Prime Minister Mark Carney addresses troops at the Adazi Military base in Latvia in August. The goverment says it will spend an additional $81.8-billion over the next five years on defence.Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press

Jeffrey F. Collins is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island. He is author of the 2024 book Canada’s Defence Procurement Woes.

In Tuesday’s budget, the government said it would spend an additional $81.8-billion over the next five years on defence. More than half of this sum will go to repairing existing capabilities, expanding new fleets of equipment and bolstering digital infrastructure.

More likely than not it will be Prime Minister Mark Carney’s new stand-alone Defence Investment Agency, or DIA, that will be responsible for turning the bigger items – projects costing more than $100-million – into tangible outcomes. This could turn out to be a problem.

Tasked with consolidating procurement processes across departments, aligning new projects with certain “strategic defence........

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