Discussion · Government Orders
Scott Anderson Conservative
“I oppose this bill. Our military badly needs new equipment, but creating a new Crown corporation will not fix the government's broken buying system. This bill also risks taking money away from Arctic defence and NORAD to buy equipment from Europe instead.”
“Mr. Speaker, the thoughts of this House are with the brave soldiers who were killed and badly injured at Wainwright. The fact that these young men knew and accepted the risks beforehand is what makes them the Canadian heroes we will remember. The soldiers wearing our Canadian uniforms are well renowned for peacekeeping and asymmetrical warfare even with outdated equipment. They serve aboard aging ships, fly in old airplanes and train with equipment that was new over half a century ago. I know this because I was in that equipment only 15 years ago, in simpler times when war was far away from our shores. That was at a time when grey-zone warfare was just a concept for novels. After more than a decade of the Liberals sidelining Arctic sovereignty and continental defence, the need for rebuilding our armed forces is obvious to everyone. Our geostrategic reality has shifted over the past decade while the Liberals have slept, and we can no longer ignore the attacks against the west by foreign powers. This is not the bogeyman to the south, who the Liberals blame for everything, but our real enemies, the ones actively engaged in grey-zone warfare against us: Russia and China. In Afghanistan, we could afford to use older equipment because our outdated tanks and borrowed logistics were still generations ahead of anything the Taliban could send. They were good enough. Today, we live in a different world. Cyber-attacks and other grey-zone warfare is on the rise. If we are going to protect our northern sovereignty, we must rearm with first-class modern hard power. The government’s own figures show the urgency to update and fill our forces. In 2024-25, serviceability across key fleets stood at 59% for maritime equipment, 51% for land equipment and 42% for aerospace equipment. These describe serious constraints on what our military could do even if our equipment was modern. Today, we ask our soldiers to be ready to fight against battle-hardened enemy soldiers in a three-dimensional, high-tech, 21st-century battle space, and we ask them to do it using weapons that were old even 20 years ago in Afghanistan. Ukraine has shown us that the next war will be fought with weaponry never imagined before 2022. Only the very best is good enough for our troops in today’s threat environment. Our soldiers, airmen and sailors have no voice. They depend on us here in this chamber to speak for them. They are entitled to know when their equipment will arrive, and they must know, in an era of symmetrical warfare, that they have the best equipment possible. Conservatives support getting equipment to our armed forces faster. We support a strong Canadian defence industry, clear responsibility for procurement, and the removal of unnecessary red tape. However, Bill C-40 asks Parliament to accept that giving a new Crown corporation greater flexibility, while placing substantial authority in the minister’s hands, will finally solve problems the government has repeatedly promised to fix. The Defence Investment Agency began in October 2025 as a special operating agency within Public Services and Procurement Canada. Then the Liberals proposed a stand-alone agency. Now they have proposed a Crown corporation with dedicated ministerial leadership. Each iteration has promised to bring greater speed and clarity. Each iteration is built atop the failed promise of the last one. Each iteration takes procurement farther away from the military and toward civilians, some of whom do not know the difference between an RPG and an RPAL. Perhaps that is why 18 months after taking office, the Liberal government has plastered this House and the media with announcements, but the only thing it has managed to produce is a signature on the yellowed papers that will eventually get new rifles to our troops. Eighteen months is the time it took to build the Empire State Building and the Alaska Highway from planning to completion. If the government had been in charge of the Alaska Highway, we would still be laying logs in muskeg 85 years later. Why is that? Why is the government shouting announcements from the rooftop while doing as little as humanly possible? After 18 months, the Liberal government cannot even decide to buy what must be the most over-vetted aircraft in the history of North American military flight. The F-35 is an airplane that our air force generals need, an aircraft we Canadians helped develop and a transitional aircraft on the cusp of an age of autonomous warplanes. It is the only aircraft with continental deterrence value today and into the next decade, and the Liberal government can do nothing but dither. Why? What has changed in the military requirement? Has NORAD suddenly become less important? Has the threat to the Canadian Arctic diminished, or is it because of the Prime Minister’s ambitions toward European integration? Let us step back down to earth for a minute. We are a North American nation whose security depends on NORAD, and NORAD depends on our military integration with the United States and the defence of our Arctic, yet this legislation would grant sweeping powers to a new Crown corporation just as the Prime Minister redirects defence procurement toward Europe through SAFE and Readiness 2030. The Liberals try to pass this redirection off as diversification, knowing full well that it is nothing of the sort. It is an expensive security arrangement that almost certainly benefits European bankers more than Canadians. The European Union cannot replace NORAD, and European equipment may cost a fortune to integrate into continental defence systems. Will scarce defence dollars be diverted from Arctic surveillance, air defence and NORAD modernization to satisfy the security demands of the Prime Minister’s pet project? Europe is an important ally, but geography is not a political preference. Canada’s defence procurement must serve our security requirements, not the Prime Minister’s European geopolitical ambitions. This is precisely the issue I raised with the Parliamentary Budget Officer when I questioned the competing financial demands of European and continental defence ambitions. She acknowledged the tension between the two and identified aircraft procurement as one of the major expenditures potentially affected. We therefore have a government advancing multi-billion-dollar European procurement initiatives without Parliament having any clear financial picture, or the additional costs of maintaining interoperability with our American partners. The Carney government is simultaneously pursuing European defence procurement arrangements—”
