Canada Releases New National Security Policy

Opinion

Canada has a new national security policy!

After much anticipation, Canada’s new national security policy has finally been released after some delay. Then-Prime Minister Trudeau directed officials in 2024 to deliver a renewed policy in 2025. That policy had been pushed back and delayed as we transitioned into the Carney era, until a relatively quick, almost surprise drop today.

Canada’s last national security policy was Securing an Open Society back in 2004 (when I was in kindergarten) under Paul Martin’s Liberal government. It was billed as the first policy of its kind in Canada, coming off several major events and crises all arriving in the same period. 9/11, the Madrid train bombings, SARS, the 2003 blackout…

It came with $690 million in new initiatives and built the foundation that much of the current system still bases itself on, including the Integrated Threat Assessment Centre, the Government Operations Centre and the Public Health Agency of Canada.

It also promised a National Security Committee of Parliamentarians, which wouldn’t exist until 2017. Its first chair was David McGuinty, now the Minister of National Defence. That was followed by the International Policy Statement in April 2005, and then a progress report a month after. That was the last time we had such a policy published, over twenty years ago.

Unlike Securing an Open Society, the new policy is more a framework rather than a plan, running at 11 pages of actual information. It presents:

• Five areas of national interest

• Eight Strategic Capabilities

• Five foundations, which will each get their own detailed policy

We’re going to try and break this down as we usually do for these kinds of strategies, but with a bit of a difference in how we usually do it. While usually we go line by line, breaking down the strategy piece by piece, there isn’t a whole lot to go off of here. It is after all only really 11 pages, many of which are recaps and such.

So, like the EU Arctic Strategy, we will instead be focusing on the main points that matter to us. I highly recommend in turn that you read the whole policy yourself. Again, it isn’t that long in the slightest

The Policy

First, a quick rundown of how the policy is laid out before we dive into things.

The five areas of National Interests serve as the starting point of the document, outlining the core concepts of the policy. Sovereignty comes first and above all, followed by a prosperous, inclusive and innovative economy, a cooperative, clear-eyed relationship with the United States, stability and security internationally, and a values-based society.

The international core gets broken down further into four regional priorities, those being a wider web of partnerships (with new partners in the Middle East and Africa named), the Arctic and the Americas, Europe, and then the Indo-Pacific. No order of priority is given.

The eight Strategic Capabilities are the sectors the government outlines the need to be strong in, where Canada needs the sovereign capacity to support ourselves. Those eight areas are:

• Emerging Technologies

• Critical Minerals

• Defence

• Energy

• Transportation

• Pharmaceuticals and Biotech

• Food Security

• Payments, Settlement and Investment

Emerging technologies is a bit of a catch-all here, covering everything from cloud computing and AI to space-based communications, semiconductors and telecommunications. What exactly Payments, Settlement, and Investment is I also don’t fully know at an initial glance. It also has potential to be another fairly broad category that groups in a lot of the financial side of things.

The rest of the items on the list are of little surprise to anyone who has followed the Federal Government the last year. Critical Minerals, Defence, energy, biotech… all areas that the current Liberal government has put heavy stock into as pillars of the new economy.

The policy is also very complimentary of the new Build-Partner-Buy framework. While buy gets conveniently left out of the policy, the need for supporting domestic solutions and manufacturing, mixed with a healthy amount of strategic partnerships with allied partners, is held up here as the model framework moving forward.

Lastly, the five foundations are the core areas that we will be following up on, and to which the policy acts as a bit of a teaser for what is to come. Economic security, foreign policy, defence, public safety and intelligence are the core areas that the national security policy is built on. Each gets a short list of key items in the policy, and all five will eventually get their own detailed policy down the line.

The first will come next month with a new foreign policy to be released, bringing Canada’s current mix of strategies (Arctic Foreign Policy, Indo-Pacific Strategy, Africa Strategy) hopefully under one concrete banner. Most of these strategies are admittedly fairly young. Indo-Pacific is almost four years old and Africa Strategy, as example, is from last year. They’ve had little time to really build off their commitments and show results.

