In June 2025, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced Canada would meet its 2% of GDP threshold for defence spending for the 2025 year, putting the nation on track to invest 5% of GDP in defence by 2035. This commitment is emblematic of Canada’s accelerating capacity to consolidate leadership in the NATO Alliance and defend its sovereignty amidst tectonic shifts in global politics. Prime Minister Carney has put into practice his efforts to “rebuild, rearm, and reinvest” in the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF), with the provision of $81.8 billion over five years and $9 billion in 2025-26 alone. Beyond simply raising the budget of the CAF, procurement goals are being executed in concert with the government’s Defence Industrial Strategy (DIS), aiming to empower the nation’s industrial base by investing in Canadian supply chains. Towards this end, Canada’s new Defence Investment Agency aims to cultivate Canada’s sovereign defence capacity by creating opportunities for Canadian businesses and individuals. In this sense, Canada’s procurement strategy extends beyond ordinary military investment; it embeds procurement within a broader aim of national development, nurturing Canadian supply chains to compound national resilience and the returns on investment. Canada’s DIS has the potential to reshape the nation’s industrial landscape and generate new opportunities for Canadians. However, this initiative can be expected to cultivate opportunities for women in Canada’s defence industry. Current initiatives for empowering women across leading Canadian defence firms indicate that Canada’s DIS can foster substantive opportunities for women in defence and security.
Several of Canada’s leading firms in the defence and security industries have begun implementing initiatives that both strengthen women’s leadership within their businesses and increase women’s access to opportunity in the field. Babcock, a leading Canadian defence engineering firm, partnered with leading companies such as L3Harris Technologies, Thales, CAE and General Dynamics Missions Systems Canada (GD), to invest in future female industry leaders. In 2019, they launched the Canadian Industrial Leadership Award (CILA), to present 10 female STEM students across Canada with a fully paid internship and a one-time $6,000 bursary. The program provides access to full-time employment, making it a valuable opportunity for young women to receive mentorship and nurture industry connections. Additionally, in 2021, GD renewed its commitment to Women in Defence and Security (WiDS), a non-governmental organization dedicated to boosting women’s careers in the Canadian defence and security industries. GD expressed its commitment to becoming the patron sponsor of WiDS, providing $25,000 per year to support program development and WiDS’ directive. Today, GD remains the primary sponsor of WiDS, reflecting the continuity of this multi-year commitment to advancing female leadership in defence and security.
ADGA Group, a Canadian defence and security company has deployed similar initiatives to advance gender equality. The firm is currently conducting company-wide competency management surveys. Given that women are less likely than men to self-promote and celebrate their accomplishments, initiatives like this are important in their capacity to create data-based growth and promotion pathways. In an interview with Erika Coghill, the Director of Marketing and Communications at ADGA Group, and a leading woman in Canadian defence and security, described how the company also offers a flexible and hybrid work environment. According to Coghill, this work environment is successful in its capacity to achieve gender equality. Women are more likely to face challenges because of disproportionate unpaid labour responsibilities. Therefore, flexibility is an important measure for ensuring women are not evaluated based on rigid time availability, thereby correcting structural disadvantages embedded in traditional work models.
These early commitments to diverse representation reflect the Canadian private sector’s capacity to match domestic commitments with Canada’s international commitments under the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) Agenda. This United Nations initiative, aims to embed women’s rights in strategies for conflict prevention and resolution, including by offering women equal access to opportunity in the field of defence and security. Creating opportunities for women in Canada’s defence supply chains thereby advances the WPS agenda within the broader fabric of Canada’s security strategy. By virtue of the expansion anticipated by the DIS, it should expand opportunities for women in the fields of defence and security.
As Canada’s DIS scales the nation’s industrial capacity, gender equality must be expanded with the intent to establish equal opportunity. While leading strategic partners, such as the ADGA Group, have proven capable of implementing meaningful initiatives to expand women’s access to opportunity, these initiatives can become embedded across the defence sector’s institutional architecture to open up greater opportunities for women in the field. To mobilize the transformative potential of the DIS for achieving gender equality, the defence sector must continue to offer women access to mentorship, sponsorship, and opportunities for skills development. Coghill described how important exposure is for young women in particular; women must be invited into rooms and spaces that permit them to observe their potential contributions in defence and security. Moreover, strategic partners and firms can reconfigure traditional pathways so that women’s skills from adjacent sectors and subsectors are appreciated. By redefining what qualifies as relevant experience, the DIS can create new opportunities for women, encouraging integration from unconventional routes. This includes, but is not limited to, presenting diverse routes for entering the defence sector that extend beyond the traditional military pathway. Similarly, firms can invite women with technical engineering experience into non-technical projects. This divergence from traditional pathways toward professional development would allow the DIS to maximize its transformative capacity, illuminating its potential to create tangible change for Canadian women.
The scale of opportunity generated by the DIS can be expected to produce a complementary increase in opportunity for women. This is pivotal to the success of Canada’s industrial strategy. By utilizing the DIS as an opportunity to bolster gender equality initiatives, Canada can not only strengthen its defence posture, but also the democratization of access to the industries that sustain it.
Photo: Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks about DIS at CAE Inc. in Feb. 2026. Source: @MarkJCarney on X.
Disclaimer: Any views or opinions expressed in articles are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the NATO Association of Canada.
