Minister says Suffield, region a major player for DND

Courier/Commentator Photo Courtesy of Mackenzie Gendron. MAJOR PLAYER: Federal Minister of Defence David McGuinty tours CFB Suffield during a visit on August 6.

By Zoe Mason
Southern Alberta Newspapers

Federal Minister of Defence David McGuinty says he is working to restore the BATUS tank training program, which ground to a halt in 2023 after decades of collaboration at CFB Suffield.

McGuinty was in Alberta on Aug. 6 for an itinerary that included a major defence announcement in Calgary and a tour of the sprawling base near Medicine Hat.

In an interview with Southern Alberta Newspapers at Suffield, McGuinty said he wants to renew the decades-long partnership as Canada looks to increase defence activity at home and abroad.

“It’s a big priority for me. I want the BATUS agreement back in place,” he said.

“We can’t afford not to work in close partnership with the U.K., not in my view. The world is a rough and tumble place. We need to be co-operating with the U.K., and the U.K. needs to be co-operating with Canada.”

He says his team has visited London twice, including a recent meeting between McGuinty and the new British defence minister. He says he raised the prospect of renewing the BATUS tank training at that meeting.

CFB Suffield is the 17th base visited by the minister, who was treated to a tour of the base and adjoining Defence Research and Development Canada research centre.

Last year, the Department of National Defence advanced a $750-million laboratory facility for DRDC Suffield, the largest single federal investment in the history of the region. McGuinty says that facility is set to break ground next fall.

Once complete, he said it will be Canada’s most sophisticated lab of its kind and the leading DND and CAF research centre for areas like chemical warfare.

It’s just one element of a cluster of expertise and industry he says will experience tremendous growth as the federal government implements its inaugural Defence Industrial Strategy.

In Calgary, McGuinty announced the launch of a new $20.3-million Defence Innovation Secure Hub, or DISH, focused on quantum technology.

The Calgary-based Quantum DISH will join a network of DISH centres scattered across Canada, including a Maritime DISH in Halifax and a DISH focused on uncrewed systems in Quebec. The facilities aim to serve as centres for innovation that will attract engineers, academics and industry and provide them with the resources needed to produce new, made-in-Canada defence solutions.

Of 25 bids from coast to coast, Calgary was chosen as the site for the Quantum DISH. McGuinty says he was impressed by the precision of the University of Calgary-led proposal, and drawn by the amenities of the southern Alberta defence innovation cluster.

“I consider it to be one area here. I consider this to be a southern Alberta configuration. This area is very strong in drones, very strong in engineering, very strong in hypersonics,” he said.

“The expertise here in drones is pretty much the greatest expertise cluster in the country. You produce more drones here than anywhere else in the country today.”

It’s an expertise base McGuinty says he views as symbiotic with a new regional emphasis on quantum tech.

Since Prime Minister Mark Carney was elected last spring, the federal government has undertaken substantial new investments in defence. One element of that was the introduction of a new $6 billion in available funding for defence projects through the Business Development Bank of Canada.

Medicine Hat-based company Landing Zones received the first investment through the BDC’s $300-million venture capital fund for defence-focused startups.

The primary goal of the strategy, McGuinty says, is to reorient the Canadian defence sector to produce the solutions to its own problems. Then, those solutions – Canadian technologies, products and expertise – can be exported abroad.

“There are many companies here in Medicine Hat that already do that,” he said. “We want to take them from, let’s say a 40-employee operation to a 400-person operation.”

The Defence Industrial Strategy links national security and economic growth. It outlines several material targets, including increasing the share of defence contracts awarded to domestic firms to 70 per cent and creating 125,000 new jobs.

“If you build the kind of concentration of ability we want to see, which DRDC will be driving here with a cluster of really, really smart companies in Medicine Hat, money follows. Research follows, investment follows, jobs follow, exports follow, wealth follows.”

The minster says his government expects the defence industrial sector to become one of the top five economic sectors in the country. By locating a major hub in southern Alberta, he says the region will reap the benefits.

Over the next five to 10 years, he says between $6 and $8 billion in federal defence spending is set to flow to Alberta.

McGuinty is confident the international demand is there for Canadian defence producers.

“The bottom line is, this is going to create momentum, investment, construction,” he said. “In an uncertain world, it’s not getting any more certain. I’ll tell you one thing: I know for sure the speed of change is never going to be this slow again.”