Defence Minister McGuinty announces the first project under BOREALIS
November 21, 2025 – Dartmouth, Nova Scotia – Department of National Defence/Canadian Armed Forces
Today, the Honourable David J. McGuinty, Minister of National Defence, alongside the Honourable Sean Fraser, Minister responsible for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA), announced the establishment of Canada’s first Maritime Defence Innovation Secure Hub (DISH) at COVE in the Halifax Regional Municipality.
The Government of Canada recognizes the need for independent and resilient defence capabilities to protect its sovereignty. As part of Canada’s NATO commitments, it is actively engaging the Canadian innovation ecosystem and enhancing collaboration with like-minded partners. As part of this effort, the Government of Canada will invest $29.4M, to establish the Maritime DISH, a new hub focused on resilience and collaboration.
This pilot initiative marks the beginning of a national network of secure, purpose-built spaces, where Canadian researchers and scientists and their trusted partners can co-develop, test, and validate emerging technologies requiring classified handling.
These hubs will focus on critical areas of defence research and development essential to a resilient Canadian innovation industry. These areas include quantum technologies, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, autonomous systems, Arctic research, space, and—in Atlantic Canada—the Maritime DISH will focus on ocean technology.
The Maritime DISH will unite various defence and security partners, including industry, academia, naval and joint operators, and federal departments and agencies, to collaboratively develop, test, and transition new maritime technologies. Key areas of focus will include:
undersea domain awareness;
uncrewed and autonomous systems;
advanced sensing and surveillance technologies; and
AI-enabled maritime analytics.
Canada is navigating a rapidly changing global environment where shifting power dynamics and advances in technology are affecting the foundations of Canadian security and prosperity. Now, more than ever, the Government of Canada is committed to strengthening Canada’s sovereignty, security, and prosperity, and to driving economic growth, including through the enhancement of dual-use technologies and Canada’s military capabilities through research and development.
Quotes
“Today’s investment connects the needs of the Canadian Armed Forces with the next generation of Canadian innovators. We need to set up our industry for success – and we cannot do that if our armed forces and businesses are unable share critical information. As Canada rebuilds, rearms and reinvests in our armed forces, we will build a strong industry to support our workers and communities across the country”
The Honourable David J. McGuinty, Minister of National Defence
“We need stronger homegrown tools to keep Canada safe, so our government is setting up a secure place in Dartmouth where experts can work on new ocean and defence technology. This new hub, called the Maritime DISH, will help protect our coastline and the Arctic. It also means more good jobs in our region and more chances for local companies to work directly with our Armed Forces.”
The Honourable Sean Fraser, P.C., K.C., Member of Parliament for Central Nova, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada and Minister responsible for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency
“Atlantic Canada is a culture of innovation, and COVE, with its strategic location along the shores of Dartmouth, is helping drive Canada’s ocean technology sector. The new Maritime DISH builds on this incredible work and will strengthen collaboration between innovators, researchers, and defence partners, reinforcing COVE’s role as a national asset in advancing maritime security and technology. As I always say, companies and stakeholders in Dartmouth—Cole Harbour are doing big things, and I’m thrilled that we will host this first-of-its-kind hub, creating new opportunities and supporting Canada’s security for years to come.”
The Honourable Darren Fisher, Member of Parliament for Dartmouth—Cole Harbour
Quick facts
Last month, the Department of National Defence’s science and technology organization, Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC), signed collaboration agreements with COVE and the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA) to launch this pilot.
COVE is Canada’s leading technology partner advancing high-impact solutions in the maritime domain – from seabed to space. Its mission is to move technology from prototype to deployment through real-world testing and validation, to support ventures’ growth into sustainable businesses, and to ensure the right talent is in place to succeed.
The Halifax Regional Municipality provides an excellent backdrop to support the Maritime DISH moving forward. With a thriving innovation ecosystem – sustaining more than 300 entrepreneurial science and technology start-ups – it is also home to several major universities and research centres, Canada’s Atlantic naval fleet, and the Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic North American regional office.
The Department of National Defence continues to work closely with Canadian industry partners to build a strong and resilient defence industrial base that supports Canada’s defence and economic needs for decades to come.
Noah Note: Well congrats to the people at COVE! This is a major win for them, and a testiment to all the good work their doing. I love the people at COVE. They're all so friendly and excited for the future. They've quickly grown into the backbone for the Atlantic defence hub, a role they do very well.
So it makes sense that, given their existing capabilities and infrastructure, that they would be one of the premier targets for BOREALIS funding. I am very happy to see one of the first focuses of BOREALIS is on capacity-building.
We haven't learnt a lot about how BOREALIS will fully work and what the goals are. Its been very quiet on the details, and in turn what their ideas of invetsment were. So stuff like this is a great confidence builder, at least to me, that Borealis is serious about taxkling things head on.
The prioirties also couldn't be better. Maybe I'm a bit biased, but if you listened to our interview with Vice-Admiral Topshee, you would have heard us discussing several major projects in the works, like the Containerized On-Board Relay Array, Underwater Environmental Assesment (which we just discussed), and the Rapidly-Deployable Fixed Array Sensor projects.
All of which are integral part of building Canada’s Arctic Domain Awarness capabilities. That and a renewed threat of assymetric targetting, both in terms of the vulnerable chokepoints along places like the Juan de Fuca and Cabot along with the ever present threat to Undersea Cables greatly raises the need for persistant, scalable Undersea capabilities to be avialble to Canada.
These are not easy technologies either. There are several major hurdles to get past, things like communications in the Arctic, the difficulty of persistantly monitoring Canada’s coast woth limited resources, the constant need to keep up with wmerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Quantum technologies.
All of which will be chalkenges for us, and all of which require having an established Research and Development network that has not just capacity to handle existing demand, but also the ability to rapidly scale up. That requires more than meeting space amd workshops. It means dedicated infrastructure for testing, deployment. It means having educational spaces and promoting students and researchers to tackle these issues.
A lot of that comes from having accessible space, giving SME the ability to participate without struggling with the restrictions of private entities and the high cost that specialized facilities often come with. So I consider all of this a major step in the right direction, and if this is the kind of stuff that BOREALIS aims to make a primary target to tackle, than I can already be happy with them in these early stages.
However that early stage needs to be emohasized. There is still a lot we don't know, and a lot that needs to be done. We need to see still how BOREALIS operates, and see how success develops from theor involvement. Its still to early to tell if those things will pan, but this initial investment seems like a great start out the gate.
Why not expand DRDC and give it the resources to manage these initiatives? Are we creating brand new organizations and bureaucracy? Or is this just a rebrand?