92nd Ottawa Conference | March 7th-8th 2024

What would it take? A majority of Canadians do not support greater investment in the military and the broader security sector, despite a clear deterioration in the state of global peace and security, with the first war of conquest breaking out in Europe since 1939, foreign assassinations on Canadian soil, wars raging in Gaza and the Sahel, and the impacts of climate change calling our forces to action more often domestically than ever before. Deliveries of equipment are late to need. Our allies are concerned about our commitment. We are left on the sidelines of global decision-making. It is hard to imagine a greater gap between the reality of threats and our general consciousness of and reaction to them.

Building on one another, they include the weaponization of artificial intelligence; a personnel shortage in public safety and military roles; a lost ability to forge political consensus around security & defence; the rise and execution of powerful global revisionism; burden sharing woes shaking the NATO alliance; and a wavering of support to Ukraine, intertwined with foreign disinformation campaigns sowing disunity and undermining our will to uphold justice and human rights.

The question cannot be simply what needs to be done but, more urgently, what can be done with the capacity we have now rather than an ideal future capacity we might never get. Given the gap between what Canada can do and what it will be called upon to do, our nation will necessarily find itself facing heart-wrenching trade-offs with life and death consequences.

Our moderators will propose conversations on how together we can flip the tide by leveraging the very forces we are up against in offsetting the risks they present. Can the pain of burden sharing among allies be offset with greater specialization and can we build the trust and interoperability so that together we fill one another’s capability gaps? Knowing that climate action can serve as a powerful call to service, can we better engage younger generations into serving in the security sector workforce? How can we instrumentalize A.I. to reduce the costs of force projection? Is it better to choose the “best in class” or the “fit to purpose” when making materiel decisions? Should our future forces be maximized towards both expeditionary and domestic capabilities by design? 

The challenges ahead are novel and intimidating in their compounding effect. However, they are not insurmountable, insofar as we uncover and utilise the underlying leverage at our disposal and prioritize diligently. Most importantly though, is to shape and communicate a strong wake-up call for Canadians and their political leaders.