The longer the gap between pledges and action is allowed to remain,
the greater the risk of a disastrous failure of deterrence – Zack Cooper
At a meeting of the Committee on Government Operations and Estimates on 10 February 2026, Stephen Fuhr (Secretary of State for Military Procurement) spoke about the creation and planning of the new Defence Investment Agency (DIA) which was announced in October 2025. He was accompanied by Mr. Doug Guzman, the CEO of the DIA and Siobhan Harty, the Senior Assistant Deputy Minister of Defence and Marine Procurement in Public Services and Procurement Canada – the latter who had focused before her latest appointment on developing a strategy for military procurement reform for more than a year.
At one point in responding to a committee member’s question regarding the work of the DIA, Minister Fuhr stated that the intent was to address the findings of the report by the Standing Committee on National Defence (the Committee) of last summer. I believe he was actually referring to the report of June 2024 by the Committee entitled ‘A Time for Change: Reforming Defence Procurement in Canada.’
Minister Fuhr specifically implied that the accountability issue of the report was being addressed by the creation of the DIA. While some testimony to the Committee suggested that procurement should be centralized in a single entity, there actually was no such explicit recommendation by the Committee.
However, the Committee offered 36 recommendations in total, many of which are worth reviewing as the DIA develops a plan to reform military procurement of projects over an estimated cost of $100 million.
Now that the Defence Industrial Strategy (DIS) has been released, the reform agenda becomes of even greater urgency and importance to enable the DIS to be successful.
For clarity, I define ‘procurement’ as the processes that the DIA will be involved in, as a subset of what I consider to be the broader ‘acquisition’ projects that also involve the Department of National Defence (DND) and the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF). I liken this duality to the famous saying attributed to Martina Navratilov: “The difference between involvement and commitment is like ham and eggs. The chicken (DIA) is involved, but the pig (DND /CAF) is committed.”
The Committee’s Significant Recommendations
Timeliness – The Committee stated the obvious, that timeliness was required based on “the danger posed by emerging geopolitical threats, the attendant urgency of replacing aging and/or obsolete platforms … and the need to keep pace with technological development in a timely manner [through] concrete steps to accelerate procurement.” This is well understood by the leadership of the DIA as essential, but no plan has yet been revealed to explain what steps will be taken to ensure speed and when they will be in place in the near-to-medium-term. In essence, this note selectively offers such essential steps.
Personnel – The Committee recommended a re-examination of methods to maintain and improve procurement personnel tenure (i.e. retention) and “ensure that an adequate number of qualified and trained procurement personnel are employed to perform all needed procurement duties.” This has been a perennial challenge, and while the DIA has a role to play, the solution requires significant resource application and training more broadly within government and through Interchange Canada with Canadian defense industry to create the appropriate business acumen for the different sectors of arms. Being bold, I would estimate that – including training, education and on-job development – there is a broad need to at least double the current complement involved in major military acquisition projects across all departments and agencies. Furthermore, involvement of members of the CAF needs to be reconsidered because many uniformed personnel have been parachuted in to fill gaps created by the shortage of experienced civilians. As CAF members can be called for operational deployment if Canada moves to a wartime footing, their employment in acquisition work should be minimized by addressing only tasks requiring their unique expertise: leading project execution offices and defining project requirements.
Adopt A Continuous Replacement Strategy for Major Platforms – Instead of the current one-off transaction when acquiring armoured vehicles and select types of aircraft, a program akin to the National Shipbuilding Strategy (NSS) should be pursued so that “new generations of platforms are designed and ready for delivery before current models reach the end of their useful lives.” As has been seen with NSS, such models are also challenged in achieving timely deliveries. DND remains responsible for generating acquisition project requirements and the DIA should study NSS and the other emerging procurement models (e.g. agile procurement and Continuous Capability Sustainment) to identify the necessary improvements required to achieve a continuous replacement strategy that delivers timeliness.
Process Re-Engineering – End-to-end mapping of the acquisition process was highlighted as the Committee’s first recommendation “with the purpose of simplifying Treasury Board Secretariat guidelines and removing any points of duplication”. I would go further to suggest that processes and policies should be much more flexible, with streamlining achieved by employing an external professional re-engineering company. Furthermore, the work should span requirements, bidder sourcing and proposal evaluation, contracting and oversight. The reduction of this large and confusing complexity debt is essential, and one that DIA has discussed in passing but needs urgent action.
