cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/11253505
...
For the first time, Canada is the "lead nation" at a major European defence trade fair, known as MSPO, in Kielce, Poland. It's bringing together more than 230 companies and associations at the exhibition’s Canada Pavillion.
...
Europe is rearming, mobilizing up to 800 billion euros ($1.3 billion Cdn) for defence over the next three years.
One of the pillars of that initiative is known as SAFE, or Security Action for Europe. Canada is the only non-European nation invited to participate, allowing it to bid on European defence contracts as it pledges ongoing support for Ukraine’s defence industrial base.
...
Charles Barlow, the CEO of Ottawa-based Robotics Centre, says he has been staggered by the change in Canada’s positioning and its sudden eagerness to embrace industries that were shunned only a couple of years ago.
...
But a trade war with the United States and Canada's push to diversify its key industries away from its largest trading partner has dramatically altered the landscape.
"It's a very big breakthrough as we extend our reach into Europe," said Defence Minister David McGuinty, who was in Kielce on Tuesday to officially kick off the event.
"We are diversifying, we are taking our next steps, we are open to serious negotiation with the United States, but right now this is about our communities, it's about our workers and it's about giving rise to an expanded and greater energy when it comes to our defence sector," he said.
Several Canadian exhibitors told CBC News they would not have been able to make the trip to Poland without financial help provided by the Carney government.
...
Now that the taboo on financing, marketing and publicly advocating for defence tech has faded away, the industry is trying to quickly pivot to take advantage.
Barlow’s company, which makes small drones and quad copters, has literally taken off in the last year, thanks in part to new deals with European customers.
It's about to move from its current headquarters near Lansdowne Park in Ottawa to a new 32,000-square-foot facility in Kanata.
"A year ago, we were 15 people. Today, we're 56," he said.
...
Government figures suggest Canada’s defence industry contributes $10 billion to the country’s economy and supports more than 81,000 jobs. The government’s new Defence Industrial Strategy aims to create more than 125,000 new jobs over the next decade.
...
Christyn Cianfarani, CEO of the Canadian Defence and Security Industries Association (CADSI), says government help is often essential. For example, if Canada buys something from a European nation and a Canadian company gets involved in the deal, it thereby becomes part of European supply chains.
"Canada recently announced it is going to make a purchase of submarines and the Germans have committed to pulling Canadian firms, Canadian companies, into their supply chains — that's a great way to do it," Cianfarani said.
But Cianfarani says the gravitational pull of the United States — far and away the world’s largest defence spender — remains strong.
"Pivoting from the United States, where it's over 50 per cent of our market share, is not an easy pivot for Canadian business. The U.S. is close, it's in the same time zone and our relationship under NORAD has given us privileges."
...
Beyond the steep shipping costs and logistical hurdles, Canadian companies are landing in a European market that has been fundamentally rewired by the war in Ukraine.
The conflict has shattered decades of peacetime complacency, forcing European militaries to realize that the old, agonizingly slow ways of buying weapons no longer work.
For Canadian firms to succeed here, they have to match a continent moving at lightning speed.
...