What a pleasure to be back in Montréal and at CAE – a leading Canadian defence company that is building what Canada needs.

For generations, skilled workers in Québec have supported the industries that underpin Canada’s security and prosperity.

Quebecers know what it means to build things that matter.

The work you do here is supporting our families. It is anchoring our communities. It is defending our country.

We are here today to build on this tradition.

Canada’s new government was elected with a clear mandate: to make Canada stronger, more resilient, and more independent. We are pursuing that on every front – building affordable housing at rates not seen in generations, creating one Canadian economy, realising Canada’s full potential as an energy superpower, and striking new international agreements with reliable partners.

None of these goals will come easily. They will all require ambition, collaboration, and on occasion, sacrifice.

But Canadians are up for it. We know that the world has changed, and that Canada must change with it.

The assumptions that shaped decades of Canadian defence and foreign policy have been completely upended.

The threats we face are numerous and growing – ranging from incursions into our Arctic to attacks targeting our cyberspace. The very nature of warfare is changing rapidly, driven by the proliferation of drones, autonomous systems, and weapons in orbit.

The potential theatres of conflict have moved closer to our borders.

In a more fractured and darker world, Canadian leadership will be defined not just by the strength of our values, but also by the value of our strength.

That strength must be concentrated, reinforced, and above all, Canadian.

That is why, right after the election, the Government of Canada set out on an ambitious mission to rebuild, rearm, and reinvest in our Armed Forces.

We are now on track to meet our 2% NATO target by this spring – a full decade ahead of the previous schedule. Recruitment to the Canadian Armed Forces is up by 13% since June. We have signed a series of new defence and security partnerships with allies who share our interests, values, and history, including the landmark SAFE agreement that the Minister of National Defence, David J. McGuinty, signed with the European Union last week.

Crucially, we have committed to doubling our defence expenditures by the end of this decade. That amounts to an additional $80 billion over the next five years. In addition, as part of our NATO commitments, we will invest an additional $45 billion per year on domestic resilience, yielding both security and economic benefits.

Over the next decade, Canada will invest $180 billion directly in defence procurement, $290 billion in defence and security-related infrastructure, and create over $125 billion in additional downstream economic benefits.

The magnitude of these commitments underscores the seriousness of the emerging threats before us. They also create significant economic opportunities.

The Canadian defence industry already provides more than 80,000 Canadians with direct employment, and many more indirectly.

It is imperative to maximise the return on these investments – over $500 billion – to strengthen our security, increase our jobs and prosperity, and protect our sovereignty.

Defending Canada means more than the size of our military. It also means the strength of our industries, the resilience of our economy, and our capacity to act independently when it matters most.

Our national security and our economic security go hand in hand.

To those ends, we are announcing Canada’s first-ever Defence Industrial Strategy. It’s a bold plan to get our Armed Forces what they need and when they need it, scale Canadian defence companies, put hundreds of billions of dollars into strategic sectors of our economy, and create over 125,000 high-paying jobs across Canada.

Its framework is simple: build, partner, buy.

First, we will build in Canada and prioritise Canadian companies. As a matter of policy, military procurement in areas where we have sovereign capabilities will be directed to Canadian firms first.

Where we cannot build, we will partner with like-minded allies – helping to attract investment, transfer intellectual property, and integrate supply chains so that public dollars flow back to Canada and jobs are created right here.

Only after exhausting these options, will we buy from abroad. Even then, we will ensure that the maximum benefits are returned to Canada throughout the value chain, including through a modernised Industrial and Technological Benefits regime.

The centrepiece of our new approach is the new Defence Investment Agency (DIA). The DIA will streamline and speed procurement, cut red tape, and expand domestic production.

The Defence Industrial Strategy has three fundamental objectives:

• To protect Canada’s sovereignty, particularly in the Arctic, by ensuring our women and men in uniform have the tools they need to defend Canada.
• To build Canadian prosperity.
• To strengthen Canada’s strategic autonomy by increasing our ability to act independently in a more dangerous world.

We start by defending Canadians.

The truth is, over the last few decades, Canada has neither spent enough on defence nor invested enough in our defence industries.

And we have relied too heavily on our geography and other countries to protect us.

This has created vulnerabilities we can no longer afford and dependencies we can no longer sustain.

Government procurement is too slow, too fragmented, and too reactive. For many Canadian companies, it is easier to sell to foreign governments than to our own. The current process increases our reliance on foreign suppliers and undermines the firms that we should be building up.

We have made important new commitments in defence, and we must do the same with our spending.