A renewal is never a bad thing, especially factoring in the shift of environment we’ve seen the last year. Things can change, including priorities, which I expect will be a big part of the upcoming policy. However, rapidly shifting from new foreign policy can also be confusing to partners, and signal uncommitment to maintaining our own mandates long-term, so there needs to be a bit of caution in how far you push.

The Defence policy should come soon after. That isn’t me confirming anything, but the desire of the Federal Government is to release it this year, early next year at the latest. Although, I should warn that what that policy looks like is currently a bit up in the air.

Different people expect different things and it might not be the last defence paper of interest that drops on us, especially with talks about doing a UK-style split where we would have the overarching policy followed by a detailed investment plan. Time will tell there.

Now, like the EU Arctic Strategy, we’re going to start with what’s committed versus what’s not. Across the five foundations there are 37 action items, and every single one of them sits under: “the Government will produce a plan to.” So for the most part, what we’re reading is a promise of future plans, not a plan in itself. Again, this is a framework. There won’t be too much new or committed in it.

Of course, a lot of what is listed is already in motion. The Buy Canadian Policy, Build-Partner-Buy Framework, foreign influence registry, Defence Investment Agency and the Defence Industrial Strategy are already established by the time this policy has come out.

For the detailed commitments, proposals to modernize national security legislation are due within the first year. While not stated, that likely means at the least we see the long overdue full overhaul of both the CSIS Act, something I know many have been calling for over the years and held off for a long time, and changes to the National Security Act. I should note that the parliamentary review of the National Security Act is now about three years overdue.

What these changes will look like is yet to be seen and the policy doesn’t try to put anything out there. We will get back to that though.

The Prime Minister will also convene a First Ministers’ Meeting on National Security, likely sometime next year, and from then on national security becomes a regular item at those meetings. As for the policy itself, it will be updated every four years, starting with a review of the whole national security enterprise that feeds into the first update. That four-year cycle is one piece of Trudeau’s original direction that made it through.

There are also three broader commitments that run through the whole policy. The government says it will be transparent with Canadians on how serious the threats are, will partner through what it calls variable geometry coalitions, and will “prepare for all contingencies up to and including war and other worst-case scenarios.”

That last line is softer language than we have seen allies and even the CAF utilize on the need to prepare for conflict and the threat of war in the imminent future, and the policy does not delve further into the topic of conflict.

The policy deliberately moves away from naming specific threats and individuals unlike the 2004 policy, electing for more broad terminology about great power rivalries, authoritarian aggression and foreign interference. No single country is named as a threat. In fact, the only countries named anywhere in the document are the United States and Ukraine.

That might sit a bit awkwardly for some beside the policy’s own commitment to being transparent with Canadians, but I think taking a bit of a broad brush here is actually better for the current environment, and provides a bit more openness for the policies to follow by creating general areas of concern over locking down specific countries.

Of course, of the two countries mentioned, the United States is the one the policy talks around the most.

Back in 2004, one of the three core national interests was making sure Canada was not a base for threats to our allies, something the policy tied directly to 9/11 and continental security. That’s no longer the case here. Instead, the US gets its own lines about building a cooperative, clear-eyed relationship based on mutual respect, national sovereignty and shared responsibility for the security of North America, along with a line in the foreign policy section about building a new partnership with the US.

The Prime Minister’s message also notes that what were once strengths, our deep integration with other countries, have now become vulnerabilities. The PMO actually goes a step further in its own release, listing the weaponization of trade deals as one of the threats Canada now faces.

It’s not hard to read a bit of the tension inside the document. While the relationship is vital and a key cornerstone of our collective security, a relationship that we are both tethered to whether people like it or not, the policy also sets out the message that good relationships can’t come at the expense of ourselves, nor should they be infallible.

The policy knows that the relationship needs to change, and acknowledges, even if not directly, that the actions of the United States are a key driver behind the policy itself, but keeps itself very soft on how we plan to go about it, committing to a new partnership without saying what that actually looks like.

Again, not too dissimilar to the last year of conversations we’ve seen everyone having, but still interesting to take note on.

