Written By: Josiah Witherspoon

Canada just hit a historic milestone: in 2025–26, the country finally reached NATO’s 2% of GDP defence spending target, pouring roughly $63 billion into national defence. That’s real money, more than ever before. But here’s the  uncomfortable truth: if Canada spends it on more tanks, fighter jets, and overseas combat brigades, we’re defending the wrong century.  

Canada’s national security isn’t primarily about projecting power across oceans. It’s about protecting the economic engine and energy dominance that keeps the country sovereign, prosperous, and safe. Any new military investment should laser-focus on high-leverage technology, software platforms like Palantir and autonomous weapons systems like those from Anduril. That’s how you deter, defend, and win at the price point Canada can afford. 

Canada isn’t a small European nation worried about land borders with hostile neighbours. It is a country that is a resource superpower with the world’s fourth-largest oil reserves, a top-five natural gas producer, and vast critical minerals. The energy sector alone contributed about 8.1% of Canada’s nominal GDP directly in 2024 ($232 billion), with total energy-related GDP hitting 9.8% when indirect effects are included. Oil and gas exports alone were worth $188 billion in 2024—26% of all Canadian goods exports, overwhelmingly to the United States. 

That is the foundation of our sovereignty. Those dollars fund hospitals, infrastructure, pensions, and yes, the military itself. Disrupt that flow—either through ineffective policy-making or by failing to defend against external shocks—and Canada’s economy, social stability, and ability to project any power at all collapses. More broadly, the 2025–2026 National Cyber Threat Assessment amplifies this point. State actors (Russia, China) and criminals are targeting our critical infrastructure precisely because it is our economic jugular. 

The Arctic demonstrates this in another way. Melting ice is opening shipping routes, resource deposits, and strategic chokepoints. Russia has militarized its side; China is probing with “scientific” and commercial footholds.

These aren’t scenarios for troops and jets—they’re contests for economic control: seabed claims, undersea cables, critical minerals, and dual-use infrastructure. A foreign power doesn’t need to invade Toronto or Ottawa to weaken Canada; it just needs to make our energy exports unreliable or our northern resources inaccessible. Energy independence, paired with the ability to defend and project power, strengthens deterrence 

Traditional “hard power” projection—sending Canadian troops, jets, and armour to distant conflicts—does little to secure these vital interests. We are a trading nation integrated with the United States through NORAD and deep economic ties. Our comparative advantage has never been massed conventional forces. It is geography, resources, and alliances—specifically with Washington. Pretending otherwise wastes limited dollars on capabilities we will never match at scale. 

Canada has a proud military history, but expeditionary wars have rarely been decisive for our core security. Afghanistan and other missions showed the human and financial cost of sustained overseas commitments. Meanwhile, the real threats—cyber espionage, economic coercion, Arctic gray-zone activity—grew unchecked. Even at 2% GDP, Canada’s budget cannot buy parity with great powers in traditional platforms. A single modern fighter jet costs tens of millions; a frigate, billions. Attrition in peer conflict would be unsustainable. 

Our geography and alliances already provide strategic depth. The United States treats Canada as a continental extension of its own defence. Our job is to be an indispensable partner—not a junior expeditionary force. That means securing the homeland, the resources, and the data flows that make North America resilient. Tanks rolling through Kandahar do not protect Alberta oil sands or British Columbia ports from ransomware or foreign ownership plays. Energy security and economic resilience do. 

Here is where my argument turns optimistic. The future of warfare is not massed legacy hardware—it is software-defined, autonomous, and cheap at scale. This is exactly where Canada should prioritize every new defence dollar. 

Look at Palantir and Anduril: two American companies that have redefined modern defence through AI and autonomy, not bigger budgets. Palantir’s platforms integrate vast data streams for real-time intelligence, logistics, and targeting. They turn information overload into decisive advantage. Anduril builds autonomous systems—drones, sensors, AI command-and-control (Lattice)—designed for mass production at low cost. Their model: software-first, modular hardware, rapid iteration. Swarms of inexpensive autonomous weapons can overwhelm expensive crewed platforms. Factories churn out “mass over exquisite” systems that change the attrition math. 

Recent conflicts have proven the point that cheap drones and AI coordination dominate the battlefield. Ukraine has shown what even limited autonomous tech can do against a larger foe. Anduril and Palantir executives openly discuss how this shifts warfare from industrial-age factories to software-age speed and scale, and we shouldn’t see them in contempt; Canada should understand their points, and imagine how it can optimize its own national outcome.  

Canada already has the talent. We are home to world-class AI researchers, aerospace expertise, and resource-sector data know-how. And, the country is investing in drone and counter-drone tech through programs like IDEaS and the National Research Council. Why not double down? Why not actually scale our ideas?  We must supercharge the effectiveness of every sailor, soldier, and aviator we have—without needing hundreds of thousands more. 

This is fiscally responsible defence. It aligns with our geography (vast distances, harsh environment) and our economy (tech + resources). It deters without provocation. And it positions Canada as a serious 21st-century ally instead of a nostalgic one. 

We have the money now, $63 billion and rising. The question is whether we spend it on yesterday’s weapons for tomorrow’s unpredictable missions, or on the software, autonomy, and economic resilience that actually secure Canada’s future. 

Protect the energy arteries that underpin the economy (pipelines, grids, and export infrastructure) through hardened physical and cyber defences. Secure the digital backbone by investing in resilient data architectures and sovereign control over critical systems, including in the Arctic. Deploy autonomous and distributed sensing systems to monitor, attribute, and respond to threats across vast and remote domains. These investments directly protect Canada’s core assets while raising the cost of disruption or attack. For a resource-rich, alliance-dependent middle power, this is the foundation of sovereignty: making critical systems resilient, observable, and defensible. Tanks and jets have their place, but they are not the main effort. Economic strength and technological edge are. 

The choice is ours. Smart, or the same.