In February, Canada released its Defence Industrial Strategy (DIS), a sweeping plan aimed at strengthening national sovereignty, security, and economic growth. With $180 billion in defence procurement, $290 billion in infrastructure investment, and ambitious targets for industry expansion, it is one of the most significant defence policy documents in decades.

But as defence expert Wendy Gilmour argues, the challenge is not the scale of the ambition, it is how it will be delivered. The strategy sets out clear goals, but offers less clarity on how trade-offs will be made, how quickly capabilities can be fielded, and how Canada balances urgency with long-term industrial development.

What follows is a lightly edited transcript of a conversation between CIC Executive Director Melanie Walker and defence expert Wendy Gilmour.

When you first read the Defence Industrial Strategy in depth, what was your reaction?

Getting the Strategy ‘out the door’ was itself a victory, given how much work goes into publishing a document like this. There was a tremendous amount of effort by the bureaucracy to get this over the finish line, and while it represents compromises, as every government policy document does, it is an achievement. But now comes the hard part. It is an ambitious document, but the real challenge will be in implementation. For instance, it contains a number of significant targets, but does not provide much direction on the fundamental question: how will trade-offs be determined?  These questions are especially relevant for the armaments, procurement and defence industry communities.

How will choices be made between “build, partner, and buy”? There are always choices to be made between the timeframes involved in recapitalizing the Canadian Forces, and in delivering new capabilities. We need most of these capabilities yesterday, not ten or twenty years from now. If we are going to “build”, this means research and development (R&D) and moving through the early stages of development and production. That is a long-term ambition when we might be at war tomorrow. Indeed, some would say we are probably already in a hybrid war. Certainly, if you are a NATO Ally living in Eastern Europe, you understand the threat posed by Russia, and that you may already be at war.

“We need them yesterday, not ten or twenty years from now.”

If the US is no longer the default customer, who are we selling to – and how do we reconcile those export ambitions with our values-based foreign policy?

I am firmly, personally, invested in........

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