I find Australia always provides a good comparison. Basically, $500 of Canadians' taxes per year goes to defence. In Australia it's about $1,000. It's our job to explain to Canadians why they must go from $500 to $1,000.
Australia, it is often claimed, must spend that money because they're far closer to the dangers of the Pacific. This is nonsense.
Not Darwin, but a town south of there—it escapes my mind—is 4,050 kilometres from Beijing. Vancouver, our biggest city close to there, is 4,500 kilometres from Beijing, a difference in distance from about here to Sudbury. The bottom line is we're a Pacific nation and all of the indications...our immigration is immensely Pacific bound. We are becoming a Pacific nation. Yet Australia is able to devote 2% of GDP and has a force that will soon involve 12 submarines; two supply ships; two HADR ships; three anti-air warfare destroyers, very much the modern equivalence of the destroyers that we just got rid of; and frigates. They are buying F-35s and they will probably be buying the VTOL, the vertical takeoff and landing version, for their amphibious carriers.
They have been able to explain to their people why they need to get to that 2% and it's not just based on proximity to the threat.
I think I'll be quiet there, but if you probe me on how you sell your people on more defence I can probably respond to that, too.