CANUC launches at MSPO in Poland as Canada prepares major uncrewed systems investments — and calls for a Canadian content test that holds up under the government’s ‘Build, Partner, Buy’ policy.
KIELCE, POLAND — September 8, 2026 — Fourteen Canadian-controlled companies today announced the formation of the Canadian Alliance for National Uncrewed Capability (CANUC) and called on the Government of Canada to adopt a practical, enforceable definition of Canadian content in uncrewed systems procurement — one that distinguishes genuine domestic capability from resale, assembly, and licensed foreign technology. A robust, verifiable definition would bring clarity to the defence supply chain and accelerate durable international partnerships.
The announcement was made at MSPO in Kielce, Central and Eastern Europe’s largest defence exhibition, where a substantial Canadian government and industry delegation is in attendance this week.
Together, the founding signatories employ more than 400 people and represent over $70 million in combined annual revenue. Their record is operational rather than aspirational: collectively they have flown tens of thousands of hours, delivered thousands of units into service worldwide, and hold the advanced certifications, approvals, and beyond visual line of sight authorities that make routine commercial and defence-related drone operations possible in Canada. Their capability spans airframes, autopilots, propulsion, radar and sensing, geomatics, software and autonomy, safety systems, test and evaluation, and sustainment.
The problem: capability that looks Canadian but isn’t
Canada is preparing significant investment in uncrewed and autonomous systems, and the Defence Industrial Strategy has identified the domain as a sovereign capability priority. As that money moves, well-funded foreign suppliers are entering the Canadian market — in some cases through newly incorporated Canadian subsidiaries or distribution arrangements — and are being presented, and counted, as Canadian capability. Who funds and ultimately controls a company matters, because that ownership determines how freely Canada can use the intellectual property its taxpayers are paying for.
A Canadian mailing address is not Canadian capability. Where the intellectual property, the firmware, the engineering authority, and the ability to modify a system all sit outside Canada, Canada has purchased a product, not a capability. It cannot adapt the system to a new threat without permission, cannot sustain it independently, and cannot export it on its own terms.
“Canada has a genuine choice to make about what it means by Canadian. If the test is where a company is registered, we will spend a great deal of money and end up with no more sovereign capability than we have today. If the test is who owns and controls the technology, we build something that lasts.”
Sean Greenwood, President and CEO, Canadian UAVs Inc.
Open to allies, clear on ownership
CANUC’s members are actively engaged internationally and view partnership with allied industry — including Polish and Ukrainian companies, whose operational experience in uncrewed systems is unmatched — as valuable and necessary. Several members already work with allied partners, and the alliance expects that to expand.
The distinction the alliance draws is not between Canadian and foreign firms. It is between arrangements where Canada retains control of the core intellectual property for sovereign exploitation and those where it does not. Joint development, licensing in both directions, co-production, and shared standards are all compatible with sovereignty. Buying a ‘closed’ finished foreign system through a Canadian intermediary is not.
What the alliance is asking for
CANUC’s founding signatories have endorsed six positions on federal policy:
Canadian capability should be procured in Canada. Where domestic industry can meet a requirement, federal procurement should reflect that.
Intellectual property should stay in Canada. Sovereign capability means owning and advancing the technology, not reselling someone else’s.
Procurement must be faster and reachable by small firms. Outcome-based requirements and shorter cycles are a national capability issue, not an administrative one.
Airspace sovereignty should mean both enablement and denial. Enablement generates the flight hours Canadian industry needs to compete; clear counter-drone authority protects that same airspace from hostile actors.
Uncrewed systems should be treated as a sovereign capability. The Defence Industrial Strategy identifies this domain as strategic, and program structure should reflect that.
Industrial benefit should reach the whole country. Regional participation, Indigenous partnership, and domestic skills development should be built in from the outset.
“The question isn’t where the invoice comes from. It’s who can change the platform and software. If the answer is a company in another country, Canada doesn’t own that capability; it’s renting it.”
Spence Fraser, President, Landing Zones Canada
“When AVSS started in 2017, there were a handful of Canadian entrepreneurs attempting to shape the future of Canadian uncrewed systems. Today, these 14 companies largely represent the entrepreneurs who persevered through the early days of company formation when regulations were unclear, overcame the COVID19 supply chain disruption, and are ready to provide the Government of Canada's Department of National Defence with truly Made-in-Canada solutions, i.e., no licensing or reselling of foreign uncrewed tech. Ultimately, CANUC is a group of companies that were here before the Defence boom and will be here after.”
