Canada took 4 months to send money after deciding to buy air defence system for Ukraine

It initially took Canada four months to get into the queue after deciding to join a plan by the United States to buy urgently needed National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS) for Ukraine.

Defence Minister Bill Blair insists the lag did not contribute to the slow pace of acquiring the high-tech defensive capability, which is still months away from being delivered.

A proposal for the federal government to purchase the system was first discussed by former defence minister Anita Anand and U.S. Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin in late November 2022 at the Halifax International Security Forum, CBC News has learned.

It came at a time when Russia was engaged in a brutal ballistic missile campaign intended to wipe out Ukraine's electrical grid, a series of attacks that hit civilian targets and killed scores of innocent people.

Anand announced the planned $406-million purchase in January 2023, but as the Defence Department recently told CBC News, the federal government didn't transfer funds to the United States to pay for the system and start the process until March 2023, at the end of the fiscal year.

"I don't believe that that contributed in any way to the delay," Blair said in a recent interview with CBC News.

"It required more than just a conversation and an agreement between the secretary and the minister. There had to be a contract. And because we were purchasing through the United States, it required congressional approval as well. And so there is actually a legal process in the United States to enable them to acquire and purchase munitions that they would send to another government."

Washington, however, could not begin to negotiate a contract with the manufacturers until it had both its own funds and Canada's money in hand.

The U.S. Congress gave the green light in May 2023. 

The Liberal government has faced repeated criticism for the glacial pace of acquiring the capability, especially as the civilian death toll in Ukraine increases.

The most expedient way to buy the NASAMS was through Washington and to piggyback on a purchase the United States was already making, Blair said.

On the margins of the Ukraine peace summit in Switzerland in June, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said his country is in urgent need of weapons and wished the air defence system Canada promised was already in place.

In his interview with CBC News, Blair said the latest information is that 10 NASAMS ordered by the United States will be delivered by the manufacturers Raytheon and Kongsberg Defence and Aerospace by the end of this year.

"Ours will be among that tranche of deliveries and we'll immediately get it to Ukraine" in early 2025, the minister added.