Why Canada decided to rearm and how cooperation with Ukraine could help

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.

Read more about the major shift in Canada’s security policy and Ukraine’s new role in it in the column by Anastasiya Ringis, a strategic communications professional based in Canada: CA$350-million for drones and a 100-year pact: How Ukraine is reshaping Canada's thinking about its own security

The author notes that 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 2022, the question was: "How much support are we prepared to give Ukraine?"

But after Donald Trump returned to the White House in 2025, the more important security question is: "Can Canada defend itself in the world that emerged after 24 February 2022?"

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," Ringis writes.

According to her, 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.

The author also notes that, 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.

That is why 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, Anastasiia Ringis observes.

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.

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.

According to the author, 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.

"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," she concludes.