Long-delayed defence policy update is being recrafted again, Blair says

Blair told a defence industry summit that the group helped him realize the current plans would not adequately answer questions raised by defence companies.

Defence Minister Bill Blair says he recently instructed his team to rejig the Liberals’ long-promised defence policy update, so as to give industry more clarity on long-term spending plans

“As the world becomes an increasingly difficult and challenging place, we have to make those investments,” Blair told an industry conference on Wednesday.

Blair told a summit held by the Aerospace Industries Association of Canada that the group helped him realize the current plans would not adequately answer questions raised by defence companies.

“It’s in part as a result of the meeting I had with you and your team the other day — a couple weeks ago — that I went back to my own team, and I said, ‘We really got to — as we now recraft and refine the defence policy update, it has to be an industry policy as well,”’ he said.

Blair said that he met with the Prime Minister’s Office “earlier this week” about the new changes to a policy update that had initially been expected in the fall of 2022.

He said he also expects to soon sit down with Finance Canada officials, who are set to publish the government’s overall spending plan in a mini-budget in the coming weeks.

“I hope to be able to provide that clarity in the next few months, as part of the fall economic statement that Finance will come out with, and so that the resources and the clarity will be there in the budget in the coming year,” Blair said.

The Liberals took office well before Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year, and before an escalation in military activity around China. Blair said that before those events, his government didn’t indicate it would need new technology or artillery.