Manitoba is trying to position itself to capture a share of Ottawa’s commitment to increase defence spending — with the ultimate goal of becoming an aerospace and military hub.
Manitoba is holding an invitation-only summit this week with aerospace and defence industry experts from the United Kingdom. Topics such as Arctic defence and sovereignty, supply chain integration and procurement are on the table.
“How does Manitoba participate, given the strengths that we have, but also get more than our fair share?” said Paul Soubry, executive champion of the Manitoba-Canada Defence Alliance, a new organization tasked with promoting the aerospace industry in this province.
In its 2025 fall budget, the federal government set aside an additional $81.8 billion for defence over five years, but did not provide any details on how the money will be allocated or how it will meet NATO’s spending target of five per cent of gross domestic product by 2035. In 2026-27, the Carney government plans to spend $48 billion on defence, according to budget estimates.
Numbers aside, for some of the U.K.-based companies attending the summit, the presence of three of the biggest aerospace companies in Manitoba — Boeing, Magellan Aerospace and Standard Aerospace — is of huge interest. Many will go on tours of those companies’ Winnipeg facilities on Tuesday.
“We’ve just been blown away by what we’ve seen here today by the sheer breadth and capacity and capabilities that Manitoba has,” said James Watson, membership growth director with Make U.K. Defence, a trade association representing more than 1,000 small- and medium-sized companies.
“You need an attractive business environment anywhere in the world to set up, that’s a given, but what you really need is that ability to create those deep collaborations and connections between companies so they can work together and support one another in their journey,” Watson said.
“Canada has been a market that I think a lot companies have seen as sort of ‘B’ to the U.S. That’s changing.”
Rupert Sexton works for one of those companies. Finecast is a foundry that makes magnesium and aluminum gearbox housings —the rigid outer shell that protects the inner components of a transmission system — for the aerospace industry.
He is talking to a couple of Canadian companies that have expressed interest in working with Finecast, including potential suppliers. He’s interested in Manitoba’s infrastructure and location.
“We’re very keen to understand the logistics, the ports, the access to other parts of Canada,” Sexton said. “Everything we’ve seen thus far from this event leads us to believe that we’ve come to the right part of Canada for a chat about how we might be able to collaborate in this area.”
Kay Smith’s company, Jarvis Manufacturing, manufactures military textile products such as backpacks and canvas vehicle covers.
At a time when global supply chains are threatened, she’s looking forward to collaborating with Manitoba companies.
“It might only be a small thing to start with, but once we’ve got established and we all trust each other then I think it’s endless,” she said.
Jonathan Cox says he was delighted to get an invitation to the summit. He’s a director at Antillion, a technology company that makes heavy-duty computers and servers built to work in harsh, challenging environments instead of safe, air-conditioned data centres.
Cox was hiking in Alberta last week and tested his gear in the mountains. He says it’s ideal for the military because it’s small, lightweight, quiet, and uses less power while still delivering massive computing speed.
“Our inception was working for defence customers and so we’ve grown that base in the U.K.,” he said. “We’ve been doing a lot of outreach into sort of the Five Eyes allies, really, looking at what the opportunities are for the capability that we have.”
Trusted partnerships key
The summit comes at a time of increased international attention on defence and growing interest in strengthening economic and security relationships among trusted allies.
“The prime minister’s position globally and with our country is that we’re going to protect our own sovereignty,” Soubry said. “As much as we’re part of NATO or NORAD, we need to be independent and in control of our own destiny.”
Watson agrees.
“We need strategic independence, we need sovereign capability, we need resilience, and we need partners that can help us do that,” he said.
“The world we’re in is an interesting one, and I think, no matter what, we need Canada as an ally both from a strategic, from a political, but also from an industrial point of view.”
Cox sees threats from the United States as the impetus to move from reliance to collaboration.
“I think previously we’ve all relied perhaps a little too much on each other, someone else will do that bit of work for us, and now it’s a case of well we need to have more control over what we do,” he said.
Soubry said this won’t be the last summit of its kind — he hopes to announce another one very soon.
