After more than a decade of involvement, Canada’s special forces are dropping out of a U.S.-sponsored military exercise in Africa, with Ottawa saying it needs to reconsider where to deploy its resources.
The decision to stop participating in the annual Flintlock exercise, a key Pentagon priority in Africa, could be a sign that the Department of National Defence is stretched thin, with a growing list of commitments in Europe, Asia and the Arctic, defence analyst David Perry said.
Senior executives from Lockheed Martin will be in Quebec on Tuesday to confirm that they plan to service Canada’s F-35 aircraft at the L3Harris facilities in Mirabel, which are currently used to maintain Canada’s CF-18 fleet.
The announcement will be their first major outing on Canadian soil since Prime Minister Mark Carney announced last year that he was reviewing the government’s plans to purchase 88 F-35s.
The Department of National Defence (DND) says it does not centrally track Antifa involvement among members of the Canadian Armed Forces or its employees, saying there is no “common definition” of the movement.
In an April 13 response to an order paper question by Conservative MP Garnett Genuis, the DND said it does “in-depth screenings” to identify past records of extremism or hateful conduct but does not “centrally track involvement with Antifa in its human resources systems.”
A member of the Canadian military is suing both the federal government and an American-based gun manufacturer after being wounded by an unexpected, accidental discharge of his new handgun.
The C-22 pistol — the Canadian variant of the P320 — is at the centre of multiple injury claims and lawsuits in the United States.
Master Warrant Officer Jamie Deslaurier, a long-serving military police officer and weapons instructor, was wounded in the foot while being trained on the handgun, which went off while in his holster.
As well as being the first woman to lead Canada’s armed forces, General Jennie Carignan is also in command as her country pushes to rearm on a scale not seen since the Cold War.
This includes expanding the full-time military, bolstering the number of reservists and attempting to get up to 300,000 civilians to join a “strategic reserve” – a pool of people with some form of training that could be called upon in the event of a major crisis.
“The world has changed,” General Carignan told Sky News. “We have to get ready for large-scale conflicts, more conventional, so we need a different military to do that and different capability.”
PM Carney says the days of sending 70 cents of every dollar in military spending to the United States are over and gets a standing ovation pic.twitter.com/mW6MgLjYwQ
— Scott Robertson (@sarobertsonca) April 11, 2026
As part of its pitch to lure Canada to buy Gripen-E fighter jets, Saab has offered to establish a secure, sovereign data centre in Montreal to house critical, top-secret mission data and intelligence, CBC News has learned.
The company is framing it as a “unique advantage” in the battle to convince the government of Prime Minister Mark Carney to limit the purchase of U.S.-manufactured F-35s, which have all of their data stored at a Lockheed Martin centre in Fort Worth, Texas.
The purpose-built Saab data centre “will host all work on the fighter mission system,” Saab spokesperson Sierra Fullerton confirmed in a recent statement to CBC News.
Given the potential for graft I suspect Carney & Co. are leaning toward the Gripen.
The Canadian military is studying what kind of tanks and armoured troop carriers it will need in the future and how quickly those projects can and will be advanced, says the commander of the army.
An internal presentation, delivered to a closed-door audience in the United Kingdom last winter, suggested the timelines for buying new armoured fighting vehicles (AFVs) and main battle tanks (MBTs) were being accelerated.
In a recent interview with CBC News, Lt.-Gen. Mike Wright acknowledged the need to move quickly on the modernization of the army, but suggested the recent lessons and technological advances on the battlefield, particularly in Ukraine, need to be factored into future decisions on what kind of armoured vehicles and tanks are purchased.
An increasing percentage of Canadians say that they would be willing to serve in the Armed Forces if Canada were involved in a major conflict, suggests a new poll.
The public opinion survey, conducted by Nanos Research for The Globe and Mail, also shows that a majority of respondents said they have a positive view of the military and would support a friend or family member joining the Canadian Forces. Most respondents agreed that the military is a good career option for young people today.
Better than a poke in the eye I guess …
Canadian Armed Forces members used their own personal social media accounts, computers and networks at home during the COVID-19 pandemic and gathered information about Canadians, violating intelligence-gathering rules, according to a newly released report.
The internal military report obtained by CBC News provides a new look behind the scenes at how a controversial military operation went so wrong.
“Everything you could imagine in a military operation went wrong in this case,” said national security expert Wesley Wark.
CALGARY — Canada’s navy raised a transgender flag at its morning colours ceremony, accompanied by a message online stating it will not tolerate “hateful online conduct,” which may be subject to the “criminal justice process.”
Last week, “Transgender Day of Visibility,” was observed by the Royal Canadian Navy, or the East Coast Navy, on Canadian Forces Base (CFB) in Halifax — Canada’s largest military base in terms of population.
The federal government should consider a one-to-two-point increase in the GST and slower growth in non-defence spending to finance a massive jump Canada’s military budget, according to a new report from the C.D. Howe Institute.
“Some combination of tax increases, spending cuts, or taking on more debt is required,” wrote authors Colin Busby and Nicholas Dahir.
The analysis warns that meeting Canada’s commitment to raise defence spending to five per cent of GDP by 2035 will require “hard fiscal choices,” including potential GST hikes and tighter limits on non-defence programs.
The military’s operations command is currently drawing up an “all arms defence of Canada” plan which will lead to a major reorganization of the army this fall, says the country’s top army commander.
Lt.-Gen. Mike Wright, speaking at a land forces conference at the University of Calgary on Thursday, said the army’s existing four-division structure, which is largely administrative, is being torn down and replaced.
“The army we have is not the army we need,” Wright said.
Few policy choices shape a country more profoundly than decisions about sovereignty, security and military might.
Those questions are now at the centre of a debate triggered by Prime Minister Mark Carney’s pledge to meet a NATO defence spending target of five per cent of GDP by 2035 and the government’s new defence strategy.
Oh Oh! – US president considers blocking members of military alliance from decision-making unless 5 per cent spending target hit
OTTAWA — The North Atlantic Treaty Organization confirmed on Thursday that Canada’s defence spending has reached the target of two per cent of gross domestic product, a commitment that has been 20 years in the making.
“We control our destiny,” Prime Minister Mark Carney told reporters in Halifax. “I am pleased to announce today that we have kept that ambitious promise.”
Canada crossed the politically significant threshold of meeting NATO’s defence spending benchmark of two per cent of gross domestic product, according to the Western alliance’s annual secretary general’s report and compilation of statistics released on Thursday.
It is the first time since the late 1980s — toward the end of the Cold War — that the country has met the target, which has in recent years taken on enormous political and symbolic significance.