Our Armed Forces will be backed by a resilient, Canadian defence industrial base. Every dollar will be spent to maximise jobs, careers, and industries right here in Canada.

The Defence Industrial Strategy will start by concentrating on the sovereign capabilities that are critical to our ability to defend Canada – areas where we are already strong or where we have the potential to lead.

For example, Québec and Canada have proven strengths in aircraft, aircraft engines, and parts. We have advanced capabilities in maintenance, repair, and in-service support. With CAE, we are a world leader in training and simulation. You are the world leaders in training and simulation.

Across Canada, we have other strengths. We produce world-class combat vehicles, munitions, and naval vessels.

And Canada is developing leadership in areas that will be increasingly central to defence, including space, AI, cyber, quantum, medical countermeasures, robotics, and drones.

Strengthening our sovereign capabilities, and the quality jobs that come with them, will require various tools, including our determination to buy Canadian whenever possible.

Our strategy rests on five pillars:

• First, renewing our relationship with industry, including through clear long-term demand signals.
• Second, procuring strategically and with greater efficiency through “build, partner, buy”.
• Third, investing in innovation and workforce development.
• Fourth, securing supply chains.
• And finally, working with domestic partners, including in Canada’s North.

The details are in the strategy document we are releasing today, but let me highlight one aspect that matters particularly for our long-term competitiveness and is directly relevant to the activities of CAE.

This company knows our defence sector is research-intensive – three times more research and development-intensive as Canadian manufacturing overall. And history shows that defence spending catalyses innovation far beyond the sector itself. Computing, GPS, the powerful camera lenses in our phones – all emerged from defence investment.

We will boost government investment in defence-related research and development by 85% to help develop the next generation of capabilities in AI, quantum, robotics, and autonomous systems.

In part, to do that, we are creating a new Bureau of Research, Engineering and Advanced Leadership (BOREALIS) to coordinate and accelerate defence research and innovation in frontier technologies like quantum and AI.

Our overall objectives are to increase Canadian defence sector revenues by over 220%, our defence exports by 50%, and to create 125,000 new jobs.

And for small and medium-sized businesses, the strategy targets an annual increase of $2.8 billion in defence-related revenues to reach $4.5 billion.

These direct benefits will have positive impacts across our entire economy. Each job created means one more Canadian who will enjoy greater security, a family that feels less anxious about the future, a local economy that is self‑sustaining and can provide opportunities to the next generation.

Ultimately, this strategy is about protecting Canada’s sovereignty in its fullest sense: our ability to act independently in a more dangerous and divided world.

To be clear, strategic autonomy does not mean isolation. It means being strong enough to be a partner of choice – rather than a dependent. It means building a domestic defence industrial base so that we are never hostage to the decisions of others when it comes to our own security. And it means diversifying our partnerships so that we are resilient against any single point of failure.

That is why the “build, partner, buy” framework at the heart of this strategy matters so much. When we build at home, we develop the sovereign capabilities – in aerospace, ammunition, digital systems, naval construction, space – that ensure Canada can defend itself under any circumstances.

When we partner with trusted allies in Europe, the United Kingdom, and the Indo-Pacific, we access capabilities and technologies that strengthen us all. By diversifying these partnerships, we reduce our exposure to any single alliance or any single decision that we do not control.

Defence depends on complex supply chains – from critical minerals to specialised components. Accordingly, we are launching the new Canadian Defence Industry Resilience Program to secure key supply chains for the Canadian Armed Forces.

We will expand the production, processing, and stockpiling of defence critical minerals. And we will coordinate with allies through the G7 Critical Minerals Production Alliance and NATO stockpiling efforts, because strategic autonomy is strengthened by smart partnerships.

A sovereign country can defend itself and has local industries that support its defence and quality of life.

A free country can act autonomously, by doing what is best for its people, putting its interests, its jobs, and its aspirations above all else.

This is the Canada we are building.

To conclude, Canada’s new government came to office with a clear mandate: to build a stronger, more resilient, more independent country. Today’s Defence Industrial Strategy is central to that mission.

With this strategy, we will strengthen Canadian security – ensuring our women and men in uniform have everything they need to defend our country.

We will build Canadian prosperity by creating high-paying jobs, boosting research and development, growing world-leading Canadian firms, and ensuring that the benefits of defence investments are felt in communities across the country.

In this century, the work of defending Canada is the work of building Canada.

Security and prosperity aren’t competing priorities.

They are mutually reinforcing foundations of the true North, strong and free.

They are the foundations of Canada strong.

Thank you.