Privy Council Secretariat – Such a Secretariat was recommended “to ensure defence procurement remains a top priority for the Prime Minister’s Office.” In essence, this Secretariat would be performing two roles: access to speedy decision-making and oversight of the DIA in delivering on its mandate of reform. This has not been mentioned in any public appearances that I am aware of, and it would be important – at least as a temporary measure for a few years – to ensure that the government reforms the complex military acquisition ecosystem.
Interdepartmental Delays – The Committee proposed investigating “a procurement tracking software system to increase accountability between departments, reduce delays and track internal performance measures”. This concern relates to the DIA, to the DND and to the Treasury Board as a minimum. Furthermore, delays often occur within departments and agencies. Two actions would be required before software pursuit: completion of process re-engineering, and the development of Service Level Agreements between every office involved in acquisition and the DIA related to achieving contract award.
Performance-Based Requirements – These are suggested to “help deliver the mission rather than on prescriptive, detail-oriented criteria, so as to produce faster and better results.” This can be applied to requirements, Requests for Information, Request for Proposals and contracts, rendering these much less complex in terms of page counts. However, it is much harder to do and seen as riskier in terms of what is delivered (i.e. what is not included); this can lead to expensive contract amendments and/or post-delivery modifications. It is a relatively new concept for Canada when acquiring weapon system platforms, aside from the Canadian Patrol Submarine Project and military aircraft selection based on fly-offs.
Communications – A longstanding issue surrounding transparency, the Committee called for “greater effort to communicate major procurement projects in a transparent manner that articulates the risks of cost overruns and other issues”. This has been a longstanding concern. For DIA, challenges will arise because complex platform acquisitions are lengthy projects that cannot avoid the emergence of unpredictable risks. Failure to regularly brief on such matters will lead to the perception of project failures – and thus failure of the DIA. It is vital this be addressed despite the fact that risk aversion is baked into the government’s culture.
Defence Industrial Strategy (DIS) – The Committee made ten recommendations relating to the recently released DIS. Because the strategy is so expansive and presently raises more questions than answers, it warrants a separate note. Of importance, the DIS changes the context of many reform efforts and should be carefully analyzed before setting out to reform the acquisition system.
Before leaving the Committee’s recommendations, there are some aspects of reform which I consider were missing, many of which were discussed in their report but not recommended explicitly: adapting the culture to one of less risk aversion, a significant acquisition project support ecosystem, education and innovation in the realm of emerging techniques to better navigate complex weapon systems platform acquisitions, advanced risk treatment techniques, ineffectiveness of the Treasury Board Secretariat due to a lack of project-specific knowledge, the challenges of employing Artificial Intelligence, the lack of realistic performance measures in the acquisition system and governance and oversight.
As well, the report includes the detailed testimony by witnesses who offered a myriad of tactical improvements also worth considering.
The Point
At the hearing of 10 February when Mr. Guzman was asked to explain his past experience, he opined that he would likely draw on external support as he settled into his new position to better understand procurement.
There is much reform work to do, and much of it can be treated as separate business lines, with a central clearing house for cross-linkages. The months seem to be slipping by without any transparency regarding the plan for the DIA in the coming year. And as was apparent in the testimony to the Committee, this will be a painful and long process requiring patience.
During the hearing on 10 February, it was stated that the DIA had about 85 warm bodies assigned to it, with about six projects now responsible to DIA that presumably are not yet housed in the DIA. Aside from Mr. Guzman’s intent to hire external advice and support, one wonders where the dedicated, experienced and knowledgeable people will come from.
But whenever the external advisors arrive, they and our defence industry associations and companies need to ensure that the DIA takes a comprehensive and consultative approach to all of the recommendations of the Standing Committee on National Defence as a minimum.
Statements about ‘accountability’, ‘greater authorities’ and ‘streamlining and consolidating processes’ are not enough. In essence, we need a companion piece to the 50-page document entitled ‘Security, Sovereignty and Prosperity: Canada’s Defence Industrial Strategy,’ but focused on acquisition system reform. Such a document remains MIA.
Urgency needs to be the watchword. I hope I am wrong and transparency will soon indicate how the DIA is about to ‘move out with all due dispatch’ on all the required reform areas of concern – or is doing so already.
