HALIFAX, Nova Scotia — A U.S. senator and supporter of Donald Trump said Friday that the president-elect would laugh at Canada’s current military spending plans and said the country needs to do more.

Republican from Idaho Late. Jim Rischranking member of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, made the remarks at the start of the annual Halifax International Security Forum that attracts defense and security officials from Western democracies.

According to NATO figures, Canada was projected to spend 1.33% of GDP on its military budget in 2023, below the 2% target NATO countries have set for themselves.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said Canada will meet the alliance’s goals by 2032.

“With all due respect. We’re good friends with Canada and they say, ‘Yeah, we’re working on this.’ We say, ‘What does that mean? And they say, ‘Well, we’re looking at 2032,'” Risch said during a panel discussion.

“If Trump was in this room, you’d get a big rant from him in 2032. It’s got to be better than that. It’s got to be really, really better than that.”

Canadian Defense Minister Bill Blair said his government knows it needs to increase defense spending, but he must make sure Canada gets “good value” for its investments.

“When our allies say they want us to meet the commitment, I’ve told them the answer is ‘Yes’ and I’ve told them you’re pushing on an open door,” Blair said. “We will make those investments.”

Canada is already planning to buy surveillance planes, helicopters and replenish its ammunition stockpiles. And have plans to buy submarines in the future.

Trudeau has recently re-established a special cabinet committee on the Canada-U.S relations to address his administration’s concerns about another Trump presidency.

Former US ambassador to Canada Kelly Craft said in the waning days of the US presidential campaign that Canada would do well to speed up its timeline for meeting its NATO spending commitments in the event of a Trump victory.

Retired Lt. Gen. Andrew Leslie – a former lawmaker in Trudeau’s government – told a parliamentary defense committee two days after the US election that he detects “no sense of urgency” from the government to meet those commitments.

After Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula In 2014, NATO allies agreed to end budget cuts and move towards spending 2% of their gross domestic product on defense within a decade. Canada spent just under 1% at the time.

Last year, as it became clear that Russia’s war with Ukraine would grind on, they decided that 2% would be a spending minimum.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has said he expects about two-thirds of the alliance’s 32 member states to spend 2% of GDP on their defense budgets this year, compared with just three countries a decade ago.