National Defence Committee on May 27th, 2026

[Mélanie Lussier]

I'll go ahead and answer first, Mr. Mueller. Thank you.

As a Quebec industry, we do a lot of outreach because talent really is what sets us apart. We've had a strong talent pool for many years; the talent pipeline is in good shape. Quebec is fortunate to have two schools that, for the first time in many years, are both full. That's good news. However, we're going to need more capacity in those schools.

We're working with the provincial government to rapidly increase the schools' capacity for training in avionics and the trades. Our sector also needs to be attractive. We've promoted the aerospace sector extensively, and we'll have to keep promoting the defence sector to the general public to get people to choose careers in this sector and to get parents to encourage their children to study for these careers.

All that to say that it's going to be extremely important to promote the sector, build capacity in schools and retain people, because there will be layoffs and retirements. We'll need to retain talent in our industry.

Immigration will also be part of the solution. I'm sorry. I told you that we currently have 43,000 passionate individuals. Within 10 years, we'll need an additional 65,000 skilled workers, not counting defence contracts. We'll have to pull out all the stops to ensure the talent pipeline remains well stocked.

[Tim Watchorn, Liberal, Les Pays-d'en-Haut, QC]

Excellent.

Mr. Mueller, do you have something to add?

[Mike Mueller]

On a national level, I couldn't agree more with what my colleague Mélanie said. The Prime Minister has set an ambitious goal of 125,000 new workers in the defence industry, which we applaud, celebrate and support, but there's going to have to be the corresponding training that comes along with that.

We were also encouraged by the focus on skilled workers in the recent budget update. The issue with a lot of our workers is that they're not red sealed but are certified through different mechanisms or other national certifications. A recommendation could be to focus a little more on that so that our companies could take advantage of some of those pieces.

I would also say that we need greater alignment with the provinces, universities and colleges for the demand on the industry side of things. We need to deal with that continuum between folks wanting to come to get the training and ensuring there's a job at the end of the day. We have some work to do on coordination and collaboration across the board, but we are encouraged that the right signals are being sent.

[The Chair, Liberal, Charles Sousa]

Thank you.

Mr. Watchorn, I appreciate it.

Monsieur Gabriel Ste-Marie, we go to you for six minutes.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette—Manawan, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My regards to the four witnesses. We are fortunate to have them here. They're adding a lot of valuable content. There has been a lot of back and forth. I thank them for their presentations.

I would like to take a moment to acknowledge all my colleagues. I'm standing in for my friend, Simon‑Pierre Savard‑Tremblay, today. It's a pleasure to be able to share this happy moment with you.

Ms. Lussier and Mr. Mueller, before we talk about the defence industrial strategy, I'd like to talk about why it's important to have an aerospace strategy, which we see as an economic engine driving value added in Quebec and many places across Canada. This is Quebec's number one export.

Canada is the only country with a significant aerospace industry that does not have a defence industrial strategy. I serve on the Standing Committee on Industry. Mélanie Joly was there on Monday, and I asked her a question about this. I told her that anyone who looks at the departmental plans can see that the government has nine industrial strategies. Defence is one of them, and so is the automotive strategy and strategies for artificial intelligence, quantum technology, genomics and life sciences. However, there is still no aerospace strategy, even though Ms. Joly's predecessor, François‑Philippe Champagne, had committed before the last election to developing one.

Do you still want an aerospace strategy? Mélanie Joly seemed unaware of time passing.

[Mike Mueller]

Thank you for the question.

Thank you for your strong support for the aerospace sector across the board.

There are many nuggets in your question I could go on a tangent about, but there is absolutely still a need for a broad aerospace strategy. I'm very encouraged by the defence industrial strategy and very supportive of the government in the implementation of it. Nonetheless, as I said in my remarks, there's the dual-use nature of the aerospace sector, which may be more unique to this sector than others. With a lot of the innovation and cross purposes, the skilled workers are very much doing a lot of the same work. I think you pointed out that there are strategies for AI, quantum and all these other pieces, but we still need a national aerospace strategy. That's something we're still pushing the government for very aggressively.

As for your comment on exports, they are absolutely critical. Between the civil and defence sides of the sector, 80% of what we do as an industry is export-related, so focusing on that export piece in a strategy is absolutely critical. Again, there's the continuum from innovation to first buyer on the defence side to certification on the civil side, as well as exports. You need that full continuum for the aerospace sector, so we're looking for a strategy to address both the defence and civil sides.

[Mélanie Lussier]

I'd like to add that Quebec has had a provincial strategy for the aerospace sector for over 10 years now. As we've been discussing since the start of our remarks, having a strategy really provides predictability, allows us to stay focused, and truly gives us momentum and a clear direction to follow. Everyone is moving in the same direction. Everyone can work toward the same goal. It also sends extremely important signals.

I think that not having a strategy is more harmful than having one because we have several companies headquartered abroad, and one of the first questions that arises is this: Does this country or province have a national strategy or mechanisms specific to the industry? This helps secure additional investments.

So, the message this sends should not be overlooked. It is extremely important—just like the accompanying measures, of course, which are always well received by businesses—and it also helps maintain momentum and keep interest alive. Despite sometimes fluctuating economic cycles, this helps sustain interest over several years in an industry that is important to a region.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette—Manawan, QC]

In terms of Canada's defence industrial strategy, both of you talked a lot about dual technologies.

As you mentioned, Ms. Lussier, when we look at other countries that have an aerospace sector, for example the United States, we see that aircraft are very often developed in the defence sector. Then they are transferred to the civilian sector.

