Parliament’s Standing Committee on Industry and Technology (INDU) is currently holding meetings to discuss the forthcoming Defence Industrial Strategy (DIS), a key pillar of Prime Minister Carney’s new budget.
The new Defence Industrial Strategy is championed by both Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED) and the Department of National Defence (DND), and seeks to align defence procurement, industrial growth, and technological innovation under a single strategic vision.
Strategies come and go, but could this one have a better outcome than those in the past? Driving the new strategy is the reality that Canada’s sovereign defence capabilities are lacking and that our staunchest ally, the United States, led by President Trump has verbally attacked Canada, started a a trade war, and is so unpredictable and reactionary, that you never what he’ll say or do next. In other words, our neighbour to the south can’t be relied on right now and at least for the near term.
Buy, build, partner and dual-use technologies
In the first meeting held on October 1 the Committee heard from witnesses including representatives from ISED, DND, the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and two individuals.
From ISED the Committee members heard from Kendal Hembroff, Associate Assistant Deputy Minister who said DIS hasn’t been finalized and that ISED and DND were working together noting that “details will be forthcoming in the coming months.”
Hembroff said ISED “is well positioned to play a leading role in the development and implementation of the DIS, and the Minister of Industry has publicly discussed her vision for the strategy, using a framework of buy, build and partner.” And continued, “This means leveraging the government’s purchasing power to create benefits throughout the supply chain, building up Canada’s industrial capacity in key areas and developing strategic collaboration with international allies.”
Another theme that came up and which we’ve heard a lot about of late is ‘dual-use technologies’.
Ashwin K. Iyer, a professor and Director at the Centre for Applied Research in Defence and Dual-use Technologies (CARDD-Tech), University of Alberta, who appeared as an individual, said in response to a Committee members question on dual-use technologies that at CARDD-Tech “We’re looking at technologies and their evolution over time frames of five to 10 to 15 years. We’re always looking for the dual-use counterparts in the defence technologies, because this is where we tend to build basic science, and we tend to train our graduate students, build our labs and do our research. We’re always aware and conscious of the dual-use counterparts to defence technologies.”
An example he cited was drone development, specifically drones used in Alberta for wildfire monitoring and geophysical surveys. Iyer said, “The same technologies that go into making drones resilient to those environments are the technologies that are required for defence.”
A generational opportunity
The October 22nd meeting included some key players from the space side in Mike Mueller, President and CEO of the Aerospace Industries Association of Canada (AIAC) and Mike Greenley, CEO of MDA Space.
In this meeting Mueller set the tone early and defined where the AIAC things we’re at in Canada’s history by saying, “The choices we make now will determine whether we seize this opportunity to build up the defence industrial base and provide the capabilities our armed forces need to protect Canadians and our sovereignty. With the federal government focused on defence and significant new spending commitments — 2% of GDP this year and 5% by 2035 — we are on the cusp of a ‘generational opportunity.'”
Indeed, if the government follows through on the DIS by creating a plan and executing it as envisioned, it would certainly be a “generational opportunity.”
As for Greenley, he traced a rich Canadian space history from space-based communications, the Canadarm to RADARSAT and Sapphire and even gave mention to new startups working towards sovereign launch capability like Maritime Launch Services, Reaction Dynamics and NordSpace.
With respect to sovereign launch capability, the budget released this week included $182.6 million to kickstart this capability. The same companies mentioned by Greenley are likely to be the beneficiaries along with others. And MDA Space, clearly reading the tea leaves correctly, made a $10 million investment in Maritime Launch Services earlier this week giving themselves another avenue for potential growth.
Greeley, in his testimony, also touched on a thorny issue under discussion for years, procurement, framing it with a modern approach. He also chimed in on dual-use technologies.
“By working with Canadian space industry leaders as strategic partners and leveraging dual-use commercial space technology, Canada can dramatically accelerate the design and delivery of required sovereign space capabilities to deliver advanced space missions at the speed of relevance. If new procurement approaches are empowered, this can be performed without significant demand on DND staffing capacity, as industry can design, build, operate and maintain these turnkey space systems under defence command and control or as a commercial service to DND.”
Taken together, both meetings emphasized a new narrative, space defence is economic defence. Combined, the opportunities for defence and space could lead to thousands of new jobs and economic clout for the country.
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