People often use this flawed logic in the debate on Canada's military. Those "vested interests" are always self-serving, and predatory. NATO is just a reflection of that ambition (one country acting as shot-caller for them all).
The price of calling upon such help is: that "friend" would then help themselves to everything that is ours, claiming their security interests as a pretext to override our sovereignty. Look up the war of 1812, Manifest Destiny and Monroe Doctrine, because those policies were never repudiated, just back-burnered. Even recently, that NATO designation has never stopped them from fucking allies over diplomatically, commercially, or legally - Canada or anyone else.
When the chips are down, or even if there is just the opportunity for advantage, anyone can turn against you. Declarations of friendship before are as meaningless as their apologies after - foolish to bade a defense policy on some kind of naive sentimentality.
Obviously Canada does not need a better military to go stomping around the world to build ourselves an empire, and it should not build up our military solely for the purpose of building up & defending someone else's.
But we do need at minimum to be able to defend our own territory, so that any other world power (yes, including our sometimes sketchy neighbour) understands it would be too painful if they ever tried to take what is actually ours. That's the only real kind of respect Canada will ever be able to rely on in the international scene.
On the other hand, having a reputation as some other great power's mealy-mouthed puppet causes the opposite reaction - an impression of weakness, inviting all sorts of belligerent disrespect, even from one's "allies".
These are two different debates: One is how big our military needs to be and what capabilities it needs to have - most would say is is under-strength and has been for some time. The other is about how we choose to use it, which is really a question of foreign policy and how much we feel like any particular conflict is really about upholding our interests versus fighting on behalf of someone else's ambitions.
These two aspects have an effect on each other, of course, but you have to watch carefully what sort of military capabilities we are building and why. All that extra spending is meaningless if what you have build is just a cog in someone else's big machine, and results in our military being unable to perform on its own. The weird thing about the debate is how those advocating standing on our own also seem to talk about spending less, when really that effort might require a bigger military overall; meanwhile those who advocate for increased capabilities and big military spending seem to also be the ones who'd let another country to make all our strategic decisions for us, and use our military more for supporting ill-conceived foreign interventions rather than actually defending Canada.
The 2% of GDP is a fairly arbitrary NATO benchmark, more of a buzzword than a real measure of capabilities or roles. If Canada is constantly named as falling below this "average", why is there no discussion of those countries (the US especially) that might be over-spending on their military above that level, and by doing do, neglecting their own peoples' lives at home? Are we really lackadaisical on defense, or do they just have an oversized military because they like to pick fights project power all over the world, and want us to support their activities more?
Even our G20 sized economy is still "small" enough to be affected by acquisitions of certain military hardware/platforms, which cost tens of billions each (frigates, fighters, radar warning networks, etc.). At the same time, if our civilian-side GDP grows, it makes us statistically look worse, even if it has not harmed our long-term military spending plans at all.
Perhaps it would just be better to just decide what capabilities we want need to have, and then focus on creating and keeping it. Getting sidetracked by metrics of what other countries or alliance bureaucrats want does not help the matters become any clearer or less expensive. Waiting for big decisions until there is some period without major overseas deployments is never going to happen (especially not when Canada keeps committing to them). The idiotic way our procurement system gets in its own way, while allowing corporate intrigues and massive cost overruns at the same time, is actually costing us capabilities. There should be much more decisiveness than there is, but have you ever known any such pronouncement to not be revealed as coming from some shady insider motivations? The brass have a Xmas wish list and half of them are working so hand-in-glove with companies like Lockheed, they might as well be salesmen (indeed many leave the Forces to become just that). Politicians don't tend to know very much, so they can be manipulated, or else have some agenda to push, even if that agenda is just to do some electioneering at the expense of their foes.
Canada, given our huge territory and sparse population, probably has a harder time than most defending what is actually ours, so you'd be right to say we need to do that more. But what are the real gaps we need to fill, and how do people intend to pay for it? Either raise taxes (which will cause political complaints), or gut some other area of government services (which will cause political complaints). Or hope that the world will be at peace long enough for our military to come home and rebuild itself inexpensively (LOL). And none of that answers the debate over what we actually expect our military to do, or rather who they are really doing it for.
