A sovereign Quebec will invest more in Defence: PQ to revise Year 1 budget

Military spending by a potential independent Quebec will have to be higher than anticipated.

The Parti Québécois acknowledged on Saturday that it will have to revise its picture of the finances of a sovereign Quebec, an exercise commonly called the year 1 budget.

PQ MNA Pascal Paradis also argued that a Quebec army would be just as capable of defending Quebec as the Canadian army and that it would be of a similar size to the armed forces of other equivalent medium powers, such as Denmark or Sweden. 

The Canadian army is not acting as a “shield for Quebec” and “it is not the Canadian army that is deterring a hypothetical American invasion,” this is a “fallacious argument from the federalists,” he commented in a press scrum at the PQ congress in Saint-Hyacinthe.

“We are going to have a strong army that will ensure our protection,” argued Paradis.

The Year 1 budget presented in 2023 by the PQ leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon had set military spending for an independent Quebec at nearly $3.6 billion, which is proportionally Quebec’s share of federal defense spending. 

But the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) secured a commitment from Canada to increase its military spending, and the PQ argues that an independent Quebec would join this alliance of Western powers.

Paradis hinted that there would be an update to the data to take into account the new reality.

“Of course, (…) we are very rigorous in our work, we update our work with the latest data,” he assured, without indicating when a new budget simulation will be published.  

NATO had initially set a target of 2 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) for its member states to allocate to their military spending.

But last December, NATO raised its military spending target for member states to 5 per cent by 2035.

The PQ’s mock budget exercise had already drawn criticism from its opponents.

Former senator and former chairman of the Quebec Liberal Party (PLQ) revival committee, André Pratte, had estimated that the military spending of an independent Quebec had been underestimated. 

To cross the 2 per cent of GDP threshold, a hypothetical sovereign Quebec would cost $8 billion more than the $3.6 billion budgeted by the PQ. 

According to research by the Library of Parliament in Ottawa, NATO estimates that Canada’s defence spending as a percentage of GDP has increased from 1 per cent in 2013-2014 to 1.31 per cent in 2023-2024. 

The Alliance projects that Canada will allocate 1.37 per cent of its GDP to defence spending in 2024-2025. The Alliance also stated that Canada’s defence spending in 2024-2025 ranked seventh among NATO’s 32 member states.

In the event of achieving independence, “we will be in stability and continuity on the strategic interests of Quebec, that includes NATO and that includes fulfilling our obligations under the (North Atlantic) Treaty,” argued Paradis. 

Furthermore, he argued that it is not only the army that would ensure the defence and sovereignty of Quebec, but a set of alliances, political, economic, geopolitical interests. 

The MNA argues that an independent Quebec would be a middle power, just like Canada, Denmark, Finland, etc.  

The portrait of the finances of a sovereign Quebec, commonly called the “budget of year 1”, has been carried out a few times by the PQ during its history. 

Its main objective is to try to demonstrate the financial viability of an independent state and to counter the arguments of opponents who want Quebec to be a beneficiary of the federation. This is a pro forma exercise, meaning that we simply take the federal budget choices as they are, we replicate them without making any additional political decisions that would modify them.

–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews