Pat Buchanan doesn’t often comment on Canada but when he does, it’s plain he hasn’t got a lot of respect for this country’s defence effort.

Buchanan has a nasty way about him, but he isn’t wrong on the freeloading charge. As evidence, Canadians need only check out the June 2002 version of the Report on Allied Contributions to the Common Defense.

This document, compiled by the U.S. Department of Defense, has been coming out every spring for some two decades. It is the definitive U.S. government’s annual assessment of the “relative contributions toward the common defense and mutual security” made by the United States’ allies in NATO, by its two principal Pacific allies Japan and the Republic of Korea, and by the nations of the Gulf Cooperation Council: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

In all, 26 nations are rated on virtually every aspect of their common defence programs, foreign aid, and contributions to international peacekeeping and peace-enforcement operations. The aim of the report is to compare their defence burdens and explain the disparities and corrective actions.

The Americans are neither unreasonable nor simplistic. For example, they realize that straight comparisons of the percentage of a nation’s defence budget when measured by its gross domestic product can be very unfair, especially to less developed and poorer nations.

The comparisons also ignore military contributions that fall outside the ambit of the 26 countries acting in concert. For example, most of the rescue and maritime patrol responsibilities undertaken by the Canadian navy off Canada’s coasts fall outside the report’s area. By the same token it is also true that much of the military capability of the U.S. is also outside the report’s boundaries.

In the report’s 20-odd categories, Canada gets a pat on the back for increasing the percentage of its defence budget devoted to modernization by some 10 per cent in 1001 over 2000, as compared to the non-U.S. average of just 2.8 per cent. And Canada was also better than average in foreign-assistance spending as a percentage of GDP over the period 1998 to 2000.

The rest of the story isn’t so good. Although most NATO allies contributed what the U.S. thinks is a “fair share” in at least one of four major categories – active duty military personnel, ground combat capability, naval tonnage, and combat aircraft capability, Canada has the sole distinction of contributing “less than its fair share” in all four areas.

The performance is distinctly poor in almost every area being measured. Canada’s defence spending as a percentage of GDP has shrunk from 2.0 in 1990 to 1.1 in 2002, third last only to Luxembourg and Japan, among America’s allies.

What is not so well known is how badly Canada fares by other measurements. Once a peacekeeping operations powerhouse, Canada now ranks eighth among the 26 nations in percentage of GDP devoted to peace operations and 14^th in personnel deployed as a percentage of the labour force.

Still, Canada’s performance in international peacekeeping operations is sterling compared to its ranking of active duty military personnel as a percentage of the labour force (25^th out of 26 in ground combat capability share as a percentage of GDP, 24^th in combat aircraft capability as a percentage of GDP, and 10^th in transport aircraft capacity.

Canada does badly in almost everything when compared to advanced industrialized NATO partners such as Britain or France. It does abominably compared to poorer countries such as Turkey or the Czech Republic.

As for those Canadians who claim that although Canada may not spend much, it was there at the front, when the war on terrorism heated up last fall and winter, the report offers little consolation. Yes, Canada was there. But so were 17 other countries besides the U.S. Eight others, beside the U.S. sent ground combat troops.

The report carries one clear message. At a time when the U.S. is increasingly measuring its friends by how much they are doing in the common cause after Sept. 11, 2001, Canada doesn’t measure up. This proud nation has allowed itself to become a military pipsqueak on the one hand, while maintaining it nagging—and to the U.S. increasing annoying—demeanour on the other. When a friendship runs one way, it isn’t a friendship anymore; it’s a dependency.

Professor David J. Bercuson heads Strategic Studies at Calgary University and is a director of Council for Canadian Security in the 21st Century.

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