Canada defence spending has been a broken promise for decades, and a political journalist says the US pausing a joint defence board is just the beginning of what’s coming.

Matt Gurney says the Permanent Joint Board of Defense, a Canada-US committee dating back to 1940, has been paused explicitly because of Canada’s failure to meet defence commitments. The trade agreement renegotiates in six weeks, mushroom tariffs just hit Canadian farmers, and Gurney says it is all the same pressure campaign.

A classified American document leaked in recent years captured European and American officials confronting Canada’s former prime minister over defence spending. Gurney says the former PM privately acknowledged Canada would never hit its NATO target because there was no domestic appetite for it. Polling now shows that appetite is growing.

Topics: Canada defence spending, Permanent Joint Board of Defense, trade renegotiation, mushroom tariffs, NATO

GUEST: Matt Gurney | The Line | Substack | @‌mattgurney

Originally aired on2026-05-19