Carney won the last election with an “elbows up” rallying cry promising to protect us from Trump, tariffs, and threats to Canadian sovereignty. Before he became a politician he repeatedly called for fossil fuels to be left in the ground. His election platform included imposing a cap on oil and gas emissions, maintaining the industrial carbon tax and supporting the development of renewable energy. Carney has discarded his climate promises and is accelerating the two most carbon-intensive industries – oil and gas, and the military.
It is becoming increasingly clear that he has abandoned climate goals. The federal government is siphoning off public money needed for healthcare, education, social services and affordable housing and diverting it to Canada’s military and weapons industry without public consultation or debate. Canadians who felt moral soothing in our brand as ‘peacekeeper’ or ‘diplomat’ need to heed the signs of Canada’s march to war.
Ever the banker, Carney is the main promoter of NATO’s war bank.
Carney led negotiations with allies and partners to establish the Defence, Security and Resilience Bank (DSRB). On April 29th he announced that once the DSRB is ratified Canada will serve as host country for the bank’s future headquarters. Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver are bidding to host the bank.
The DSRB is the brainchild of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security at the Atlantic Council (an American think tank), with input from NATO International Staff, academia, and JP Morgan. The document “How a new global defense bank—the ‘Defense, Security, and Resilience Bank’ … can solve US and allied funding problems” was published in December 2024. The DSRB is a fix for US chronic resentment that NATO countries are not pulling their weight. It blames the public in many European nations and Canada for choosing spending on healthcare, education, and public infrastructure over defense.
Carney, Ford and Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow are promoting the bid to establish the DSRB headquarters in Toronto and are prepared to cut red tape and regulations to make it happen. They promote the DSRB as a stimulator for investment, innovation and job creation. In fact, military spending creates far fewer jobs than investments in education, healthcare, renewable energy or just about anything else. DSRB will be a hub for public money used to solicit private investment in weapons and military industries. It would:
- offer low-interest loans to NATO allies for defense modernization, equipment leasing, currency hedging, and building critical infrastructure.
- allow stronger states to guarantee the debts of the weaker ones, undoubtedly with stipulated concessions, allowing the most powerful NATO states to determine the internal political and economic policies of weaker partners.
- underwrite risk for commercial banks, enabling them to extend financing to defense companies across the supply chain. If a private bank wants to lend to an arms company and the deal looks risky, the DSRB steps in to guarantee it. If profits are made, corporations keep them. But losses are borne by taxpayers.
- funnel money directly to arms manufacturers.
A core group of allied nations would initially fund the bank by “providing paid-in capital” (our tax dollars). The core group would build its governance structure. Then the remaining NATO, EU, and Indo-Pacific allies would join as shareholders. This allows the US and its closest allies to control the DSRB and overshadow less powerful countries. The DSRB document also proposes using seized Russian assets as seed money. It is not in Canada’s interest to provoke rising tensions with Russia.
Canada’s Big Six banks know a good deal when they see one and are ready to invest in it. Last year Canada’s 6 big banks collectively reaped $69.86 billion in profit, an increase from $51.27 billion the previous year. Where does that profit go?
As a war bank, DSRB will be the financial arm of NATO’s war machine designed to accelerate a global arms race. The DSRB plan is to eventually include Indo-pacific nations, perhaps to arm China’s neighbouring countries, and ensure that the US and its allies retain global power. This beefs up major Non-NATO Ally countries with strategic working relationships with the US Armed Forces. The US will continue to steer the ship.
Carney is building an economy based on the military.
Carney promised to distance himself from Trump and to protect our sovereignty in the face of US aggression world-wide. Instead, the government is drawing us into the Trump-led NATO quagmire from which it will be increasingly difficult to disentangle. He is rapidly moving us towards a military industrial complex economy that will manufacture and export military parts, vehicles and weapons. Once built, this military economy, like our fossil fuel economy, will determine our economic direction for generations.
Carney’s first budget made deep cuts in almost every department. The cuts will result in 40,000 job losses and severely erode the services we depend on. In contrast, the military received $16 billion per year for the next five years.
Our military should be well paid, properly equipped, and able to defend our borders and protect our north. But most Canadians do not want to participate in endless US wars of aggression. This pivot to a highly militarized economy, a historically new path for Canada, was not brought to citizens for discussion.
Immediately after the election, Carney agreed to increase NATO funding to 2% of GDP by the end of 2025, and invested more than $9 billion to rebuild, reinvest, and rearm the Canadian Armed Forces. He softened the news by framing it as “growing a world-class defence industry that fuels innovation and job creation.” A few months later, Canada, along with other NATO allies (except for Spain), committed to 5% of GDP by 2035. This will cost the federal treasury $150 billion per year.
