You can't fly sovereignty on foreign fuel

Globe and Mail

7 hours ago

Omar Saleh is the chief operating officer at North Vector Dynamics.
This week, China slapped a 75.8-per-cent preliminary anti-dumping duty on Canadian canola, threatening $5-billion a year in exports and putting the Prairie agricultural economy squarely in the crosshairs.
Yet in this crisis lies an opportunity. The same crop now caught in a trade war could also be the key to fixing one of our biggest national security vulnerabilities.
Canola has quietly become one of the most credible feedstocks for sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) – chemically identical to conventional jet fuel, yet with up to 90 per cent lower life-cycle emissions. It's a drop-in fuel – usable in current engines, aircraft and refuelling systems with no modifications. The U.S. Air Force flies on it. Lufthansa uses it regularly. NATO is preparing to deploy it.
Canada isn't.
We have committed to spending $38.6-billion on North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD) modernization and Arctic deployments – without securing the fuel to support them. No strategic reserve. No domestic supply chain. No plan.
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At Canada's most remote base, CFS Alert, it takes seven litres of fuel to deliver just one usable litre. In a crisis, that's a logistics choke point an adversary wouldn't even need to attack – just wait for the supply chain to strain and watch operations slow.
This isn't a technical gap. It's industrial abdication.
Canada has the tools to lead. New high-oil varieties can grow on Class 4 marginal lands – millions of acres across Saskatchewan and Alberta that aren't used currently for food crops. That means no pressure on food systems, and no need to convert premium farmland. That shift wasn't driven by marketing – it was earned through hard science, better crop genetics and proven refining results.
What's more, Canada has a real shot at global leadership not only because of what we grow, but also what we can store. Alberta already has one of the most advanced carbon-capture networks in North America. Facilities such as Quest, and the provincewide trunk line that supports it, are exactly what will separate low-carbon SAF from the ultralow-carbon SAF needed to win international contracts. That infrastructure is already there.
Put it together and the Prairies don't just have the feedstock. They have the land, the logistics, the refining and the emissions solution. No other country has all five.
So why are we still acting like this is someone else's opportunity?
The European Union and Britain are mandating SAF blending – 2 per cent by 2025, climbing to 70 per cent by 2050. The United States has committed billions through the Department of Energy, Federal Aviation Administration and Department of Defense. Yet Canada remains on the sidelines, siloing SAF under clean fuel programs, ignoring it in procurement and treating it as someone else's file.
We've got more to lose than most. Almost a quarter of Canada's jet fuel is imported, leaving our defence and Arctic operations dependent on foreign supply chains that are vulnerable to global disruptions. This isn't about emissions – it's about operational readiness and supply chain control.
Scaling SAF to 15 per cent of Canada's jet fuel use could generate $3-billion to $5-billion annually across agriculture, refining and logistics. It could give farmers a new market, insulate us from geopolitical fuel shocks and create an Arctic fuel reserve that doesn't cost $10 a litre to deliver. It means rural jobs. It means Indigenous-led infrastructure and northern resupply chains. It means fuel security for defence operations without relying on U.S. or overseas supply.
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It also means leverage. SAF opens the door to premium export markets in the EU and U.S., and strengthens interoperability with NATO and NORAD fleets. Done right, this isn't just industrial policy – it's foreign policy.
If Canada can't fuel its own jets, we don't control our defence. If we can't deliver fuel to our Arctic bases without draining our supply chain, we don't control our territory. And if we can't build the industrial system we're uniquely positioned to lead, we don't control our future.
Ottawa must treat SAF as strategic infrastructure, not just a climate file. That means committing to a federal SAF procurement mandate for defence and Arctic operations, subsidizing Prairie-based SAF refineries and creating a domestic strategic reserve by 2028. It also means integrating SAF into NORAD modernization planning – so the next time we upgrade our northern air bases, we're upgrading their fuel supply, too.
Sovereignty isn't a slogan. It's fuel in the tank. It's time to fill it.