“The Trudeau policies are the freeloading policies of a NATO of decay. If everyone had the policies of Trudeau, there would be no NATO,” said Turner, who also serves as vice chair of the Defense and Security Committee of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.

Jim Risch said Ottawa’s pledge to meet Nato’s target by 2032 would get a ‘large guffaw’ from the US president-elect.

An influential United States Republican senator delivered some blunt criticism of Canada's military spending on Friday, telling a major security conference in Halifax the federal government has to do better to please president-elect Donald Trump.