Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says Canada says Canada will continue to share intelligence with its allies.
Trudeau made the pledge at Thursday’s NATO summit in Brussels, where he continues to defend his lack of funding for Canada’s military and keeps insisting that “it’s not about cash” when it comes to contributing to NATO, that participating in overseas missions should also be considered.
Intelligence sharing has become a focus of the annual NATO meeting due to British Prime Minister Theresa May’s criticism of sensitive information being leaked in the U.S.
“The track record has shown that collaboration and co-operation between allies, friends and partners has saved lives and keeps all of our citizens safe,” Trudeau told reporters Thursday.
“We are going to continue to collaborate and to work together to ensure we’re doing everything we can to keep citizens and our communities safe.” Trudeau said he is not in disagreement with a NATO pledge to increase intelligence-sharing among member states, as part of a broader strategy to fight terrorism. He said Canada has been a direct beneficiary of intelligence-sharing but would not be specific about the instance.
“We continue to be an important and trusted ally in the global intelligence community,” Trudeau said.
“There are many, many occasions upon which we have directly participated and in other occasions directly benefited from information-sharing between security agencies and at the highest level.”
The spectre of the Manchester terrorist attack hangs over the summit and the subject of terrorism is dominating discussions. NATO wants to assume greater responsibilities in fighting terrorism and the alliance’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said Thursday morning that NATO would formally become a partner in the U.S.-led coalition that is fighting ISIS.
“NATO joining the coalition to defeat (ISIS) is a strong political message of unity in the fight against terrorism,” Stoltenberg said.
Every one of NATO’s 28 member states is currently part of the anti-ISIS alliance, and NATO has already participated in the training of Iraqi forces.
Nonetheless, despite his buoyant words about cooperating with the alliance, Trudeau has arrived at the conference “empty-handed,” according to Conservative defense critic and Manitoba Member of Parliament James Bezan, who told The Daily Caller that despite assurances of returning to a peacekeeping role by the end of 2016, the Liberals “still have nothing to show.”
Bezan said, “The consecutive budget cuts to our military introduced by Prime Minister Trudeau are a slap in the face to our NATO allies. While other allied nations have been implementing increases to their defense spending, this government has used the past two budgets to take a step in the opposite direction.”
Trudeau remained supremely vague about what exactly Canada intends to do about replacing its aging military equipment and adequately funding the Canadian Armed Forces. Instead he spoke of increasing a “footprint on the ground” in Iraq and engaging “as a positive actor” as a member of NATO.
Trudeau acknowledged that the Canadian military has been “underfunded” for the last decade and talked about changing that reality. But Bezan says Trudeau has shown no inclination of doing so.
“The Liberals’ decision to pull our CF-18s out of the fight against ISIS, their discredited sole-source fighter jet purchase, and their failure to advance important procurement projects all suggest that Justin Trudeau has a naïve view of our military and expects other countries to do the heavy lifting,” he told The Daily Caller.