“Yes, and” should be the guiding mindset for Canada as we rebuild our military. Avoiding false choices and ensuring we don’t let the perfect become the enemy of the good are essential if we are to protect ourselves in this chaotic era.
I recently reshared two articles on social media (one from March 10, 2025 and one from March 20, 2025) about the need for Canada to shift military procurement away from the United States and toward Europe and South Korea. These articles generated a welcome discussion, with positive feedback and constructive criticism. The criticism was based on the idea that, rather than purchase foreign weapons, Canada should be focused on rebuilding its own withered defence industrial base.
While I have often written about the need to rebuild our defence industry and produce more military equipment domestically using Canadian resources, Canadian workers, and Canadian ingenuity (The Case for Canadian-Made Weapons: What It Would Take to Build an Independent Arsenal), I wish to address this criticism in more detail, because the stakes are too high for Canada to get it wrong.
Instead of choosing one or the other (foreign purchases vs domestic production), our nation must do both. The demands of the moment require a dual-track military investment strategy. We must simultaneously recapitalize our force and build domestic military production capacity.
Given our limited current production capability, recapitalizing the CAF rapidly will require large purchases of foreign weapons. Canada does not make fighter jets, advanced air defence systems, tanks, artillery, or submarines at scale. Building that capacity will take time. In the case of fighter jets, for example, this will involve partnerships with allies that could, at best, lead to some production in Canada within five to 10 years (GCAP).
In some cases, such as artillery, air defence, and even tank production, recapitalization and domestic defence industrial expansion can go hand in hand. Germany’s Rheinmetall is often willing to build factories in partner nations. Large initial purchases of Skyranger 35s air defence platforms, for example, could be followed by the construction of production plants in Canada.
Similarly, South Korea is currently pitching Canada on an offer to provide four submarines by 2035 (ahead of the current procurement timetable), with maintenance facilities to be built domestically, staffed by Canadian workers.
Canadian workers would gain valuable experience, our country would gain critical submarine maintenance capacity, and we would have submarines delivered more rapidly and efficiently than if we sought to undertake the entire process ourselves. That is the kind of thinking we need going forward.
In some areas, there are Canadian companies such as Roshel that we can invest in immediately, ramping up production, expanding/building factories, and creating jobs in the defence sector for Canadians:
“Roshel, headquartered in Brampton, Ontario, has emerged as a key supplier of armoured vehicles to Ukraine, recently delivering its 1,700th Senator. This operational scale positions it as a logical anchor for an expanded domestic defence procurement strategy. A government order for 10,000 units to be delivered within two years, valued at an estimated $10–12 billion, would necessitate a significant ramp-up in production, requiring additional facilities and a likely tripling of its 500-strong workforce.”
For drone production, working with allies and building domestically go hand in hand. Ukraine is a world leader in drone warfare, and Canada could leverage our close ties with Ukraine to jump-start domestic drone manufacturing at scale. Imagine the benefit of Canadian & Ukrainian companies jointly designing and mass producing drones.
The key to making a Canadian defence rebuild work is the aforementioned “yes, and” mindset, a mindset of openness and action. Canada has many close allies with strong defence sectors (UK, Ukraine, France, Germany, South Korea), and we must be open to working with them and purchasing weapons from them. They are certainly willing to sell, and we must be willing to buy. We also need to take action. Rather than pondering over procurement plans for years, we need to start stocking up on weapons, equipment, and ammunition now. If that means utilizing the Defence Production Act to bypass the current procurement process, then so be it.
Despite U.S. President Donald Trump promising the U.S. would continue to defend Canada (a promise that could flip tomorrow), Canadians can no longer trust the United States as we once did. Russia remains a threat to Canada, particularly in the Arctic, and China’s immense military buildup cannot be dismissed as mere posturing.
In this environment, time is not on our side. We don’t have the luxury of waiting for the perfect plan or the perfect moment to rebuild the CAF. Instead, we must start now and move fast. We must seize the opportunities in front of us, deepen ties with our allies, spend substantial sums to rapidly recapitalize our force while building our domestic defence industry, utilize our tech sector to advance the integration of artificial intelligence into warfare, and become a world leader in military drone production.
Spencer Fernando
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