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Canada’s defence industry has gotten good at hiring veterans. A new industry survey suggests it has been far less deliberate about what happens after they arrive.
Why it matters: Ottawa is pushing to grow the defence industrial base, and companies are competing hard for experienced people. That makes the veterans already on the payroll an obvious talent pool. The findings suggest many employers aren’t getting full value from them because managers and HR teams struggle to translate military rank, occupation and leadership scope into civilian terms.
Driving the news: ALLIES (A Leadership Lab for Impact and Executive Sponsorship) has released its findings report. ADGA Group convened the initiative in partnership with Invest Ottawa, and the report comes ahead of a Veterans’ Week capstone event at Bayview Yards on Nov. 9.
The 2026 ALLIES Industry Survey drew 84 completed responses from Canadian Armed Forces veterans working, or recently working, in the defence industry.
Participating organizations include AWS, CAE, Calian, Leonardo, SEA Canada and Thales.
Erika Coghill, ALLIES creator and lead at ADGA, wrote the report.
By the numbers:
75 per cent said their organization values their military experience.
51 per cent said their organization does not know how to assess military leadership experience.
64 per cent would be likely or very likely to pursue greater responsibility if the opportunity arose.
The report describes itself as exploratory and not statistically representative. The sample skews toward experienced veterans and the National Capital Region, which limits what it can say about members who have only recently left the forces.
The details: The central finding is that hiring veterans and developing them are two distinct jobs. The report draws four lessons from the responses.
Valued isn’t understood. Respondents said employers often struggle to map military occupations, qualifications and leadership scope against civilian competencies and seniority. Skills like decision-making under pressure, operational planning and risk management may not show up in a rank or title.
Career paths are hard to see. Veterans described learning civilian advancement systems informally, by watching, networking and finding mentors. The report notes that being satisfied in a role is not the same as knowing where to go next.
Relationships are infrastructure. Managers stood out as the biggest enabler, followed by mentors, sponsors and access to senior leaders.
Veterans carry the load. Respondents’ advice leaned heavily on individual initiative. The report says this shows how much of the work of navigating a civilian career falls on the veteran alone.
What they’re saying: “Having leaders who looked beyond military titles and understood the scope, accountability, and complexity of my experience significantly accelerated my progression,” one respondent wrote. “The opposite was true when military experience was assessed only through civilian job titles or direct functional equivalencies.”
Another put it more bluntly: “It’s not enough to simply perform your new role well, you need to advocate for yourself and make sure you are a ‘known entity’ to senior personnel.”
Panelists at the ALLIES capstone at Bayview Yards in Ottawa on Monday echoed the report's findings.
"That significantly undersells the leadership responsibilities we put on people at a relatively young age, and the dedication it takes to lead a team of 10 people at 24 or 25," said Enno Kerckhoff, a portfolio manager at Thales Canada and a retired lieutenant-colonel. He was describing a colleague who said he'd "only" been a master corporal.
"I was always amazed, sitting with military members, that they didn't understand how the skills they'd learned could be of huge value beyond their rank and the role they held," said Robin Richardson, Calian's chief commercial officer.
"Our second career could end up being longer than our first," said Dan McKinney, defence industry lead at Amazon Web Services Canada. "I think it's important to help people navigate what that second career may look like, and the study shows there's some dissatisfaction and misunderstanding there."
"The stories we've already heard this morning shouldn't have to be carried by each individual, learning it over and over again for themselves," said Lisa Taylor, CEO of Challenge Factory.
"What you measure is what you get. If you don't set a baseline, you won't know whether you've been successful," said Nick Booth, CEO of True Patriot Love. He was urging employers to start counting the veterans they employ.
The bigger picture: The report gives employers a six-part framework: hire, orient, recognize, connect, develop and advance. It stresses that these are standard talent-management practices, not veteran-specific programs. The gain comes from applying them deliberately.
The work sits alongside Invest Ottawa’s Defence Innovation Hub, the network behind the Ottawa-Gatineau defence strategy unveiled in October 2025. That strategy lists workforce capacity among its six priorities and calls for supporting veterans through inclusive training programs.
“The opportunity for Canada’s defence industry is to become as deliberate about developing veteran talent as it has been about attracting it,” the report concludes.
Background: ALLIES started this spring with a pilot cohort of veterans and executive sponsors in Ottawa. It then went industry-wide with the survey Vanguard covered at launch in August.
What’s next: ADGA and Invest Ottawa are releasing the aggregate survey data so employers, researchers and veteran-serving organizations can dig further. Suggested questions include how mentorship and sponsorship affect career progression and whether experiences differ by career stage or type of organization.
