By James Careless

If a Liberal government gets re-elected, Canada will finally get a single agency to handle all of its defence procurements. This pledge was made by Mark Carney during an election stop on April 14th, 2025 at Bombardier in Dorval, Quebec.

“Today I’m announcing our plan to build the tools needed to ensure Canada’s sovereignty to support a new approach to made-in-Canada defence procurement while helping our industries and businesses reach new markets around the world,” said Carney. “The first thing is to take procurement into a new centralized agency so that there’s a focus on delivering the security that Canadians need with the equipment that we need; to provide that agency with greater powers and flexibility so that there are exceptions, for example, with respect to the level of competition that’s required in terms of defence contracting; speed with which contracts can be struck; [and] integration and a priority put on Canadian suppliers and Canadian supply chain that’s going to deliver it.”

Having a single procurement agency is something that Canada’s domestic defence industry has been seeking for many, many years. It would be a welcome change from the current multi-departmental procurement approach. There’s a consensus within this industry that the current system is very slow, overly drawn out, and inclined to economically penalize companies bidding for procurements due to the years it often takes for the government to grant contracts

In tandem with the move to a centralized procurement agency, Carney wants to see the Canadian defence industry get more closely involved with the European Union’s ReArm Europe defence procurement plan. Born as a response to the Trump government’s pullback from supporting European security, ReArm Europe could represent a multibillion dollar sales opportunity for Western/non-US defence equipment suppliers such as Canada. To this end, “we’ve been talking directly to our European partners, both at the national level — the French government, for example — and the European level to enable Canada to be part of that process so that we are part of that entire defense supply chain,” Carney said.

In general, Liberals want to see their proposed increases in defence spending having as much benefit for the domestic defence industry and the Canadian jobs it supports as possible. “There’s an enormous opportunity as well — as we dramatically increase our defense spending — to ensure that, as much as possible, we have the maximum economic benefit here in Canada through great companies such as Bombardier, but many others from CAE and others across the defense supply chain,” Carney said.