CA$350-million for drones and a 100-year pact: How Ukraine is reshaping Canada's thinking about its own security

At a joint press-conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Calgary last week, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced Canada’s most ambitious military rearming in 70 years. 

Just a few years ago, spending on this scale would have seemed politically unthinkable. There was little public appetite for it. Donald Trump’s geopolitical bullying, however, has accelerated Canada’s strategic coming-of-age.

That shift is now shaping government policy and Canada’s relationships with allies and others. Nowhere is the change more striking than in Ottawa’s approach to Ukraine.

Ukrainian diaspora warned Canada

When I arrived in Canada in 2022, I often found myself explaining to Canadians why the war in Ukraine had begun, and reminding them that Russia’s aggression did not start then, but in 2014 with Russian occupation of Crimea and parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

Some people had heard about it. Most had not followed it closely. Canadians were shocked and deeply sympathetic. But there was also a palpable sense that this war, however unjust and barbaric, was happening somewhere far away from Canada’s peaceful and secure life.

For years, Ukrainian Canadians had been warning Ottawa about the Russian threat far more loudly than Canada’s political mainstream was prepared to listen.

They called for sanctions, weapons for Ukraine, a stronger NATO presence, greater attention to Russian information operations and a more serious approach to Eastern European and global security. In a country that had long felt insulated from major wars, such demands could sometimes sound alarmist or simply too "Ukrainian".

But the diaspora did not stop pushing. 

Ukrainian Canadians worked with MPs and governments, organised campaigns and demonstrations, raised money, spoke to journalists and brought Ukrainian soldiers and experts to Canadian audiences. For years, they repeated one simple message: Russia is not only Ukraine’s problem.

In a sense, the Ukrainian Canadian community pushed Canada to reconsider its assumptions, not through one decision or one campaign, but through years of sustained advocacy.

Rapid geopolitical shifts helped make the argument impossible to ignore.

Donald Trump returned to the White House in 2025. After making territorial claims against Greenland, he turned his attention to Canada, repeatedly

suggesting that it should become the 51st state and openly mocking both Canada’s prime minister and its armed forces.

Reality began to validate precisely what the Ukrainian diaspora had been warning about.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the erosion of the longstanding international security order, increasingly aggressive behaviour by major powers, a new contest over the Arctic, and growing tension with the United States have transformed the debate. What once looked like an issue of solidarity with Ukraine is increasingly seen to be a matter of Canada’s own national interest.

The shift has been so rapid that Canada’s most influential television programs now openly discuss the idea of Canadians learning lessons from Ukraine about modern warfare, through cooperation with, among other things, the development and manufacture of drones. Canadians have also rediscovered an uncomfortable geographic fact: their country sits between two great powers:  the United States to the south, whose president has launched an economic confrontation with Canada, and Russia across the Arctic, with its own ambitions in the North.

In 2022, the question was: "How much support are we prepared to give Ukraine?"

Today, the more important security question is: "Can Canada defend itself in the world that emerged after 24 February 2022?"

The answer coming from Ottawa is an uncomfortable one.

Time to rearm

For decades, Canada underinvested in defence in part because it could rely on the American security umbrella.

By 2014, Canadian defence spending had fallen to roughly 1 per cent of GDP. In 2026, the Carney government announced that Canada had finally reached NATO’s 2-per-cent benchmark. But even 2 per cent is no longer seen as the end point.

Donald Trump has contributed significantly to this change with statements that Canadians have interpreted as threats to the country’s sovereignty.

The subject came up directly during Adrienne Arsenault’s interview with President Zelenskyy. Arsenault, host of CBC’s flagship program The National, asked how Mr. Trump’s repeated comments about Canada looked from the outside. The Ukrainian President described the situation as strange.

Ukraine knows better than most how dangerous it is to build national security on the assumption that rules will always hold, agreements will always be honoured and partners will always arrive in time.

The Budapest Memorandum demonstrated the dangers of such geopolitical illusions.

That is why Canada’s military buildup, the expansion of its domestic defence industry, its renewed focus on the Arctic and its strategic partnership with Ukraine should be understood as parts of the same process.

Until very recently, for many Canadians the Arctic existed largely as part of the national imagination: an immense, cold and sparsely populated expanse on the map.

Increasingly, it is being viewed as a potential arena of strategic competition with Russia and China.

Canada is now talking about new nuclear-powered icebreakers, submarines, radar systems, aircraft, missiles, upgraded ports and air bases, and a permanent military presence in the North.

A war that began thousands of kilometres from Ottawa has ultimately forced Canada to take a harder look at its own map.

Ukrainians sometimes grow frustrated when Western countries take years to grasp what has long seemed obvious to us: that Russia will not simply stop on its own; that stopping an aggressor today is cheaper than fighting one tomorrow; and that a defence industry cannot exist only on paper.

Four years ago in Canada, such warnings could easily be dismissed as the anxiety of a Ukrainian diaspora constantly pressing the government to do more.

Last week, Canada formally acknowledged that it needs Ukrainian expertise.

On 10 September 2026, Mr. Carney and Mr. Zelenskyy announced a 100-year partnership framework, a political declaration setting out the foundations of a future strategic relationship. The full One-Hundred-Year Partnership Agreement is expected to be concluded by December, marking the 35th anniversary of Canada’s recognition of Ukrainian independence.

Ukraine can teach Canada how to defend itself

Canada has committed roughly C$350-million to purchase urgently needed air-defence interceptors for Ukraine through the US-led JUMPSTART mechanism. Mr. Carney said the agreement for that package had already been finalised.

The two countries are also building a long-term intergovernmental partnership to produce drones, counter-drone systems and priority munitions.

Separately, General Dynamics Mission Systems-Canada and Ukraine’s Green Tech Harvest have agreed to jointly develop and manufacture drones and related technologies.

Mr. Carney also announced a commitment of particular importance to Ukraine: one-third of the drones produced as part of Canada’s new industrial expansion are to support Ukraine. Canada’s objective is to build the capacity to manufacture millions of drones within two years.

Perhaps even more significant is the fact that Canada is teaching from Ukraine’s Brave1 model.

Ottawa is creating a Defence Drone Initiative Marketplace, a digital platform through which the Canadian Armed Forces will gain access to nearly 400 Canadian suppliers. Initial contracts worth up to C$50-million have already been awarded, with the goal of increasing the number of drones available to the Canadian military tenfold.

Four years after Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukraine is no longer simply receiving Canadian weapons.

Canada is beginning to redesign parts of its own defence system using lessons learned in Ukraine.

Speaking in Davos in January, Mr. Carney captured Canada’s new view of the world in a single sentence:

"We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition." The systems Canadians relied on for decades are breaking down. Canada, like much of the world, is being forced to build new security relationships and rethink old assumptions.

For middle powers such as Canada, Ukraine is becoming something close to a guide to this new security reality.

Ukraine cannot defend Canada.

But it can teach Canada how to defend itself, and how to survive in a world where old guarantees no longer work automatically.

That may ultimately become one of Ukraine’s new roles: not only a country asking the West for help, but a country producing knowledge the West increasingly needs - knowledge about how free societies can defend themselves and remain free in the 21st century.

Publications in the Expert Opinion section are not editorial articles and solely reflect the author's point of view