Canada Still Needs a Defence Industrial Policy

In April 2024 the much-awaited defence policy update was released by the Government of Canada. Our North, Strong and Free: A Renewed Vision for Canada’s Defence, or ONSAF as it has become referred to by many, indicates “Canada will invest $8.1 billion over the next five years, and $73 billion over the next 20 years.”1 The policy update addresses six major themes, one of which deals with building an innovative defence industrial base. The connection to the defence industrial base is part of a broader focus on speeding up the acquisition system and building up Canada’s defence capabilities.The media coverage of national security and defence in the past few months has covered a wide variety of issues, everything from identifying the poor state of the Canadian Forces and its readiness levels to the need for government and Canadian society to get serious about the nations’ security.2 The world is a very different place today than it was when the current government came to power in 2015. To its credit the government engaged Canadians and released Strong, Secure, Engaged in 2017.3 Recognizing the changing security environment, the government’s 2022 budget indicated “ . . . recent events require the government to reassess Canada’s role, priorities, and needs in the face of a changing world. Budget 2022 announces a defence policy review to allow Canada to update its existing defence policy, Strong, Secure, Engaged, in support of its broader international priorities and the changed global environment.”4 Finally, two years later Canadians, the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) and Canada’s allies have the updated defence policy Our North, Strong and Free: A Renewed Vision for Canada’s Defence.5Canadian governments have not historically been proactive in producing policy documents. The last time a government actually issued a set of policy documents was under the Paul Martin government in 2005 when it released an international policy statement covering defence, diplomacy, development and commerce.6 Two defence policies have been released prior to the update just released, one in 2008 by the Stephen Harper government,7 and the 2017 policy Strong, Secure, Engaged. These policy documents including the current update, were all released without an overarching updated national security policy or foreign policy.8 This is not to imply that the government does not develop policies. The government has a variety of policy documents or strategies. For example, there is an Industrial and Technical Benefits Policy, a Feminist International Assistance Policy, a National Cyber Security Strategy and a Defence Artificial Intelligence Strategy to name just a few. But these are bureaucratic documents that deal with individual issues without an overarching national strategic level policy document dealing with national security policy, foreign policy, development assistance policy and industrial and trade policy. Most of our traditional allies release these documents on a regular basis.The difficulty is that the documents that have been released deal with very specific issues rather than providing policy guidance on what the governments priorities are at the national and strategic level. Critics might argue that spending time writing more strategic national level statements is not required and there are many senior officials in government that would make the case for why they were not required. However, as indicated, most of Canada’s traditional allies believe it is necessary and invest the time and effort to develop such guidance. The United States has a congressionally mandated requirement to issue a National Security Strategy, a National Military Strategy and release a Quadrennial Defence Review every four years. Australia has issued defence policies and defence industrial strategies on a regular basis as has the United Kingdom. Beyond these three nations, it is important to note that other NATO Allies have also released defence industrial strategies or defence policies that deal with similar defence industrial issues. For example, the Netherlands’ has a 2018 defence industrial strategy while Germany has a 2023 defence policy guidelines document that has specific issues related to the defence industrial base.9