The committee studied dual-use science and technology for defence and national resilience, hearing from six witnesses: Karn Manhas, founder of Terramera Inc.; Major-General Paul Peyton, Military Deputy Director of NATO’s Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA); Robert Asselin, CEO of U15 Canada; Richard Shimooka, Senior Fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute; Paul Brett, Deputy Provost at Memorial University’s Fisheries and Marine Institute; and Edoardo De Martin, CEO of Industrio AI Inc.
Karn Manhas argued that Canada’s defence strategy must include food sovereignty, security, and defence, warning that a border closure would leave only three to five days of fresh food. He recommended adding strategic biology and food systems to dual-use defence research, funding a living national digital soil map, creating sovereign IP retention mechanisms, and adopting policies that prioritize resilience. He noted that Canada lacks the strategic approach of the Netherlands, which is a smaller country but a larger agricultural exporter.
Major-General Paul Peyton described DIANA’s role in accelerating dual-use technologies for NATO, noting that Canada has the highest number of applications in the alliance’s latest challenge call, with 22 Canadian companies selected. He highlighted that Canada was the first ally to use DIANA’s rapid adoption service for follow-on contracts and that Canadian innovators receive additional grants of up to $200,000. He emphasized that the main challenge is adoption, not innovation, and that Canada is showing strong interest in prototyping contracts.
Robert Asselin stressed that Canada must move beyond episodic collaboration to structured, long-term partnerships between universities, industry, and government to translate research into sovereign capabilities. He noted that Canada invests less than 5% of federal research spending on defence, compared to 20% across the OECD, and that only a tiny share flows to universities. He recommended building institutional interfaces similar to U.S. models like MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory to close the gap between discovery and deployment.
Richard Shimooka argued that Canada’s defence industrial strategy is backward, starting with industrial objectives rather than military needs, and lacks a clear link to a national security strategy. He warned that fragmented new bureaucracies risk further diluting limited personnel capacity and that buying immature Canadian solutions could repeat past failures like the Ross rifle. He disagreed with the strategy’s approach, contrasting it with allies like Australia that focus on developmental areas rather than pure economic benefits.
Paul Brett explained how the Marine Institute translates science into operational capability through workforce development, applied research, and harsh-environment testing, including as a DIANA test centre. He noted that clear IP policy and reduced bureaucracy are key to successful partnerships with SMEs and that demystifying DRDC funding would help institutions engage more effectively. He emphasized that near-Arctic institutions like his provide capabilities unavailable elsewhere in Canada’s national system.
Edoardo De Martin argued that Canada loses its best technology companies because they cannot find their first serious Canadian customer fast enough, leading them to scale elsewhere. He recommended accelerating procurement pathways like IDEaS, treating commercial deployments as proof points for defence procurement, and anchoring early defence demand in Canadian SMEs. He stressed that data sovereignty is a national security question and that current procurement processes favour multinationals over sovereign-by-design builders like his company.
After the testimony, the committee briefly discussed a motion to resume debate on a study of a space port project, but the motion was not adopted, and the meeting adjourned without further procedural action.
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