Last week the defence industry, stakeholders and government partners saw that the Atlantic Canada defence advantage is real, and that Newfoundland and Labrador is already built for defence.
That was the case Premier Tony Wakeham made directly to industry and stakeholders this week at the 13th Maritime Arctic Security and Safety Conference in St. John’s, NL.
His message to the primes, integrators, and program partners in the room: stop imagining a future capability and look at what already exists here.
Decades of precision engineering and large-scale fabrication from offshore energy have built a workforce and industrial base that transfers directly to defence. There are deepwater, ice-free ports at Bull Arm and Port of Argentia, a $200M dry dock commitment from Equinor with a second under consideration, and 14,000+ Trades NL members, including specialty welders and pipefitters, ready to work now.
That industrial capacity sits inside a strategic position few can match: closer to Europe than any other point in Canada, on NATO’s northern flank, the closest region to Greenland and the Northwest Passage, with 5 Wing Goose Bay backed by up to $8B in federal investment, with billions of more in infrastructure investment across the region’s Canadian Armed Forces bases.
Atlantic Canadian companies are already exporting technology built for zero-visibility naval operations, ice navigation, subsea systems, and marine simulation. These dual-use capabilities are developed for the harshest conditions on earth and competing globally.
With Canada’s Patrol Submarine program now engaged with TKMS and Arctic and North Atlantic defence priorities accelerating, the Premier’s ask to industry was straightforward: partner with what’s proven, invest in a workforce that’s ready.