Moving on to defence, the policy gives the CAF one clear, central mission, being the defence of Canada and Canadian interests, and wants it to be a leader in what it calls defence in depth, taking the lessons of modern conflict (Ukraine being the example given) and building them into the force.

It is just vague enough to be both something and nothing on its own. The Defence of Canadian Interests can basically include anything that we’re already doing and then some. It’s broad enough that anything can really fit into this message, and still, what exactly makes up the Defence of Canada is left vague as well, all likely to be defined in the upcoming Defence Policy.

Same goes for defence in depth as well. It’s a term that has been sneaking around the place in other discussions like the Army Warfighting Concept, but so far remains more of a catchphrase over policy. What I will say though is that I expect the concept of Defence in Depth from a Canadian perspective to be both in the upcoming defence policy and a major backbone of it, one that feeds into the broader discussion we’ll have on capabilities.

The rest of the Defence section is mostly a recap of the discussions and policies we already set out through the DIS. The commitment to building a domestic industrial base that can equip and sustain the CAF, with procurement focused on maximizing strategic autonomy is a very nice way of defining things mind you, but fundamentally we are recommitting ourselves to utilizing the DIS as a core framework when building the next Defence Policy, which is completely unshocking.

The line about providing the CAF with a broader, deeper range of military options is probably the most personally interesting. The language used, flexible, scalable, has started to become more and more entrenched in policy. The Army Warfighting Concept, as example, has put a large emphasis on 80% solutions and the need of attritable, scalable, cost-effective solutions.

While it doesn’t say that things will be shifted or that it will become policy, taking note of language is a good starting point to understanding what the Federal Government might prioritize and look to in the upcoming Defence Policy.

I also make note of the inclusion of Defence in Space, something that is often times excluded from the conversation but becoming increasingly looked at as an area of concern. Adversarial targeting of critical space assets is becoming both more complex and more common globally, with even middle powers able to start exploring their own anti-space capabilities.

The proliferation of these capabilities, and their advancement, are a primary driver behind having a resilient space industry from design to launch. I would love to see it get some real commitment in the next Defence Policy.

Moving on though, Intelligence actually has the longest list in the whole policy at nine items, being built around increasing sovereign intelligence capabilities, collection and analysis.

At the briefing, officials said that we aren’t at the stage where we’re going to create a foreign human intelligence service, and are instead looking at expanding what existing agencies can do, with CSE, CSIS and the defence intelligence enterprise all named for strengthening, which again will include legislative changes. Again, I have no clue what exactly those changes will be or what exactly they’re thinking.

There’s also the partnership side of things. Canada will increase its contributions to the Five Eyes, while also strengthening and diversifying intelligence partnerships elsewhere. It reads to me like insurance against leaning too heavily on US intelligence, without actually stepping back from the alliance.

The government will modernize intelligence authorities to reflect current threats and technologies, which lines up with the delayed review of the 2017 national security law. CSIS has also been pushing this, mind you, with its own 2025 report saying changes to its legislation have been outstripped by evolving threats. Again, all comes back to the need for legislative modernization of Canada’s security enterprise, a modernization that has been pushed to the backburner for years even as new technologies and threats emerged.

We will also look to improve our approach to security clearances and information sharing, something that continues to be a major bottleneck and challenge for us. There’s also a line on expanding Foreign Information Manipulation Detection using open-source information.

The other three foundations have a bit less to dig into, so we’ll go through them quickly.

Economic security leads the document on purpose, with the policy saying it will now be a primary factor in decisions on industrial support, innovation and foreign investment. Most of the section points back to programs that already exist, from the Strategic Response Fund to Buy Canadian. Energy, despite being one of the eight capabilities, only gets a single word in the action items, while transportation and payments get nothing at all.

The section also promises stronger enforcement against hostile foreign economic activity, kinda on topic with the whole Stelco situation, but doesn’t name any enforcement tools, and doesn’t mention the Investment Canada Act despite calling out foreign investment decisions directly.

Foreign policy is up first among the follow-on policies. The main thing, again, to keep an eye on is the plan to fold the Indo-Pacific Strategy, the Africa Strategy and the Arctic Foreign Policy into one global approach. That’s where I have the most worry right now in its execution, but I digress.

