Amid a chorus of calls to increase funds for the Canadian Forces, a new report is urging the government to hold the line on military spending in the coming federal budget.

"Breaking Rank: A Citizens' Review of Canada's Military Spending" was written by Steven Staples of the Polaris Institute.

The 49-page report says the government should take immediate steps to address its outdated defence policy, stem waste and mismanagement of current funds by the Department of National Defence and direct tax dollars to social programs such as health care.

"The debate on whether Canada should increase military spending has been very one-sided," Mr. Staples writes. "The federal government has not been presented with the view of the majority of Canadians that defence spending, while necessary in principle, must be weighed against more important priorities such as health care and education."

The report recommends a defence budget that reflects the minimum necessary to ensure sovereignty patrols of Canada's territory and non-combat peacekeeping under United Nations auspices.

"The defence lobby, Canada-U.S. relations, NATO, corporations and even free trade agreements are driving military spending upward for reasons unrelated to Canada's legitimate defensive needs," Mr. Staples said. "Canada's $12.3-billion in military spending is already the sixth highest in NATO."

In May, the Liberal, Canadian Alliance, NDP and Progressive Conservative members of the Commons defence committee released a report calling on Ottawa to raise its annual military budget to at least $16-billion from $12-billion over the next three years to gain some respectability among its defence partners.

Mr. Staples argues that such a move would leave little money for important social programs.

"The Commons and Senate defence committees would render the Romanow Report irrelevant if the government implemented fully their multibillion-dollar demands," he said. "There would barely be a penny left over for heath care."

The report says that Canadians tend to see security as deriving from social programs and maintaining a positive role in world matters.

"The defence lobby overlooks the fact that every dollar spent on defence means a dollar not spent on another program," Mr. Staples writes. "...Military programs are very expensive, create fewer jobs than non-defence investments and do not provide long-term benefits because weapons systems do not make contributions to the economy once built."

A study released in November found that 75 per cent of Canadians felt funding to the military needs to be increased.

In July, hundreds of would-be soldiers were turned back because the forces could not afford to train them. The forces also struggled to cope with deployments in Afghanistan, the Balkans and the G8 summit in Alberta.

The Polaris Institute was founded to help citizen movements "reskill and retool themselves to fight for democratic social change in an age of corporate driven globalization," its Web site says.