By Melanie Nadeau
To fill up one’s gas tank nowadays in Canada is to be reminded that we live in an interconnected world that is increasingly marked by destabilizing armed conflicts. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz that has shot global oil prices to record highs is but one of many significant and ongoing international conflagrations being felt here at home. There is no doubt now that many of the assumptions upon which we have based our economic and defence and security policies since the end of the Second World War have fallen away. As Prime Minister Carney has said, “we are in the midst of a rupture.”
In response, Canada has taken some rather dramatic steps in quick secession towards the development of a defence industrial base to produce a range of sovereign capabilities necessary to secure the nation. The Spring Economic Update announced $104 million over 5 years to establish and operate a stand-alone Defence Investment Agency. This institutional anchor of the government’s first of its kind Defence Industrial Strategy announced in February will be responsible for allocating the generational investment in defence that Canada has now made and will continue to make in the coming years.
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