Prime Minister Mark Carney said Canada can meet a steep expected increase in its North Atlantic Treaty Organisation obligations spending partly by leaning on the country’s bounty of critical minerals.

The 32-member military alliance is meeting in The Hague and discussing a new total spending target of 5% of gross domestic product — 3.5% in core defence funding and 1.5% in related investments including infrastructure.

In an interview with CNN on Tuesday, Carney said “we’re all likely to agree tomorrow” about the new headline figure, and they are “likely to agree” about the core defence aspect rising over 10 years.

For Canada that comes out to about C$150-billion, he said, before clarifying “a little less than a third of that overall number is spending on things that quite frankly we’re already doing to build the resilience of the economy.”

Some of the spending on extracting, processing and exporting Canada’s critical minerals in partnerships with allies “counts towards that 5% — in fact, a lot of it will count towards that 5% because it’s infrastructure spending,” he said, such as railroads and “other ways to get these minerals out.”

If Carney hits his surprise pledge from June 9 to meet the old NATO target — 2% of GDP — this fiscal year, which isn’t guaranteed, that still leaves an enormous 75% uplift in core military spending.

Echoing remarks from his foreign minister earlier in the day, he said “we’re going to do a review in four or five years” on the plan, because “the nature of warfare is changing very rapidly.”

“We don’t need an aircraft carrier any more” but rather drones, integrated with cybersecurity, satellites, AI, he said.

He also spoke about his conversations with US President Donald Trump as the two leaders aim to reach a trade deal within about three weeks. Asked if Trump was still saying he wants to “annex” Canada, Carney said he was not.

“He admires Canada, I think it’s better to say, and they for a period of time coveted Canada,” he said. “We’re two sovereign nations who are discussing the future of our trade relationship, our defense partnership, which has been very strong in the past; how is that going to evolve?”