How can Canada deliver capability quickly enough to meet today's security challenges?

NORAD modernization, growing Arctic activity, increased NATO commitments, maritime security challenges, and the introduction of the F-35 are placing new demands on Canada’s Armed Forces. We must now look at accelerating our solutions for these pressing concerns.

The Defense Industrial Strategy provides a useful framework: Build, Partner, Buy.

This approach recognizes that preparedness has strategic value and that time matters. But Build, Partner, Buy should not be seen as mutually exclusive. 

Many of the capability challenges Canada faces are not unique. The Build, Partner, Buy approach creates varied opportunities. Allied nations have developed technologies, operating models, and sustainable approaches that should be adopted. With trusted partners, Canada can maintain control over critical requirements and operational decisions, delivering immediate mission impact quickly and securely. Those outcomes then become experienced and mature into ever enhanced sovereign capability. 

Whether training pilots, modernizing naval vessels, or inserting autonomy into critical systems, this principle applies across all domains. The aim should be to avoid unnecessary duplication while accelerating operational readiness. Industry partnership is an efficient and effective conduit to these applied insights.

For instance, Serco has three decades of experience addressing our nation’s challenges. That is three decades of working with local and Indigenous communities and businesses, investing in people, technology, and innovations to improve and sustain highly skilled service delivery.

Hundreds of Serco employees across the country are building sovereign capability, leveraging insights gained from global colleagues. Those insights include experience delivering fifth-generation aircrew training and lessons learned from the successful operation of the autonomous USX Defiant. In fact, Serco’s Canadian teams are ruggedizing many diverse skillsets for extreme and unique environments, like remote base operations in Moose Jaw and Goose Bay. 

Canada needs to build its sovereign capability, but we must also leverage proven solutions and expertise where they provide clear advantages by working with trusted industry partners. This approach:

The strategic environment is evolving faster than traditional procurement timelines.

Canada faces increasing demands in Arctic security, continental defence, maritime domain awareness, and coalition operations. At the same time, emerging technologies, autonomous systems, and advanced sensing capabilities are changing how modern militaries operate.

Every day spent recreating existing, proven capabilities is time that could be spent strengthening readiness.

Canada's defence sovereignty should be measured by its ability to field, sustain, and control critical capabilities. Achieving that objective will require both domestic investment and effective partnerships. Serco stands ready to partner with Canada to deliver capability at the speed of need.