NATO says it wants its members to develop national plans to bolster the capacity of their individual defence industry sectors, a concept Canada has struggled with — or avoided outright — for decades.
At the NATO leaders summit in Washington in July, alliance members agreed to come up with strategies to boost their domestic defence materiel sectors, and to share those strategies with each other. Almost entirely overshadowed at the time by debates about members’ defence spending and support for Ukraine, the new policy got little attention.
Federal officials are just beginning to wrap their heads around the ramifications of the new policy, and the burden it could place on the government and Canada’s defence sector.
I’m not that surprised. Supplying the Ukraine War has shown that most NATO countries do not have the ability to contribute with any meaningful industrial capacity. Fixing this would require a lot of supply chain building.
It was extremely embarrassing seeing the free world failing to out-supply Russia enough as the war has dragged on too much with too many Ukrainian civilians being murdered by russian war criminals.
Ukraine needs to be given more tanks, air defence systems, armoured vehicles, jets, ammo, drones, frigates, missiles and artillery than they can do with.