Ashlee VanceNYT Best Seller | Reporter at Bloomberg Businessweek

Why Canada Stopped Building This #military #technology #shorts

21 Aug 2026 · 1 min

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1:00

The short video outlines Canada’s historical pattern of developing world‑class military hardware—such as the 1958 Avro Arrow jet and the later HMCS Badore warship—only to cancel and destroy them because of cost concerns. It then highlights that while Canada excels in defense technologies like flight simulators, robotics, and satellites, it lacks a Canadian‑owned prime contractor capable of building large‑scale systems, leaving the country dependent on U.S. firms such as General Dynamics. The segment ends by noting that an individual named Elliot is working to shift procurement toward Canadian companies, aiming to fill this structural gap.

In 1958, it built one of the fastest military jets on Earth, the Avro Arrow. A year later, the government decided it wasn't worth the money and had every single one destroyed, putting the company that built it out of business. A decade after that, Canada built the fastest warship of its kind on the planet, the HMCS Badore. Same story, too expensive, scrapped. So yes, Canada has had the juice before. It just keeps blowing the lead.
The golden goal for the United States!
Canada does in fact build world-class defense tech. Flight simulators, robotics, satellites. What it doesn't have is a Canadian-owned prime that builds the big things like Lockheed or Anduril do back in the States. Even the country's number one defense company, General Dynamics, is American. That's what Elliot is trying to solve.
The prime minister said 75% of what we spend on defense goes to American companies. Really? And he wants to change that to 75% Canadian companies.