Defence

Defence spending against the NATO guideline, and the size of the armed forces: Canada since 1920, 16 OECD peers, and NATO

How much Canada spends on its military, and how many people serve in it. Spending is compared with 16 OECD peers as a share of GDP, against the guideline NATO members have agreed. Personnel is counted three ways, because the sources define it differently: Canada’s own Regular Force and Primary Reserve figures from the Department of National Defence, the Correlates of War count that reaches back to 1920 for every peer, and NATO’s official peacetime strength for the eleven peers that are NATO members. Every chart names its source and definition.

Defence spending

Military expenditure as a share of GDP is the standard metric for defence spending comparisons. NATO members have agreed to a guideline of spending at least 2% of GDP on defence (shown as a dashed line). Israel is omitted here because it is an outlier in spending and is not a NATO member. The series is SIPRI’s, which applies one definition of military spending to every country; NATO’s own accounting for its guideline differs, so the figures here can differ from those NATO reports. The chart opens in 2000; the slider reaches back to 1949.

Latest defence spending: ranked

Information from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) Military Expenditure Database, https://doi.org/10.55163/CQGC9685.

Military personnel

Spending is one measure of a military. People are another. Three sources cover it, on three definitions. Canada’s Department of National Defence publishes the strength of the Regular Force (full-time members) and the Primary Reserve (part-time members, counted as the average number paid each month). NATO reports every member’s peacetime military strength on a common definition. The Correlates of War project, republished by Our World in Data, counts active military personnel for every country back to 1920, which carries the long view. The counts differ by a few thousand between definitions, so each chart names its source.

Canada’s armed forces since 1920

The chart opens in 1950. Drag the slider back to see the Second World War, when Canada had 801,000 people in uniform (1945). The post-war peak was 124,000 in 1961. As of July 31, 2026, the Regular Force had 68,473 members against an authorized strength of 71,500. The Primary Reserve’s average paid strength was 25,661, with 33,315 people enrolled, against an authorized 38,800. The Primary Reserve is the part-time force; the Reserve Force as a whole also includes the Supplementary Reserve, the Cadet Organizations Administration and Training Service, and the Canadian Rangers, which are not shown here. The Regular Force line is official in two pieces: Statistics Canada’s Canada Year Book for 1962 to 1986 and DND’s open data from 1997, with no comparable official series between them.

Military personnel per 1,000 people

Absolute numbers favour big countries, so this compares military personnel with population. The series is the Correlates of War count, which runs to 2022 and covers all 16 peers. Israel and South Korea sit far above the rest; the chart opens on Canada, the United States, Germany, and Australia.

Latest military personnel per 1,000 people: ranked

Israel, at 17.8 per 1,000 people in 2022, and South Korea, at 10.7, are far above the rest and are omitted from this bar so that the other countries stay readable. Both remain in the chart above and in the data download.

Military personnel: NATO members’ official figures

NATO publishes each member’s peacetime military strength on one definition, which excludes trained reserves held at high readiness. Eleven of the 16 peers are NATO members, so this chart is the official, current comparison for that group; the latest two years are NATO’s estimates.

Peace operations

Canada’s peacekeeping record is measured here in people, by who led the mission. The United Nations publishes every contributor’s uniformed personnel month by month from November 1990. Before that, and for the NATO-led and other non-UN missions the UN data does not cover, the chart shows an approximate annual maximum: the most Canadians deployed at once in each year. It is built from the contingent strengths recorded in the Department of National Defence’s operation histories and in the UN Secretary-General’s periodic reports, each with its source. NATO’s deterrence deployments in Europe are not peace operations and are not counted.

Canadians in peace operations since 1949

The solid maroon line is the UN’s own monthly count of Canadians in its peace operations. It peaked at 3,336 in April 1993, during the missions in the former Yugoslavia, and stood at 27 in June 2026, which ranked Canada 66 of 118 contributing countries. For its first 21 months, to July 1992, the UN’s count includes troops only, so Canada’s military observers and police in those months are missing from the line. The maroon band before 1990 is the approximate annual maximum, with the missions active in the same month added together. Where the sources give no dated figure between two anchors, the band spans both, so a wide band marks a gap in the record rather than a larger deployment. Hover over a year to see the missions behind it. NATO-led missions are shown separately in navy: the Balkans (IFOR, SFOR, and KFOR) and Afghanistan, where the ISAF mission ran under a UN mandate but was a combat mission for most of its life, followed by the NATO training mission. The grey band is the other non-UN missions: the Indochina control commissions from 1954 to 1974, the 1973 Vietnam commission, and the Multinational Force and Observers in the Sinai.

Canadians in UN peace operations, by personnel type

The chart opens on the last two decades; slide back for the 1990s. Troops are formed units; police are individual officers and formed police units; experts and staff officers are military observers and headquarters staff. Canada’s current contribution is almost entirely in the third group.

Peace operations personnel per million people: Canada and peers

Contributions scaled to population, as annual averages of the UN’s monthly counts. The chart opens on Canada, the United States, Germany, and Australia; every peer is one click away in the legend.

Latest peace operations personnel per million people: ranked

Who pays for UN peacekeeping

Peacekeeping is financed by assessed contributions: each member’s share of the budget is set by the General Assembly every three years. This is the peers’ share for 2025 to 2027.

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