U.S. suspends joint defence advisory board with Canada

The U.S. government is suspending a joint defence advisory body it maintains with Canada as apparent punishment for Prime Minister Mark Carney’s viral World Economic Forum speech which was widely seen as critical of President Donald Trump.

Elbridge Colby, the U.S. under secretary of defense for policy, made the announcement on X Monday.

“Unfortunately, Canada has failed to make credible progress on its defense commitments. DoW is pausing the Permanent Joint Board on Defense to reassess how this forum benefits shared North American defense,” he wrote, using the acronym for “department of war,” the term the Trump administration uses to refer to the Department of Defense.

Mr. Colby also included a link to Mr. Carney’s January speech in Davos, Switzerland, and a map of North America. “We can no longer avoid the gaps between rhetoric and reality,” Mr. Colby wrote.

Canada should prioritize “hard power over rhetoric,” he wrote, but did not specify what, exactly, the U.S. believes Ottawa must do to show it is making sufficient progress on defence.

Opinion: Carney calls for resistance in a world of ravenous powers

The Permanent Joint Board on Defense, first established in 1940, is made up of military leaders and diplomats from both countries who consider major strategic issues in joint defence and make recommendations to both countries’ governments.

Mr. Trump has long complained that Canada and other NATO countries were failing to live up to a 2014 pledge to spend at least two per cent of GDP on defence. Under Mr. Carney, Canada reached that goal last year. Previous prime minister Justin Trudeau had set a date of 2032.

At last year’s NATO summit, under pressure from Mr. Trump, all of the alliance’s members but Spain agreed to increase spending to at least five per cent of GDP by 2035.

Among other things, the U.S. and Canada run a joint aerospace defence system, NORAD, that tracks potential threats to North American air space. More recently, Mr. Carney has said Canada is interested in joining Mr. Trump’s planned Golden Dome missile defence system.

Read and watch Mark Carney’s Davos speech at the World Economic Forum

Mr. Carney’s Davos speech did not name Mr. Trump but was widely understood as referring to him in its critique that global “hegemons” were seeking “subordination” of other countries through economic means. Mr. Carney called on Canada’s fellow middle powers to work together to resist such hegemony and preserve a rules-based international order.

“We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition,” he warned. “We should not allow the rise of hard power to blind us to the fact that the power of legitimacy, integrity and rules will remain strong.”

Mr. Carney also referred to a gap between the “rhetoric” of international co-operation and the “reality” of hegemonic countries trying to dominate others.