Five challenges Canada's new defence minister will need to navigate
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One of McGuinty's jobs will be to help set the stage for Carney's promise to speed up military equipment purchases by creating a new Defence Procurement Agency.
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But is this another empty pledge? In the early days of his government Trudeau also vowed to improve defence procurement but little was accomplished. In the 2019 election the Liberals also pledged to create a separate defence procurement agency but that was never done.
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New equipment
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The Liberal defence platform outlines specific military equipment purchases and it will be up to McGuinty to help shepherd those through cabinet. Those include new submarines, self-propelled artillery and made-in-Canada airborne early warning and control aircraft.
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That last specific promise would help placate Canada's aerospace industry who were critical of the Trudeau government's decision in November 2023 to award a sole source $8 billion contract to Boeing in the U.S. for new military surveillance planes.
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Canadian-made solutions were passed over for the American-made one and the supposed goodwill that such a deal might create with the U.S. government.
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Carney's defence platform also included the promise to purchase a new ground based air defence system. If that sounds familiar, it's because the same promise was originally outlined in the 2018 Liberal defence capability plan.
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Recruitment and retention
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The Liberals have promised to modernize the military recruitment process to get applicants into the Canadian Forces at a much faster rate. That process has already been underway so McGuinty will inherit a file on which much work has been done.
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Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Jennie Carignan said at a Feb. 19, 2025, briefing for journalists that the military was on track to meet its recruitment goal of enrolling 6,496 members this fiscal year. The Liberal government and military leadership has talked about rebuilding the Canadian Forces in what has been called a reconstitution effort. The goal is to at least rebuild the ranks to 71,500 in the regular force and 30,000 in the primary reserves, according to a DND results report released in 2024.
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What wasn't mentioned in the Liberal policy was the need to retain those skilled military personnel already in the ranks.
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In April 2024, a top advisor to the chief of the defence staff warned that Canada's soldiers were leaving the ranks because of toxic military leadership. Canadian Forces Chief Warrant Officer Bob McCann flagged his concerns during an April 23 meeting in which he appealed for changes in how leaders dealt with lower ranks. Job dissatisfaction, a lack of housing and repeated moves to new locations across the country have been cited in past military reports as the top reasons that Canadian Forces personnel leave.
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A retention bonus was proposed in October 2024 to try to convince military personnel not to leave but that was shot down by the defence leadership.
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