Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Huebert, I want to get back to the whole question of political will.
I had the opportunity recently to listen to a podcast where the interview was with former defence minister Jason Kenney. He was confronted with the statement that spending was substantially lower as a fraction of GDP when he was defence minister than under our current government. He was quite blunt with his answer when confronted with that. He said, “Mea culpa.” He said that they were coming out of the great recession, and his government looked at cuts and austerity, and that meant cuts to CAF, which brought us down to the 1% level back in 2014, when the Ukrainian conflict started, as you referenced.
I would assume from his statement there and his answer that he was following where he and his government thought Canadians were in terms of where the military stood at that point in time. I'm assuming that there was no political will to increase funding as a percentage of GDP, if I just use that key performance indicator for the purposes of this question. I'm assuming he thought the public wasn't there to provide additional support for CAF at that period in time.
In the background, I'm thinking about the efforts of Russia and China as it relates to misinformation and disinformation, and the seeds that they plant with our constituents and the Canadian public as it relates to trying to erode the trust and confidence we have in some of our democratic institutions. One of those is our military.
You caught me with your comment about the failing democracy to the south, in the U.S. I look at the efforts they have, whether it's the culture wars or the whole issue of trust in the Department of Justice or the FBI. Here, north of the border, we went through that as part of the pandemic in terms of people's trust in public health officials, questioning the efficacy of the pandemic response and the vaccines.
All of that said, in terms of political will, there seems to be almost a battle today in terms of trying to convince a portion of the population that our efforts need to be ramped up as it relates to combatting some of the threats that you talked about in your opening statement, as well as those in Mr. Massie's opening statement.
Part of that political will is hard to get at because of the efforts of some of our adversaries to plant that seed of doubt with us, whether it's the former Harper government or the constituencies that are following former president Trump.
Academics and others are talking about civil war in the United States. Had you said a decade ago that there was the possibility that there might be a civil war in the U.S., I would have bet a lot of money that I didn't have against that.
That's a long introduction to my question, but I'm just fascinated by this whole issue of political will and making the link with our constituents and our residents that there is a real, existential threat beyond just climate change. There are people working on a daily basis to undermine all the efforts of our military and otherwise.
Could you comment on that?
Maybe I could ask Mr. Massie, as well.