Everything about this is different. This is the first time in Canadian history that we actually have a defence industrial strategy. We're here. We're at the starting line. We have incredible talent. There are 600 companies and 82,000 people who work full time in the sector now, and about $14.5 billion in annual revenue, but we have very specific targets that we will achieve over the decade as we implement this defence industrial strategy.
We're going to be drawing on the capabilities across the country. We know, for example, Ontario has over 35% of our defence industry employment. We know Quebec is home to about 25% of defence industry employment. We know what its specializations are. We know Atlantic Canada is home to 20% of the defence industry. We know what its specialization is. We know about western and northern Canada as well. We know where the capacity is, and that's what we began with. What are we good at doing? What can we do? What are we doing now? How do we build on this?
The idea of more advanced research in these defence innovation secure hubs is one where we can bring together the Canadian Armed Forces to disclose what it needs, and that has to be done in a fairly classified setting. We don't go off and tell the world the details of what our forces need to prosecute their responsibilities. We can bring them together with groups like the Communications Security Establishment. We'll bring together public and private researchers. We've met with our top 15 academic research universities. They're very keen to support and apply the research. I was at Waterloo university just last week, dealing with their quantum team to see how advanced their quantum research is, because this is a big part of the future. What we're going to do is pull together into these DISHs—the first of which was launched in Halifax in the Maritimes area—in a number of nodes around the country, specialized talent so that we can give rise to our Canadian technology, our commercialization, our jobs and our companies.
That's why we are so disciplined about the plan we put in place, which comes from 2,000 stakeholders and 17 countries. We spoke to 17 countries about what they do, how well it works, what didn't work and what did work, and we've reconciled all of this in a go-forward strategy that's being implemented. So far, the take-up is wonderful.
I remind people all the time—and I could use this committee's help to remind Canadians in all of our constituencies—that we cannot build here only for ourselves. Of course, we can partner with the right partners and then we can buy, but only from the right sellers with the same values.
What we can do here in defence is compete and win. We can compete and we can win anywhere in the world. What I'm seeing in this new environment we're operating in is that like-minded, mid-sized countries like Canada from all over the world are asking to work with Canadians. They want to invest here and they want to partner here, so we think this is an enormous opportunity for Canada's future.