Shoppers in downtown Toronto in March, 2025.Andres Valenzuela/The Globe and Mail
Dan Doran and Alexander Landry are defence and security professionals.
“Buy Canadian” is back at the centre of federal economic policy. Beyond a response to tariffs, it is, at least potentially, a recognition that Canada must relearn an old lesson: public procurement is more than an administrative process. Rather, it is one of the most powerful tools a state possesses to shape its future.
Ottawa has long treated procurement as a process issue. We bought what worked, what was cheapest, and what survived fairness audits. That logic belongs to a more permissive era when supply chains were assumed dependable and geopolitical rivalries were manageable. Economics, industry, and national security were once treated as separate files; they are not anymore.
The world has changed, as supply shocks and technological dependence have resulted from a more openly contested international order. This blurs the lines between economic policy and sovereignty. Countries that once outsourced capacity in the name of efficiency are now rediscovering the cost of dependency. Canada is no exception.
This is not new ground. Past governments understood the imperative of public spending addressing more than immediate needs. During the Second World War, C.D. Howe leveraged procurement and industrial policy to build the productive base that carried Canada through the conflict and the postwar period. Mitchell Sharp, who served under Lester Pearson and Pierre Trudeau, proposed the “Third Option,” which argued access to markets alone was insufficient: Canada also needed the capacity to make national choices without excessive reliance on decisions taken elsewhere. Both understood sovereignty-building through capability, rather than rhetoric.
Canadians are still boycotting U.S. goods. Has it made a difference?
That is a tradition worth reclaiming. If Canadian taxpayers are underwriting major public contracts, should they not expect something durable to remain once the work is complete?
The debate often loses its footing over how it defines “Canadian.” The discussion is mired in geography specific to company headquarters and product assembly. Although these facets still matter, they no longer suffice in a modern economy shaped by services and systems integration.
A company can have a Canadian mailing address while exporting profits, intellectual property, and strategic decision-making elsewhere. Conversely, internationally owned firms with a serious and sustained Canadian presence could employ Canadians, pay taxes here, and deepen supply chains, ultimately leaving behind real domestic capability. Which one is truly Canadian? By reducing this discussion to flags on packaging, we mistake symbolism for substance.
The preferable question is this: What remains in Canada after contract completion?
Beyond that, who owns the intellectual property? Where is the work actually done? Where are profits taxed? Do projects strengthen domestic supply chains, or merely create temporary offices? Are we deepening sovereign capability, or simply renting it for the life of the contract?
Of course, Canadians have previously witnessed domestic capability not being carried forward. The Avro Arrow still lingers in the national imagination because its loss was beyond that of an aircraft. Rather, it was a loss of talent and industrial ambition, resulting in sovereign capacity surrendered too easily.
Consequently, the more useful principle than “Buy Canadian” is “Build in Canada.”
Canada’s recent Defence Industrial Strategy offers an appropriate model with an important premise: security, sovereignty and prosperity are linked. Procurement strengthens Canada’s industrial and technological base rather than just filling short-term needs. To this end, public spending must do more than solve today’s problem. It must leave the country better prepared for tomorrow.
The broader Buy Canadian agenda needs that same seriousness.
This does not mean that every contract should automatically go to a domestic champion regardless of cost or performance. Canada still benefits from competition, foreign capital, and global best practices. Nor does it mean retreating into a bunker mentality. That has never been the Canadian way, nor should it be.
Openness without strategy is not sophistication. It is dependency with nicer language.
As the real objective is not insulation, but integration on Canadian terms, we must move beyond simplistic definitions of “Canadian content” toward a clearer understanding of where Canadian value is created. This is done by paying attention to where expertise is developed, where data is stored, where profits flow, and what remains following project closure. In other words, it means treating major contracts as capability-building exercises, not transactions to be processed and forgotten.
The real test of “Buy Canadian” is not how often the phrase is repeated in Ottawa. What matters is whether public investment fosters capability this country can rely on when the next shock comes.
If it does not build lasting capacity here at home, then it is not strategy. It is branding.