Mr. Speaker, again, this is a political and arbitrary figure that has been pulled out of the air. In order to meet what we need to fulfill those international obligations, ensure we are keeping people safe around the world and fill those gaps, we have to spend it in a smart, reasonable and responsible way. We need to absolutely invest in terms of recruitment and retention. We need to ensure that the Armed Forces are moving ahead to provide the educational support, training and equipment. Again, 2% is arbitrary, and that would be up to $56 billion. That is a huge amount of money, and that needs to be done in a very smart, responsible way.
In the House of Commons on April 5th, 2022. See this statement in context.