Sovereignty, Foreign Relations, & the United States

National defence platforms

Here's what the 2025 Canadian election parties are promising.

Liberal

  • Give all members of the Armed Forces a pay raise
  • Improve access to doctors, mental health services, housing, and childcare for Armed Services members

    "Give better support to our CAF members, through investments in housing, health care, and child care. This means rapidly increasing the stock of high-quality housing on bases across the country and ensuring access to primary child care and health care – including mental health supports – for serving members and their families." — liberal.ca, retrieved 2025-04-21

  • Make it easier to join the Armed Forces, including streamlining security clearances and allowing people to apply online

    "Modernize our recruitment process, including by streamlining security clearances and applying online, so that more applicants can get trained, faster. Every year, thousands of Canadians try to join the CAF, but encounter frustrating barriers and a slow process, leading to a recruitment rate of less than 10%. To solve our personnel crisis, we need to make it easier for high-quality candidates to enter service more quickly." — liberal.ca, retrieved 2025-04-21

  • Give the Canadian Coast Guard a new mandate and equipment to conduct maritime surveillance operations

    "We will expand the reach and abilities of the Canadian Coast Guard and integrate them into our NATO defence capabilities. Our Coast Guard carries out important work, but we need to update their mission to face changing realities to protect our sovereignty and counter criminal activity, like the trafficking of illicit drugs. That’s why we will give the Canadian Coast Guard a new mandate—and the right equipment—to conduct maritime surveillance operations to secure our coasts." — liberal.ca, retrieved 2025-04-14

  • Dedicate funding for defence through a new defence capital account

    "We will end the chronic lapsing of defence spending, through the creation of a defence capital account that ensures that even when the timing of an investment changes, every dollar assigned to Canada’s defence will remain for that purpose." — liberal.ca, retrieved 2025-04-14

  • Build and deploy aquatic and airborne drones

    "Creating a first-in-class drone capability that will build and deploy aquatic and airborne uncrewed vehicles to defend our arctic, our undersea infrastructure, our borders, and our allies. This new capability will be matched with an industrial strategy that builds and perfects these technologies so that Canadian companies benefit from Canadian procurements." — liberal.ca, retrieved 2025-04-14

  • Address the external recommendations to combat military sexual misconduct

    "Address the external recommendations to combat military sexual misconduct. Sexual misconduct has absolutely no place in the Canadian Armed Forces. Like all Canadians, members of the Canadian Armed Forces must have a safe workplace." — liberal.ca, retrieved 2025-04-21

Conservative

  • Build 6,000 new homes on Canadian Forces bases
  • Reverse a rent increase on military families
  • Rapidly expand military expenditures to reach our defence spending commitment of 2% of Gross Domestic Product by no later than 2030
  • Increase the Reserve Force to 30,000 members and Regular Force to 71,500 members within 18 months
  • Add 10,000 cadet spots to the cadets programme
  • Triple the size of the Junior Canadian Rangers programme
We don't have any Bloc policies on National defence.

NDP

  • Meet our defence spending commitment of 2% of Gross Domestic Product by no later than 2032
  • Focus on defence investments that support Canadians, communities, Canadian Armed Forces members, and veterans

    "We will meet Canada’s commitment of increasing defence spending to two per cent of Canada’s Gross Domestic Product by no later than 2032, with an emphasis on making investments that support Canadians, communities, those who are serving in the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) and Veterans." — ndp.ca, retrieved 2025-04-19

We don't have any Green policies on National defence.

Looking for the parties' positions on other topics?

See our full 2025 Canadian election platform comparison