Canada's Submarine Bet Goes to Berlin, Not Seoul
Ottawa has picked Germany's TKMS to build 12 submarines, turning down South Korea's Hanwha Ocean on the eve of the NATO summit.
Theme
Security
Canada’s security relationships and obligations, from its NATO commitments and NORAD partnership with the United States to its evolving posture in the Indo-Pacific and the cyber domain.
Key topics
- NATO and the 2% defence spending debate
- NORAD modernization and continental defence
- Cyber security and intelligence (Five Eyes)
- Peacekeeping and peace operations
- Indo-Pacific security strategy
- Canada–U.S. defence relations
- Arctic security and NORAD’s northern dimension
Briefs
Canada’s NATO Spending Debate, Explained
Ottawa has finally hit NATO’s 2% defence target. The alliance has already moved the goalposts to 5%.
Explainers
Canada's Arctic Case Rests on the Inuit. They Are Done Being an Afterthought.
Ottawa is spending more than $40 billion to defend the North. The people whose continuous presence underwrites Canada's claim to it are warning that they have other options.
A Reserve Split by a Border Nobody There Drew
At Akwesasne, Mohawks cross between Canada and the United States to reach their own homes. A 1794 treaty says they can. Canada has never written it into law.
The Case That Put Foreign Interference at the Centre of Canadian Politics
The 2023 allegations against India collided with a wider anxiety about foreign meddling, and changed how Ottawa polices its own democracy.
A Canadian Rode an American Rocket Around the Moon. The Fare Was a Robotic Arm.
Jeremy Hansen became the first person from any country but the United States to reach the Moon's vicinity. How Canada bought its way to deep space says a lot about how this alliance actually works.
The Only Military on Earth Two Countries Run as One
For sixty-eight years Canada and the United States have guarded a single sky through NORAD. Now they are spending tens of billions to rebuild it, a quiet act of shared sovereignty the trade fight hasn't touched.
The Word Carney Used Was 'Rupture'
A new Comprehensive Strategic Partnership binds Canada and Japan across defence, energy and technology. Read the fine print and it is really a shared diagnosis: the old order isn't coming back.
Canada Won the Satellite. Then It Lost the Submarine.
In one season, a Montreal firm was picked to build the payload for Japan's next defence satellite, and Japan sat out the biggest procurement in Canadian history. The split verdict shows where the partnership's ceiling is.
Canada Used to Send Aid to the Caribbean. Now It Sends Force.
Ottawa is one of the largest funders of the armed international mission fighting Haiti's gangs, more than $126 million and a seat overseeing it. A relationship built on development assistance has acquired a hard edge.
Canada Is Building a Rocket Pad in a Town of a Few Hundred People
A $200-million lease near Canso, Nova Scotia, marks Canada's shift from satellite user to sovereign launch state. The company that has to deliver it has never launched anything.
Canada's Big Asia Bet Blew Up Before It Was Even Staffed
The Indo-Pacific Strategy was Canada's most ambitious Asia plan in a generation. Its central relationship (India) ruptured almost immediately. What the strategy has become since is more revealing than what it promised.
Canada Isn't Trying to Build GPT-6. It's Trying to Write the Rules for It.
Canada helped invent modern AI and then watched the money leave. Its bet now is that the democratic world will trust it to set the guardrails, the way it once helped invent peacekeeping.
What Is NORAD?
The binational command at the centre of Canada–U.S. continental defence: what it does, how it is run, and why its modernization matters now.
Profiles
The Canadian Company That Teaches the World's Militaries to Fly
CAE builds the simulators where pilots learn before they ever touch a real cockpit, a quiet Canadian champion that has become the world's training house for aviation, defence, and medicine.
Bombardier's Comeback Has a New Engine: Defence
The Montreal planemaker finished 2025 with its turnaround complete and a record backlog, and its fastest-growing business is now outfitting allied militaries with mission aircraft built on Canadian airframes.