installing a commemorative seat ahead of fan appreciation weekend felt like the perfect way to give something back to the fans in a fun and unique way.”
Up in Boston, the famous Ted Williams seat is painted bright red among rows of green chairs deep in the right-field stands at Fenway Park to mark where a reported 502-foot homer hit by the Hall of Fame slugger landed in June 1946.
So, does this catapult Grimace into Splendid Splinter territory?
“I don’t know if we put him on the same level,” Mets executive vice president and chief marketing officer Andy Goldberg said with a grin.
“It’s just been a fun year, and at the same time, we’ve been playing great ball. Ever since the end of May, we have been crushing it,” he explained. “So I think that added to the mystique.”
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks at a primary election night party at the South Carolina State Fairgrounds in Columbia, S.C., Feb. 24, 2024 (AP Photo / Andrew Harnik)
U.S. President Joe Biden and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, right, welcome Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to the NATO Summit on July 10, 2024, in Washington (AP Photo /Evan Vucci)
