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We also owe it to our men and women in uniform to actively consider Canada’s strategic future. Otherwise, what exactly are we calling on them to serve for? Helping to answer the questions of what it can and should mean to defend Canada and advance Canadian values in our world today can strengthen civil-military ties, further the ongoing reform of our military’s culture, and potentially even help address its perennial recruitment and retention challenges.

It is widely recognized that a country’s defence policy should flow from its foreign policy, which in turn flows from its national security policy. In this way, the question of what defending Canada should look like today is closely linked to the questions of who we are and who we should be both around the world and at home. In recent years, Canada’s foreign policy has been heavy on the articulation of values, but light on the material commitments needed to advance and defend them.

A majority of Canadians in a recent poll identified the U.S. as the greatest threat facing Canada today, a stark reflection of how rapidly the geopolitical landscape is shifting beneath our feet. The time for strategic renewal has arrived.

NATO’s 2 per cent and now 5 per cent defence spending targets serve as important rallying cries and imperfect benchmarks of military capability. While they may complement national strategies and defence policy priorities, they cannot take their place, or, in the case of Canada, make up for their absence. Canada’s post-Cold War strategic culture, or general understanding of and approach to issues of security and defence, has become outdated in recent years and is now clearly inadequate for addressing the growing threats and complexity in the global environment, including along our southern border.

Canada is emerging from a comfortable and yet untenable strategic repose in which military spending was maintained at a low level and strategic choices were largely delegated to the United States. Now is the time for us to respond to the changing world order and collectively shape our future rather than watching from the sidelines and letting other nations take the lead.

These are not easy issues to contend with, and there are no simple or expedient answers. But it is necessary work. We live in a multipolar world with little historical precedent, fraught with uncertainty, injustice, and danger, but also defined by huge opportunities in economic, technological, and social development.

As Canadians, we have much to be proud of and much worth defending. But we cannot be all things to all people, nor can we do everything. Now is the time to reflect, make clear choices, and get to work.