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Decentralized Democracy

Member of the panel of chairs for the legislative committees

Hon. Michael Chong

  • Member of Parliament
  • Member of the panel of chairs for the legislative committees
  • Conservative
  • Wellington—Halton Hills
  • Ontario
  • Voting Attendance: 65%
  • Expenses Last Quarter: $120,269.09

  • Government Page
Context: House Hansard - 177 - Mar/31/23
Hon. Michael Chong (Wellington—Halton Hills, CPC)
  • Mar/31/23 11:54:19 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, in the year before Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Canada was spending 1.28% of GDP on defence. According to NATO last week, in the year since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Canada has spent 1.29% of GDP. I read the budget document, but I could not find any information about defence expenditure as a per cent of GDP over the next five years. Will the government commit to providing this very important information to the House as soon as possible?
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Context: House Hansard - 67 - May/9/22
Hon. Michael Chong
  • May/9/22 4:22:07 p.m.
  • Watch
  • Re: Bill C-19 
Madam Speaker, there are no contradictions at all. In fact, when the current government took office on November 5, 2015, it inherited a budget surplus. The previous government had balanced the budget by the time the current government took office. In fact, it then spent an inordinate amount of money until the fiscal year end of March 31, 2016, that actually pushed the country back into deficit. It was under the Liberals' watch that the country went into deficit in early 2016. With respect to our NATO defence spending commitments, it is true that defence spending did not meet that commitment during much of the aughts, nor did it during much of the 1990s, but that was in the context of the fall of the Berlin Wall, when we assumed that autocratic states such as Russia and China would improve their records on human rights, democracy and rule of law and would be good partners in the international order. That changed on February 24 with Russia's invasion of Ukraine: the first attack on a European democracy by another European state. That is why we now need to do what Germany has done, and increase defence spending to 2% of gross domestic product.
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