Canada’s Strategic Role in Defence Innovation: From GCXpo 2025 to Ottawa’s New Defence Investment Agency
This year’s GCXpo 2025 was a powerful reminder of the significant stakes for Canada in defence, security, and innovation. The event brought together government leaders, ministers, startups, and tech builders, all circling the same questions: how do we scale faster, how do we maintain our sovereignty, and how do we prevent our best talent and ideas from leaving for opportunities elsewhere?
For me, the most eye-opening moment was the closing panel, "Canada’s Strategic Role – Scaling Innovation for Allied Defence." Moderated by Patrick d'Astous (EY), the closing panel featured Dr. Ann Fitz-Gerald (Balsillie School of International Affairs), Dan Doran (ADGA Group), Dr. Rami Abielmona (Larus) and Bruce Playfair (National Research Council Canada / Conseil national de recherches Canada). It cut straight to the point: Canada moves too slowly.
Dan Doran reminded us that Canada has proven itself capable of moving at a record pace when vision and leadership align. The Canadian Pacific Railway was completed in just four years (1881–1885), Montreal’s Sun Life Building stood as an empire-defining landmark, and firms like WSP scaled from small Montreal practices into global leaders. We know how to move quickly when leadership is bold. And yet, projects like Ottawa’s LRT drag on for more than a decade. The talent is here, the ambition is here, but the processes are holding us hostage.
Dr. Fitz-Gerald was equally blunt: Canada must claim ownership of the Arctic and refer to it as the Canadian Arctic. She warned that every delay in decision-making, every slow step with our allies, is an opening for foreign adversaries who move faster and with deeper pockets. And those same adversaries are the ones snapping up Canadian graduates, researchers, and startups, pulling not just our talent, but our IP, into systems that outpace us. Her point landed: sovereignty isn’t protected with hesitation.
Then, today, came Prime Minister Mark Carney’s announcement of the new Defence Investment Agency (DIA). On paper, it sounds like exactly what we’ve been asking for: a one-stop shop for contracts over $100M, led by Doug Guzman and overseen by Stephen Fuhr, designed to cut red tape and deliver equipment at the “speed of relevancy.” It reframes procurement as an investment is a deliberate shift to demonstrate that defence spending can grow industries, create jobs, and draw SMEs into supply chains alongside primes.
It’s bold. And it aligns Canada with allies like the U.K. and Australia, while providing a pathway into Europe’s Readiness 2030 plan. The intention is clear: stop duplicating effort, move faster, and finally treat procurement as a lever for building our domestic industrial base.
But here’s where the healthy cynicism comes in. This isn’t the first time Canadians have heard promises about fixing procurement. Previous governments have announced reforms, set targets, and launched initiatives that never materialized in practice. We’ve had submarine programs stretch into decades, aerospace deals mired in politics, and procurement cycles so drawn-out that by the time contracts are awarded, the technology is already outdated.
The result? Canada has repeatedly missed opportunities to lead. Our best engineers, researchers, and early-stage founders are often forced abroad, recruited by systems that move quickly and provide the capital and certainty they need to scale. Too frequently, we’ve watched Canadian ideas commercialized elsewhere by strengthening the ecosystems of our allies (and sometimes adversaries) while we stall at home.
That’s why this announcement by Carney, while promising, will be judged not by headlines but by how quickly contracts flow and how inclusive the agency becomes. If the DIA centralizes power but doesn’t change culture, we risk building yet another bottleneck with a new nameplate.
The industry response captured this tension. Benjamin Bergen, President of the Council of Canadian Innovators, welcomed the DIA as a long-overdue step in strategic procurement, but stressed that execution is key. Unless Ottawa changes its culture and actively brings scaleups and dual-use innovators into the process, this reform could collapse under the same weight as its predecessors.
As Philippe Lagassé and others have pointed out, the DIA can only be a pillar if it ensures that Canadian companies, not just the largest primes, have a seat at the table. Smaller development agencies with deep talent, startups with niche solutions, and engineering teams capable of delivering specialized projects must be part of the lift. That’s how we create a defence ecosystem that is resilient, fast, and globally competitive.
So where do I land? Cautiously hopeful. GCXpo’s panellists reminded us that Canada has done this before: we’ve built faster, bolder, and better than almost anyone. Carney’s announcement signals that political will may finally be catching up to that potential. But hope isn’t enough. If this is to be a real turning point, it can’t take months or years to act. We need procurement decisions, sorry “investment” decisions, that match the urgency of the times, partnerships that extend beyond the usual government walls, and recognition that smaller Canadian firms can play as important a role as the global giants.
If that happens, maybe we will finally stop losing our best minds and IP to other countries. We could start acting again like the Canada that built coast-to-coast rail in record time and companies that scaled into global leaders.
The message I left GCXpo with, and the hope I carry now, is this: Canada can lead again. But only if we stop announcing and start acting, boldly, swiftly, and together.