Here, we certainly have procurement strategies and aircraft purchases, but aircraft development is very expensive and is done in the civilian sector.

Do you think that, with Canada's defence industrial strategy, we'll be able to reverse that and get better support for the development of new technologies and planes?

[Mélanie Lussier]

I am convinced that this will help us compete on a level playing field. You talked about the United States, but there is also another one of our competitors, France, which has no qualms about awarding contracts first in the military sector, then letting companies transform results into civilian products.

If that change could be made, it would be truly generational. I think the defence industrial strategy contains the right signals about the ability to develop these technologies here in Canada. As my colleague said, when we develop intellectual property and products here, wealth is created here. The strategy really sends the right signals for that.

Once again, I remind you that we will have to be clear about how it is implemented and what we want to do, because we won't be able to do everything. Choices will have to be made, but once choices have been made and communicated, businesses will be there.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette—Manawan, QC]

Thank you.

Mr. Mueller, the floor is yours.

[Mike Mueller]

On the innovation side, it's important to point out that we have the BOREALIS framework in place in the defence industrial strategy to respond to the needs of industry. That is encouraging, but it comes down to its execution. We see a lot of programs that aren't moving at the speed of industry.

How do you reduce the complexity of the programs? How do you ensure on the innovation side that you can bring that to market, whether on the defence side or civil side? It is by having government as first buyer and having timely certification by Transport Canada—and then export certification eventually.

On the innovation side, there are huge opportunities straddling both the defence and civil sides, which we are encouraged to see. However, we do need more on the execution side, with more coordination and more responses to the industry's needs. Having shorter timelines and less—

[The Chair, Liberal, Charles Sousa]

We're short of time at this point. I'm sorry.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Liberal, Charles Sousa]

It was great dialogue, I have to admit.

Mr. Anderson, we go to you now in our second round. You have five minutes, sir.

[Scott Anderson, Conservative, Vernon—Lake Country—Monashee, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. All my future questions will be through you.

Mr. Ziadé, I love the acronym of your association, ACDC, by the way. I got in a lot of trouble associated with that acronym in my younger days.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Scott Anderson, Conservative, Vernon—Lake Country—Monashee, BC]

Academic after academic and expert after expert who have come before these committees have all mentioned either “grey zone” warfare or prekinetic warfare. Some of them have said that we're in a situation similar to 1913 or 1939, before each of the two world wars. All of them have used the term “war” to describe the situation we're in right now. What that means to me is that there is a great deal of haste in rearming our forces right now.

Given the apparent urgency of rearming, and especially if we want to rearm with deterrence rather than with war fighting in mind, would you support our buying off the shelf initially to rearm for operational needs?

[Paul Ziadé]

As my colleague said, I don't think we can do everything immediately. I think we can do everything, or nearly everything, in Canada. As I mentioned, I spent 10 years as an engineering professor. I know what our STEM talent can do, and there is absolutely no reason that we cannot make some of the world's best precision-guided missile interceptors or quantum computing technology.

To answer your question directly, yes I would. This is not a black and white position that we take, as ACDC, in which we must buy everything Canadian and immediately so. However, right now, before we find ourselves in the next situation in which we urgently need something, we can start planning. We have a lot of very innovative companies that are sitting at this technology readiness level of six or seven, are fairly mature and need that acceleration—

[Scott Anderson, Conservative, Vernon—Lake Country—Monashee, BC]

If you don't mind—I only have five minutes here—I'd like to ask the same question of Mr. Mueller.

[Mike Mueller]

It really depends, and that's why we've been calling for that defence industrial strategy, to get away from that transactional approach.

We had a strategy 10 years ago, identifying the sovereign capabilities and making the investments on the innovation side. You could do things differently in aerospace. It's a globally integrated supply chain and industry. In some cases, it makes sense to do it right here in Canada, if we have that strength. In some cases, in terms of the build-partner-buy, it makes sense to buy.

For me, it's the outcomes. Are we creating jobs in the country? Is that IP transfer coming? The maintenance repair overhaul piece—

[Scott Anderson, Conservative, Vernon—Lake Country—Monashee, BC]

What I'm getting at, though, is that there seem to be two separate problems, and we're conflating the two of them in this discussion: rearming our forces and making them Canadian-owned. There are two different things. We need haste in rearming right now. We may have that capability in the longer term, but in the short term, we do not have it.

It took over 30 years to develop the F-35. If we start from a perfect situation right now, we're looking at 30 years—2055—before we actually have this thing. We don't have that time, or at least the academics we've talked to say we don't have that time.

We're faced with two separate problems. Would you say that we have two problems that we're conflating?

[Mike Mueller]

I would say there are two problems. It's an issue, for sure.

When you take a look at the sovereign capability, the government should be defining what we can do immediately, what we need to buy off the shelf and what the benefits are to the Canadian industry through that process.

As for the longer-term pieces, we won't need them in a little bit, but how can we develop the industry here in Canada? I think of drones and things like this. We're world leaders on that, and we have the capability to do some of these things. However, in aerospace, we can't do everything. We have to rely on our partners.

[Scott Anderson, Conservative, Vernon—Lake Country—Monashee, BC]

Ms. Lussier, would you agree with that?

[Mélanie Lussier]

Yes, absolutely. It's a matter of timing. What we cannot do now, we might have to buy, and that's okay. The important thing is making sure that a lot of the offsets are coming back in real investment. We can already send that demand signal that we want to be able to build that in the future, so start working on it now, and time it. We can say that we're not going to be able to do an F-35 for the next 30 years, so do we want to build it?

[Scott Anderson, Conservative, Vernon—Lake Country—Monashee, BC]

Thank you so much.