The United States has announced a "pause" in its participation in the Permanent Joint Board on Defence (PJBD) with Canada, an advisory body established in 1940. U. S. Undersecretary of War Elbridge Colby stated that Canada has not made credible progress on its defence commitments. Colby made the announcement via social media, linking it to Prime Minister Mark Carney's January speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where Carney discussed a "rupture in the world order" without directly mentioning President Trump.
The PJBD was created by then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King to foster bilateral defence cooperation. While the board is meant to meet annually, the last publicly available record of a meeting was in November 2024. Colby stated that the U. S. can no longer ignore the gap between rhetoric and reality, emphasizing the need for shared defence and security responsibilities.
Prime Minister Carney's government recently announced that Canada had met its NATO commitment to spend 2% of its gross domestic product on defence for the first time since the Cold War, with $63.4 billion spent in 2025. However, Washington has reportedly moved the benchmark to 3.5% of GDP. Former Conservative leader Erin O'Toole called the U. S. move "profoundly misguided", noting the timing was strange after Trump's recent trip to China.
Fen Osler Hampson, a professor of international affairs at Carleton University, said the decision was "ominous," especially after Canada met its spending targets. He added that the board serves U. S. national security interests and that the Trump administration is undermining its own interests. The Liberal government has yet to decide on its order of F-35 fighter jets from Lockheed Martin, a decision that has been under political review for over a year.
