Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan offered a grim assessment Wednesday of the state of the military, saying years of underfunding has hollowed out the armed forces and left it struggling to do even basic tasks. The comments to defence industry representations and experts came as the Liberal government prepares to unveil its new defence policy, which Sajjan promised would begin to fix some of the problems. That includes enlisting the help of six accounting firms to review how the government and military came up with its costs and ensuring sustainable defence funding. But he also told audience members during a question-and-answer session after the speech that the military will require "significant investment." At the same time, Sajjan went back to the government's previous defence of existing military spending levels when asked about meeting NATO's two per cent defence spending target, noting Canada is deploying troops to Latvia.

Source: CBC News May 03, 2017 17:53 UTC