On April 23, the Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development announced that the government will use its ITB Policy to motivate defence contractors to invest in Key Industrial Capabilities (KICs).

As part of the announcement, the Minister included five areas of Canadian industrial strength in emerging technologies, which have the potential to grow quickly, and 11 established industrial capabilities where Canada is globally competitive or where domestic capacity is essential to national security. These areas include:

Emerging technologies

• Advanced materials
• Artificial intelligence
• Cyber resilience
• Remotely piloted systems and autonomous technologies
• Space systems

Leading competencies and critical industrial services

• Aerospace systems and components
• Armour
• Defence systems integration
• Electro-optical and infrared systems
• Ground vehicle solutions
• In-service support
• Marine ship-borne mission and platform systems
• Munitions
• Shipbuilding, design and engineering services
• Sonar and acoustic systems
• Training and simulation

CADSI's President and CEO Christyn Cianfarani welcomed the release of KICs as an important policy tool to strengthen our government-industry partnership, noting the it will "incentivize strategic investments in existing and emerging defence and security capability where Canada has leading-edge and globally competitive technologies"

KICs has been a concept created in large part by industry through the Jenkins Report of 2013 and informed by industry since then. 

For more information on KICs and today's Government of Canada announcement, click here.