An Open Letter to Canada

Our security requires capital and a reliable customer

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IMG // AJ Robles on Unsplash

06.12.2025

The technologies that could determine the outcome of the next armed conflict may not yet be invented, but when they are, they are almost guaranteed to be the result of private sector innovation and investment. Therefore, if the Crown is to uphold its primordial duty of defending the nation, it has no choice but to rapidly reshape its relationship with the entrepreneurs and investors that it will rely upon to create, fund, and scale the emerging and disruptive technologies necessary to meet the challenges of an ever-evolving battlespace.

This letter, the product of an ongoing dialogue among patriotic founders and investors, calls on the wider Canadian business community to join us in urging Canada to take swift action to secure our national security, sovereignty, and prosperity.

Our recommendations rest on principles we believe to be self-evident:

• The Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence will only be able to meet the challenges of 21st century competition and conflict if Canada can rapidly acquire traditional military systems while also adopting emerging and disruptive, commercially developed, capabilities;

• Meeting these demands requires a sovereign defence industrial base that builds upon Canada’s existing strengths in advanced tech and manufacturing;

• A strategic ecosystem of innovation that fosters and delivers disruptive capabilities requires deliberate government catalyzation that leverages the innate power of the private sector; and

• Growing and sustaining this ecosystem should be viewed not just as expense, but an investment in Canada’s future.

Lessons learned on the battlefield and in the boardroom lead us to conclude that Canada must identify and support elements of its existing high-tech industries that can deliver asymmetric capabilities now, forming the foundation of a revitalized defence industrial base.

As world leaders in, among other things, AI, quantum computing, cybersecurity, space technology and materials science, Canada must fully harness these industries to deliver disruptive defence and security capabilities to our end-users and our allies. Achieving this requires two essential ingredients: capital and a reliable customer.

We are heartened by Prime Minister Carney’s recent commitment to expanded and accelerated defence spending. Our goal is to ensure that the operationalization of this commitment includes the aspects we believe are necessary to meaningfully advance Canada’s ecosystem of investment and innovation. We therefore recommend that Canada:

1. Commit and catalyze mission-focused capital through public-private partnership. Seeding both capital deployment vehicles and companies with strategic government capital will support early-stage innovation while signaling to other sources of private captial that building defence companies in Canada is both urgent and encouraged.

2. Establish a dedicated public-private organization to rapidly adopt emerging and disruptive Canadian capabilities. If Canada is to see a meaningful return on its investments, this new organization must create a pathway from innovation to adoption, including mandated minimums for domestically developed solutions. It must implement allied best practices and remain independent from other innovation bodies, focused on a single mandate: delivering disruptive capabilities to defence end-users. This will require a more agile, iterative, and risk tolerant Crown customer.

We have both the opportunity and the obligation to transform how our nation fosters the innovation that will safeguard our future.

We urge leaders across the Canadian business community, regardless of sector, to join us in endorsing these recommendations. By standing together, we can send a clear signal: Canada must act now to empower our innovators, support our entrepreneurs, and secure our future.

Add your name to this letter below and advocate for these essential reforms.

Add your signature

IMPORTANT: The list of signatures is updated once daily. If you do not see your name after signing, please do not resubmit the form.

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Signatories

Last Updated // 07.25.2025 at 10:03

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Jeremy Constantineau

Glenn Cowan

Michael Smith

Jonathan Berkshire Miller

Ryan Kenick

Mitch Carkner

James Slifierz

Eric von Stackelberg

Chris Robson

Robert Dimitrieff

Eliot Pence

Paul Ziade

Marek Lorenc

Philippe Bérubé

Joel Watson

Claude Duguay

Katie Cyr

Marc-Antoine Guimond

Philippe Lagassé

Kevin Toderel

Jacob Stiner

Trevor Gallup

John Clark

Mubin Shaikh

Madison Binder

Kyung Soo Choi

Malcolm Eade

Bradley Hartwick

Ty Ellison

Troy Messinger

James Chorley

Kim Holland

Tomas Pastorek

James Schleihauf

Peter Wilcox

Paul Desjardins

Zoella Bolkiah

Niki Kearl

Douglas Berquist

Alan Cameron

Nicole Verkindt

Chris Gazzola

Mat Main

Ian Whytock

Evan McCann

Jozsef Hamari

Matt Girvan

John Cowan

Julie Quenneville

Rick Nathan

Pierre Dawe

Carter Will

Matthew Plesa

Alex Conconi

Thibaut Couture

Linsey Keats

Daniel Sax

Chris Morton

Shaun Francis

Dylan Hofer

Alex Pickering

Daniel Debow

Aarya Shahsavar

Philip Lockwood

Norine MacDonald KC

Ian Wood

Jean-Christophe Boivin-Couillard

David Cunningham

Jared Greenberg

Mark Treiber

Gordon Marshall

Mahmood Shirazy

Jon Gallo

Daniel Weinand

Kareema Batal

Anthony Aleksic

Brett Merriman

Michael Parker

Lori Simpson

Bradley Lohner

Brendyn Illchuk

Kevin O’Brien

Laurence Carkner

Glavin Leitch

John Ashworth

Paul Hook

Pam Calvert

Andrew Laliberte

Balkan Devlen

Prashant Pathak

Paul Kruszewski

Troy Kelly

Paul Pedersen

Douglas Hagedorn

Rahul Goel

Cheryl Young

Zheng Wang

Cédric LEMAIRE

Kevin Harper

Victor Bursucianu

Mike Ball

Jason Do

Hugues Boutin

Lauren Reade

William Wilcox

Richard Hillier

Andrew Kang

Alexander J Duerst

Paul Girard

Wes Jarvis

Jackson Hamilton

Steven Elliott

Erin Binks

Daniel Debow

Sean Treleaven

Jason Sweet

Brock Zinck

Mark Machin

Troy Kelly

Joanna Davies

Greg Briggs

Scott Savage

Volodimir Grebenyuk

Evan Pomeroy

Sanket Karve

Michael Kovrig

Xavier Cepella

Anthony Duong

Luther Poier

Kaizer Poonawalla

Nello DiCostanzo

Wesley Wark

Jason Latkowcer

Hugo Hodgett

Manuel Carranza

David Welch

Keith McGee

Jason Wiele

Beth Warnica

Stan Engelbrecht

Krishaan Thyagarajan

Jason Heath

Jon Schmid

Adam Fortier

Daryl Logan

Atupele Chakwera

Shane Feldberg

Derrick Dujlovic

Anthony Aleksic

William Stewart

Angello Chen

Steven Klein

Liene Vitola

Ralph Moxness