OTTAWA, November 4 – Christyn Cianfarani, President and CEO of the Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries (CADSI), has issued the following statement in response to today's federal budget.

The photo of an icebreaker on the cover of this budget tells you everything you need to know. This is a historic moment for defence – an area of federal responsibility that has for too long been overlooked, underfunded, and underleveraged. 

We’re pleased to see these very significant investments and the many references to building and growing the Canadian defence industrial base, plus various programs and initiatives aimed at doing that. 

The money is there. There’s a clear path to achieving Canada’s NATO commitment of 2 per cent of GDP this fiscal year, and a ramp up beyond that. Spending that money – and spending as much of it as possible in Canada to increase our sovereignty – is going to be the hard part. As the budget directs, it’s “time for the public service to revisit how [they] work” guided by “a whole-of-government approach to building sovereign defence capacity.”

The budget provides the initial indicators for industry to position itself for new investments. But to raise capital, hire workers, or expand production lines, companies still need details of what the government will buy, how much, by when, and how it will preference Canadian suppliers. This is the work of the new Defence Investment Agency and needs to be reflected in the upcoming Defence Industrial Strategy.