It also commits to significantly deepening cooperation with Europe, another note as we have seen the last few months to maintain an Atlanticist mentality when it comes to foreign policy, which will no doubt upset some hoping for a deeper Indo-Pacific pivot. International assistance will be reoriented to advance Canada’s national interests and values, and transnational repression is flagged as a concern.

Public safety is mostly a list of stuff that already exists, like the foreign influence registry. Alongside the registry, the new pieces are a centralized process for reporting incidents and better support for victims. Officials listed terrorism as a threat at the briefing, but the word doesn’t appear once in the document, which goes with violent extremism and radicalization instead.

Emergency management promises stronger civilian response capabilities, which we will see if there is an attempt to tie into the CAF’s Mobilization plan and Defence of Canada, and the PMO’s release adds sanctions evasion to its list of crimes, which the policy itself doesn’t include.

Some Thoughts

For industry, a few notable things are here that might be of interest. The sharing of national security and intelligence information with the private sector and research institutions, something the Business Council of Canada as example has been asking for, will likely be very welcome to some of you.

The build and partner approach, plus the push for a domestic industrial base might be a bit overused by this point, but I feel its inclusion here is hopefully a sign that the Federal government plans to hammer down definitions and what classifies as Canadian Industry and Investment as we head into the new Defence Policy, especially as it remains one of the deeper issues that industry is finding itself grappling with.

DDI I think is a big wakeup call for trying to get the definitions right, and how we try to find balance between specific Canadian capacity, designed, built and tested in Canada versus licensing existing designs. That means that we need to have some clear separation between the expectations of building and partnering that I don’t know if we’re ready to tackle, and how we judge them, over grouping both against simple buying.

The critical infrastructure plan also explicitly includes government-supported major projects, which would bring the major projects pipeline, and the companies working on it, deeper under a security lens in policy. It also aligns to the changes set out in C-8.

None of it comes with new detail just yet, so the follow-on policies, and next week’s budget, are where we will know in detail what Industry has to look out for.

Beyond the individual sections, a few broader things don’t show up anywhere. Human rights, the Charter and human security aren’t mentioned, the closest thing being the values-based society interest, which names freedom of conscience and religion, of thought and expression, and of peaceful assembly and association. The national security and intelligence advisor isn’t mentioned either.

Public health, which had its own chapter back in 2004, is down to a single mention of pandemics, and climate change is named once and never comes up again. The Arctic is described as part of the CAF’s defining task, but doesn’t get a section of its own.

Even the PMO’s release only quotes ministers from defence, foreign affairs, public safety and industry, with nobody from finance, health or agriculture, despite food and pharmaceuticals both being Strategic Capabilities.

Whether it is best to leave these to future policies is not my place to say, but I feel there could have been a few more inclusions on these sections to help set the stage better for what comes next. It is clear there were focuses on the upcoming policies, which is fine, but if there is no real follow-up coming, hypothetically, then the existing policy leaves a lot to be desired from these capabilities.

Overall I think the policy does what it needs to do. It isn’t a plan. It isn’t really a strategy. Those all come in other documents that we have to wait on. Is breaking them down better? That is dependent on execution. The National Security policy sets the stage, the seed for which the policy trees shall grow, but that requires dedicated commitment.

A barebones policy here means that the future policies have to deliver in commitment, and have to have the depth in my mind to really judge if the national security policy is a success. That’s the thing. The success of this policy to me hinges on the policies it’s supposed to help lead up to.

I don’t think this is bad at all. Far from it. I think it’s a great baseline. I think the capabilities are right. I think there is enough openness and commitment to really push things forward in a good way. It just isn’t gonna do that on its own, and the policy itself doesn’t guarantee change nor success.

I think this is a wonderful start, but it is only a start. Will some people be disappointed? Absolutely. Is there a rightful reason to be concerned? 100%. I don’t think this is what everyone was expecting, but for me, it feels like it’s the right policy for the times, so long as what comes next can capitalize.