In answer to the headline question: No.

Avi: I don’t believe we need to spend 2% of our GDP on military spending, as we need that money for other things, including the climate emergency, which is costing us more money while destroying towns and filling our lungs with smoke. The idea that we should now move to 5% of GDP is a destructive and nihilistic fantasy, pouring fuel on the climate fire.

He’s right. On the three points you reply to that with: 1. It doesn’t matter what the USA or anyone else says about it. 2. Massive spending on conventional military tools is not the best way to respond to threats from the USA. If you’re really looking for lessons from Iran that’s one of them. 3. Funding the military-industrial complex in Europe and Asia isn’t all that much better for Canada than funding the military-industrial complex in the USA.

Spending 5% of GPD on the armed forces is utter madness. People tend to think “oh, only 5% that sounds small” forgetting that it’s not 5% of government spending — it’s 5% of all the goods and services produced by everyone in Canada, making it more like 25% of federal government revenue and presumably an even larger fraction of discretionary spending. It’s hard to imagine how to put up a defence of that idea that would be credible.