Josh Ogden, CEO of AVSS, Founding Member of CANUC.
Founding signatories
AeriumARA RoboticsAVSSBalkoCanadian UAVs Inc.DARITDatsa DynamicsDes Nedhé Group DefenceLanding Zones CanadaMicroPilotPegasus AeronauticsRibbitTerrasenseVentus Geospatial
Membership is open to Canadian-controlled companies working in the uncrewed and autonomous systems sector.
What CANUC is
CANUC exists because its members believe Canada should be a world leader in autonomous systems — not a customer for them. A country of this size cannot be defended by presence alone. Ten million square kilometres of land, the world’s longest coastline, an Arctic that is opening, and weather that grounds most of what flies elsewhere: these are the conditions Canadian industry has spent years designing for, and they are precisely the conditions that make deep domestic capability a matter of national defence rather than industrial preference. The alliance’s ambition is an autonomous systems sector with the depth to scale to that geography — engineering talent, intellectual property, manufacturing, and sustainment held in Canada, and good enough to lead abroad.
CANUC is an advocacy alliance, not a commercial vehicle. Its members retain full commercial independence, keep their existing contracts and customer relationships entirely outside the alliance, and continue to compete with one another. CANUC does not bid, contract, or team on behalf of its members, and no member holds a designated prime role.
Noah Note: A big coming out for a week to be dominated by Drones. I love to see Industry come together and back eachother. Of course, with UAS becoming a focal point procurement over the next year, and the Federal Government keeping pathways generally open, the need for a Canadian-led advocacy does become very important.
The Autonomous space, as it stands, is increasingly looking to foreign solutions, in spite of Canada’s well built-up Autonomous Industry. That isn't to exclude foreign partners, especially on systems like Deep Strike where Canadian suppliers remain limited, however, there does need to remain ample space for Canadian solutions to be given a chance to succeed.
The list here is quite powerful. ARA, Canadian UAVS, Pegasus, AVSS, Landing Zones, DNG. This is coming out with a significant chunk of the major UAS providers backing it, and I am sure there will be growth over the coming months. This is a heavy-handed group already, amd I do congratulate them on taking the steps to come together and advocate as a collective.
Industry helping Industry is important to how we build the DIB, especially as we download a lot of power in the supply chain and industrial development to suppliers to build themselves. When everyone can be on a similar page, we can get things done more easily.
After reading Ethan's piece interviewing Josh Ogdan of AVSS, this seems like a logical next step. It's the big boys with lots of capital that can afford to buy ready made solutions from foreign suppliers, and can afford to operate on much smaller margins, as they have other revenue streams, and they can expect to see large volumes over the long term if they can win contracts. Some may see this as an effort by bit players to beat the big boys on optics, and that's not even really false, but it avoids the point. If we want a robust, diverse group of defence suppliers, we can't always prioritize the easy option. It's a variation of the classic saying, "those who trade their liberty for safety will end up with neither." Only in this case, we are (or, arguably, have been) trading sovereign capabilities for speed and volume. And, again arguably, we ended up with none of those. Because at the end of the day, the original suppliers of foreign owned systems have limited incentive to tweak designs, or scale local production in anticipation of our needs. For them, the sale is already made, why bother continuing to work the sale? And if a Canadian company is bringing production to Canada without owning the IP, that ties an arm behind their back for future modifications and upgrades.
It's the same argument, writ smaller, that is playing out in almost every big defence procurement in Canada right now. Only with drones, Canada is actually in a position to offer real domestic competition to foreign developed options, and how we treat Canadian SMEs in this space will largely be the first sign of how we will support domestic capabilities elsewhere. Are the powers that be happy with the largely branch plant model that most of our defence primes currently reflect? Or are they serious about building up truely sovereign capabilities?
I dream of Canadian consortiums buying up GDLS and Lockheed Canada, so there is no longer the tension inherant in using our most developed defence primes, but I don't see that happening in anything like the near term, if ever. But maybe we can avoid the same tension from ever developing in new areas like drones. One can hope, anyways.
Don’t know the companies