Mr. Speaker, the thoughts of this House are with the brave soldiers who were killed and badly injured at Wainwright. The fact that these young men knew and accepted the risks beforehand is what makes them the Canadian heroes we will remember. The soldiers wearing our Canadian uniforms are well renowned for peacekeeping and asymmetrical warfare even with outdated equipment. They serve aboard aging ships, fly in old airplanes and train with equipment that was new over half a century ago. I know this because I was in that equipment only 15 years ago, in simpler times when war was far away from our shores. That was at a time when grey-zone warfare was just a concept for novels. After more than a decade of the Liberals sidelining Arctic sovereignty and continental defence, the need for rebuilding our armed forces is obvious to everyone. Our geostrategic reality has shifted over the past decade while the Liberals have slept, and we can no longer ignore the attacks against the west by foreign powers. This is not the bogeyman to the south, who the Liberals blame for everything, but our real enemies, the ones actively engaged in grey-zone warfare against us: Russia and China. In Afghanistan, we could afford to use older equipment because our outdated tanks and borrowed logistics were still generations ahead of anything the Taliban could send. They were good enough. Today, we live in a different world. Cyber-attacks and other grey-zone warfare is on the rise. If we are going to protect our northern sovereignty, we must rearm with first-class modern hard power. The government’s own figures show the urgency to update and fill our forces. In 2024-25, serviceability across key fleets stood at 59% for maritime equipment, 51% for land equipment and 42% for aerospace equipment. These describe serious constraints on what our military could do even if our equipment was modern. Today, we ask our soldiers to be ready to fight against battle-hardened enemy soldiers in a three-dimensional, high-tech, 21st-century battle space, and we ask them to do it using weapons that were old even 20 years ago in Afghanistan. Ukraine has shown us that the next war will be fought with weaponry never imagined before 2022. Only the very best is good enough for our troops in today’s threat environment. Our soldiers, airmen and sailors have no voice. They depend on us here in this chamber to speak for them. They are entitled to know when their equipment will arrive, and they must know, in an era of symmetrical warfare, that they have the best equipment possible. Conservatives support getting equipment to our armed forces faster. We support a strong Canadian defence industry, clear responsibility for procurement, and the removal of unnecessary red tape. However, Bill C-40 asks Parliament to accept that giving a new Crown corporation greater flexibility, while placing substantial authority in the minister’s hands, will finally solve problems the government has repeatedly promised to fix. The Defence Investment Agency began in October 2025 as a special operating agency within Public Services and Procurement Canada. Then the Liberals proposed a stand-alone agency. Now they have proposed a Crown corporation with dedicated ministerial leadership. Each iteration has promised to bring greater speed and clarity. Each iteration is built atop the failed promise of the last one. Each iteration takes procurement farther away from the military and toward civilians, some of whom do not know the difference between an RPG and an RPAL. Perhaps that is why 18 months after taking office, the Liberal government has plastered this House and the media with announcements, but the only thing it has managed to produce is a signature on the yellowed papers that will eventually get new rifles to our troops. Eighteen months is the time it took to build the Empire State Building and the Alaska Highway from planning to completion. If the government had been in charge of the Alaska Highway, we would still be laying logs in muskeg 85 years later. Why is that? Why is the government shouting announcements from the rooftop while doing as little as humanly possible? After 18 months, the Liberal government cannot even decide to buy what must be the most over-vetted aircraft in the history of North American military flight. The F-35 is an airplane that our air force generals need, an aircraft we Canadians helped develop and a transitional aircraft on the cusp of an age of autonomous warplanes. It is the only aircraft with continental deterrence value today and into the next decade, and the Liberal government can do nothing but dither. Why? What has changed in the military requirement? Has NORAD suddenly become less important? Has the threat to the Canadian Arctic diminished, or is it because of the Prime Minister’s ambitions toward European integration? Let us step back down to earth for a minute. We are a North American nation whose security depends on NORAD, and NORAD depends on our military integration with the United States and the defence of our Arctic, yet this legislation would grant sweeping powers to a new Crown corporation just as the Prime Minister redirects defence procurement toward Europe through SAFE and Readiness 2030. The Liberals try to pass this redirection off as diversification, knowing full well that it is nothing of the sort. It is an expensive security arrangement that almost certainly benefits European bankers more than Canadians. The European Union cannot replace NORAD, and European equipment may cost a fortune to integrate into continental defence systems. Will scarce defence dollars be diverted from Arctic surveillance, air defence and NORAD modernization to satisfy the security demands of the Prime Minister’s pet project? Europe is an important ally, but geography is not a political preference. Canada’s defence procurement must serve our security requirements, not the Prime Minister’s European geopolitical ambitions. This is precisely the issue I raised with the Parliamentary Budget Officer when I questioned the competing financial demands of European and continental defence ambitions. She acknowledged the tension between the two and identified aircraft procurement as one of the major expenditures potentially affected. We therefore have a government advancing multi-billion-dollar European procurement initiatives without Parliament having any clear financial picture, or the additional costs of maintaining interoperability with our American partners. The Carney government is simultaneously pursuing European defence procurement arrangements—