Prime Minister Mark Carney, left, steps off a Canadian Forces CC-130 Hercules plane with Secretary of State (Defence Procurement) Stephen Fuhr as he arrives in Bardufoss, Norway, on March 13.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
Prime Minister Mark Carney is creating a new cabinet post for defence procurement, the government announced in its spring economic update Tuesday, which also unveiled $2.3-billion in training and support for Ukraine and more than $110-million to fight foreign interference.
The government did not immediately say whether Stephen Fuhr, currently Secretary of State for Defence Procurement, would be the person appointed as minister.
The Carney government said it plans to introduce legislation to legally establish its recently created Defence Investment Agency as an arms-length departmental agency “presided over by a new minister.”
It allocated $103-million in new funding to establish the Defence Investment Agency as this stand-alone entity and said coming legislation will also boost the “financial and transaction authorities” under the Defence Production Act to help the new minister to speed up procurement.
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Defence analysts have said for months that Mr. Fuhr needs more power and authority than is available to him as a secretary of state in order to enact changes that could speed up military procurement and deal with other government departments.
A minister has a seat at the top decision-making table. Ministers regularly attend cabinet whereas secretaries of state do not. Unlike a minister, a secretary of state does not have their own statutory powers under law.
Canada’s system for buying military goods is a perennial target for criticism – in particular for the amount of time it takes to acquire equipment.
Ottawa is also earmarking $2-billion to fund a three-year extension of Operation Unifier, the Canadian military’s training mission for Ukrainian soldiers who are fighting off a Russian invasion. Recently, training has taken place in Poland, Latvia and Britain.
The government also announced it was allocating $300-million for military assistance to Ukraine. Kyiv is now in its fifth year of battling a full-scale assault by Russia that began in February, 2022. Canada has provided more than $25.5-billion in various forms of aid to Ukraine since the conflict began.
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The spring economic update contained more than $110-million to fight foreign interference, a problem identified by a public inquiry that tabled its final report in 2025.
The government announced $85-million in additional funding for the RCMP over five years to investigate and disrupt foreign interference. Some of this money is capital investment and that might include purchasing information technology, Ottawa said.
At the same time, Ottawa unveiled $32-million over five years in additional funding for the Rapid Response Mechanism at the Department of Global Affairs. The money will strengthen its ability to identify and counter foreign interference and transnational repression aimed at Canada
Finally, the federal government is funnelling more money into stopping goods made with forced labour or child labour from making their way into Canada.
It announced $3-million for the current fiscal year to help enforce the Supply Chains Act. This law requires Canadian companies and government institutions to publish annual reports disclosing what steps they’ve taken to identify and reduce forced-labour and child-labour risks in their supply chains.
This money arrives just after U.S. President Donald Trump announced an investigation into how effectively 60 countries, including Canada, have been at blocking imports made with forced labour. This probe, launched in February, may result in more U.S. tariffs imposed on Canadian goods.
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Mr. Trump and his team have made clear that they’re seeking to replace the hundreds of billions of dollars in lost revenue after the U.S. Supreme Court’s February ruling – which deemed that the President’s attempt to use an emergency-powers law to enact tariffs was not valid – by using different laws to establish new levies.
In a late March report unrelated to the probe of 60 countries, the U.S government explicitly said it believes Canada is failing to block foreign goods made with coerced labour from entering its market.
The Defence Investment Agency’s job is to speed up major military purchases such as the Arctic Over-the-Horizon Radar and the Canadian Patrol Submarine Project.
Canada is undertaking its largest military spending expansion in decades.
In November, Mr. Carney, saying that Canada could no longer rely on the United States for protection, used his first budget to deliver a defence-spending increase of more than $84-billion over five years – believed to be the biggest short-term cash infusion for the military since the Korean War.
The federal government’s spending for the 2025-26 fiscal year represents the first time in roughly 35 years that Canada has devoted 2 per cent of its gross domestic product to defence. The last time was at the end of the Cold War.