In further moves to entrench us in a war economy, the government signed a strategic defence and security partnership with the European Union allowing Canada to participate in the $1.25 trillion Rearm Europe Program. His spin is that this will allow Canada to buy military equipment in Europe and reduce our reliance on the US.
Yet Canada is reorganizing The Department of National Defence into a Joint Forces Command that will strengthen and coordinate allied interoperability with the US and NATO and oversee “counter-drone warfare …integrated air and missile defence … cyber and space” programs.
Although Carney announced last year that he was reviewing the government’s plans to purchase 88 F-35s fighter jets, the CBC reported that 16 F-35s are expected to be delivered at the end of the year and that Canada has “discreetly put money down on an additional 14 F-35s.” Lockheed Martin and L3Harris (one of Canada’s largest defence and security companies) recently announced plans to establish an F-35 Air Vehicle Depot in Quebec to provide maintenance for Canadian and American F-35 stealth fighters. F-35s are the mainstay of NATO air power. Canada’s NORAD infrastructure improvements to bases in Inuvik and Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories, Iqaluit in Nunavut, and Goose Bay in Newfoundland and Labrador will allow them to host F-35 stealth fighters. NATO nations have committed to buying more than 3,500 F-35 aircraft.
Mining is for the war machine not for the green transition.
The military industrial complex cannot exist without critical minerals just as it cannot exist without oil and gas. The US relies on imports of at least 12 key minerals critical to its military. It is looking to Canada as a supply source to wean itself from its dependence on China. Fifty-six percent of our critical mineral exports went to the US in 2023. The government and mining industries see the increasing US and NATO need for critical minerals as an opportunity to profit even at the risk of losing our sovereignty, violating Indigenous rights, destroying the environment, and polluting our waterways.
The Canada US Joint Plan on Critical Minerals (2020) ensures both countries have access to critical minerals for defence. More recently, the Canada-led G7 Critical Minerals Production Alliance (2025) secures critical mineral supply chains for advanced manufacturing and defence. Carney publicly says he is protecting our sovereignty and security, but his government has quietly allowed the US military to invest in the development of critical mining projects in Canada. This could limit Canada’s access and control over our critical minerals and how they are used.
Mining and particularly rare-earth elements (REEs) mining is incredibly destructive. REEs are not rare. They are sparingly distributed over large areas. Most mines are open pit, which involves removing enormous amounts of topsoil and rock to access the ore and results in extensive habitat destruction. REE mining involves injecting chemicals into the ground to dissolve the REEs to enable pumping them to the surface. Chemical leaching poses a considerable risk of groundwater contamination. The National Observer recently found that mining companies in Canada have received approval to use natural bodies of water such as lakes as tailings impoundment areas. Waterways and lakes used for tailings impoundment areas are at risk of being ruined forever (cleaning up water post-mining is expensive and difficult, if not impossible) and because waterways are interconnected and permeable, mining pollution travels.
Both federal and provincial governments have passed bills to fast-track priority projects that have resulted in the gutting of environmental protections and consultation processes. They trample on the rights of indigenous peoples to free, prior, and informed consent. Rushing these project approvals permits harmful mining projects. Because mining is so destructive, it makes sense to develop criteria for mining development and for the use of RREs. Our government must ensure mining is highly regulated, subject to thorough environmental assessments and monitored for breaches of safety, Indigenous rights and environmental regulations.
A policy to supply Canada’s REEs to the US and to NATO’s war machine amounts to ecocide. We need critical minerals for solar, wind, batteries, and electric vehicles. The priority for REEs must be the green transition not the manufacture and sale of military equipment and weapons.
If the world is at war, we will lose the battle against global warming.
In the midst of the existential threat of climate crisis, Canada is pivoting to a military economy. Promoting it as an opportunity to grow the economy, create jobs and bring prosperity, Carney’s government is investing unprecedented public dollars in mining, processing and refining minerals, manufacturing weapons, and military equipment that will feed the arms race.
Carney is especially promoting and lobbying for the DSRB. Keeping the US in the background is crucial for acceptance of the DSRB by allied countries and their citizens. “Canada is ready to lead this effort,” Carney said. “The Defence, Security and Resilience Bank will provide low-cost financing for critical defence projects in participating countries. By pooling credit strength, we’ll build our military capacity and create good jobs across our defense sectors.”
Our government could have chosen to build a global bank to finance the green transition worldwide. It could have chosen to build wind turbines, solar panels, thermal distribution projects and batteries. It could have chosen diplomacy over the war machine. Sadly for all of us, it has not.
World Beyond War and allied Toronto groups have launched a campaign to reject Toronto’s bid to host the DSRB. The link to the campaign is HERE.
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Gail Fairley is a member of SCAN!’s Ontario Project Group and the Climate and Militarism Working Group.