The world continues to be affected by the war in Iran and the negative impacts of the war on the world economy. Despite several cease fires, Iran remains defiant and continues to impact the Straits of Hormuz and the Middle East. Despite an attempted cease fire in the Ukraine, this war continues with the Ukraine achieving some success with their innovative drone and robotic technology as well as long range strikes impacting oil refineries and the Russian critical infrastructure.
In Canada our PM continues to focus on defence and there have been a number of decisions related to the Defence Investment Agency thereby setting better left and right of arcs for spending on defence. My concern is that we have yet to see any significant decisions on major capability purchases for the Canadian Armed Forces. Our Government has not yet made a decision on submarines, fighters, or any significant army equipment. We also are hearing rumours of increasing the size of our forces both for the regular and reserve forces. I believe we are long overdue for a communique from our MND or CDS on what that plan will entail and how it will match the required increase in capabilities to better protect our sovereignty and fulfill our NATO commitments. We finally achieved 2% of our GDP on defence, but this spending was mostly focused on increasing pay for our forces, much needed infrastructure and adding the Coast Guard to our budget. A National Security Strategy is now long overdue especially considering the recent foreign policy declarations and our commitment to achieve 3.5% defence spending by 2029.
For our April speaker night Bryan Bailey and I provided a summary of the CDA Conference held in Ottawa and you can find a link to this presentation on our website. In addition, I attended the Colonel Dave Forbes CIDP presentation on the topic of operating in a drone environment. A link to his presentation is also provided.
Our next speaker for 21 May is Vice Admiral Angus Topshee and this promises to be an excellent event. The Navy is modernizing through our national shipbuilding strategy and over the coming years we will be purchasing 12 new submarines, 15 River-class destroyers and 16-20 continental defence corvettes. This will be a combined RKUSI/RCMI evening.
Next month, in June, we will have Lieutenant- General (Retired) Marc Caron, Major General (Retired) Clive Milner and Colonel (Retired) Ron Brandon providing us a video on our Op SNOWGOOSE and our military contributions to Cyprus.
Lastly, we have initiated planning for a RKUSI Defence and Security Forum with a Friday, October 30th date. CDAI is engaged and General (Retd) Tom Lawson has again committed to participating.