By Christopher Coates, June 22, 2026
In June 2025, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced that Canada would meet NATO’s two per cent spending commitment and outlined a broader plan to rebuild, reinvest in, and rearm the Canadian Armed Forces. While he boasted that this would be achieved “half a decade ahead of schedule,” Carney omitted that nonetheless this remained two years later than the government’s commitment to NATO allies made in Wales in 2014.
In explaining the government’s new strategy, the Prime Minister stated:
“We will change the way we arm the men and women who serve, so we can fight on new battlegrounds in unfamiliar territory, so we can defend every inch of our sovereign territory, from sea floor to the Arctic to cyberspace, so we can protect Canadians, our interests, and our allies.”
Carney went on to describe four pillars supporting that effort. The third pillar was to strengthen Canada’s defence industry and diversify Canada’s defence partnerships.
The question, then, is not whether Canada should diversify. The Prime Minister has already answered that question.
The question is whether diversification contributes to the objective that he identified: defending Canada, protecting Canadians, and contributing to the security of our allies. If diversification is about something else, there may be better ways to achieve the government’s objectives.
Before discussing diversification in a defence context, it is worth considering what the term actually means.
To diversify is to increase variety, to introduce additional elements, or to expand into different areas. In common usage, it can also refer to reducing dependence on a single source by creating additional options.
Importantly, diversification does not inherently mean replacement. It does not necessarily mean abandoning existing relationships, suppliers, or capabilities. Rather, it means adding alternatives, increasing flexibility, and strengthening resilience.
In defence terms, diversification is fundamentally about creating options.
Strategically, diversification is not an end. It is a way.
The end remains the same: defending Canada, protecting Canadians, and ensuring that Canada can contribute credibly to continental and allied defence. Essentially, diversification is only important to the degree that it is a way to this end.
In military terms, defence is fundamentally about mitigating risks, deterring threats and, if necessary, defeating them. I use the military terms “deter” and “defeat.” The Prime Minister used the terms “defend” and “protect.” If you will indulge this rhetorical sleight of hand, let’s consider them equivalent for the purposes of this discussion.
Viewed through that lens, the key question becomes: How does diversification contribute to deterrence and, if necessary, defeat?
Diversification is not inherently a defence capability. It is not a capability at all. It is a method. Nothing about diversification, in and of itself, directly contributes to deterring adversaries or defeating threats.
Indirectly, however, diversification can contribute to defence outcomes. It can improve competition and affordability. It can create alternative sources of supply. It can reduce dependence on a single supplier, market, technology, or production line. It can provide redundancy, resilience, and optionality. It can create additional pathways, suppliers, and partnerships without necessarily replacing those that already exist.
But none of those benefits are automatic.
Indeed, diversification can also work against defence effectiveness. A diversified force can become a fragmented force. It can require more training systems, more sustainment systems, more supply chains, more technical expertise, and more management effort. It can become less coherent, less interoperable, and less efficient. It can reduce depth rather than increase it. These are not merely procurement challenges. They are operational challenges.
Moreover, diversification that merely replaces one dependency with another may achieve very little. Diversification that adds alternative sources of capability, however, can increase resilience, depth, and strategic flexibility.
So, what should Canada’s approach be?
My view is that every decision related to diversification should be evaluated against the defence objective it is intended to serve: Will it improve deterrence? Will it improve the ability to defeat a threat if deterrence fails? Will it strengthen Canada’s contribution to continental defence?
If the answer is yes, then diversification is likely worth pursuing.
Redundant communications systems, alternative sources of munitions, resilient supply chains, secondary providers of critical capabilities, diversified access to intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, and alternative space-based services are all examples of diversification that can contribute directly to defence effectiveness.
But we should be clear-eyed about the trade-offs.
Such diversification often requires extra investment, personnel, sustainment capacity, and management effort. At least initially, it may increase costs rather than reduce them.
The rewards, however, are greater resilience, redundancy, and depth, and ultimately, a more robust and effective defence capability.
It’s important to note – diversification is not only about equipment. It is also about relationships.
The Canadian Armed Forces should pursue diversification in its operational engagements and partnerships. It should engage beyond its traditional relationships. It should seek opportunities to work with other militaries, other organizations, and other partners – including industry – domestically, continentally, and internationally.
That engagement promotes diversity of thought, perspective, threat recognition, and approach.
These forms of operational diversification can contribute directly to the defence of North America and the protection of Canada and our allies. There is also a natural synergy between these two dimensions of diversification.
A diversified and resilient defence industrial base can support broader operational engagement. Broader operational engagement can, in turn, inform and strengthen decisions about defence acquisition, sustainment, and modernization.
The two reinforce each other.
So as Canada pursues defence diversification, we should remember why we are doing it. The objective is not diversification for its own sake, nor diversification as a substitute for capability. The goal is a more effective defence of Canada.
In effect, diversification should add options, not reduce them. Where diversification contributes to deterrence, resilience, depth, and operational effectiveness, we may pursue it aggressively. Where it does not, we should be prepared to say so.
Diversification needs to strengthen Canada’s ability to defend every inch of its sovereign territory, from the sea floor to the Arctic to cyberspace, and to protect Canadians, our interests, and our allies.
Christopher Coates is the director of the Foreign Policy, National Defence, and National Security program at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, and a retired RCAF Lieutenant-General.
