By David Ljunggren
OTTAWA (Reuters) – The head of Canada’s official opposition party, on track to win an election in the coming months, said on Monday he would slash foreign aid to help build a base in the Arctic and boost regional security.
U.S. President Donald Trump, who is threatening to impose tariffs on Canada, often complains Ottawa does not spend enough on defense. Canada only has a handful of military bases and 2,000 local Inuit rangers to watch over a vast deserted frozen landscape that covers more than 4.4 million square km.
Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre, noting the Pentagon had warned of potential Russian action in the Arctic, said he would build at least one new military base, double the number of rangers to 4,000 and buy two more polar icebreakers.
“All of these improvements will be funded by dramatically cutting foreign aid, a lot of which goes to dictators, terrorists and global bureaucracies,” he told reporters in Iqaluit, capital of the Nunavut Arctic territory.
“I will be bringing our money home with massive cuts to these wasteful and corrupt foreign aid grants,” he added, but did not give details.
The Trump administration is moving to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development, shutting life-saving programs across the globe. In the 2023 fiscal year, the United States disbursed, partly via USAID, $72 billion of aid.
In the 2022-23 fiscal year, the most recent period for which complete official data are available, Canada spent a total of C$16 billion ($11.2 billion) on foreign aid. They money funded almost 3,000 projects in more than 100 countries.
Polls show the Conservatives, seeking to topple the Liberals of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau after nine years in power, would most likely win an election that must be held by late October but could happen before then.
The office of International Development Minister Ahmed Hussen was not immediately available for comment.
($1 = 1.4319 Canadian dollars)
(Reporting by David Ljunggren; Editing by Christina Fincher)
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