OTTAWA — The federal government is pouring $1.4 billion into the munitions industry to build up the domestic supply of heavy artillery shells and reduce Canada\u2019s reliance on foreign suppliers.<\/p>\n
Ottawa will put public funds toward new facilities in Ingersoll, Ont., and Repentigny, Que., for producing components used to make heavy artillery shells.<\/p>\n
The funding will be split between IMT Precision and General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems Canada. General Dynamics Ordnance, a subsidiary of the major U.S. defence contractor General Dynamics, will get the lion\u2019s share of the funds.<\/p>\n
The goal is to quickly ramp up production of 155-millimetre artillery shells and to start production of nitrocellulose, a compound used as a propellant in artillery shells.<\/p>\n
China currently dominates the global nitrocellulose market on which NATO countries rely. Western nations also have sanctioned nitrocellulose firms supplying Russia, further tightening the supply.<\/p>\n
National Defence says it\u2019s looking to get production of nitrocellulose up and running in the next three years.<\/p>\n
The federal money is going in part to production of M795 shells. Canadian manufacturers produce a variant of the 155 mm shell known as the M107, a shorter-range and lower-power shell used for training and enemy harassment.<\/p>\n
Defence Minister David McGuinty said the funding is \u201cessential to national security\u201d and will lead to new jobs.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ability to produce our own ammunition is not optional. It\u2019s essential,\u201d he said at a Wednesday news conference.<\/p>\n
The industry has been waiting a long time for this.<\/p>\n
The Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries, which represents hundreds of domestic defence firms, has been aggressively pushing the government to restock the Canadian military\u2019s ammunition stores and convert domestic munitions lines.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s something that\u2019s been dangling there for years, since the start of the war in Ukraine, really,\u201d Christyn Cianfarani, the organization\u2019s CEO, said in an email. \u201cSo it\u2019s good to see they\u2019re starting to roll this out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Canada has struggled with the task of replenishing its munitions stocks and has donated ammunition to shell-hungry Ukraine for use in its war against Russia.<\/p>\n
Christian Leuprecht, a professor at the Royal Military College of Canada and Queen\u2019s University, said this a good start but the federal government is still short a robust, sovereign supply chain that could get it through more than a few days of a shooting war.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis stuff, we should\u2019ve been doing a long time ago. Everyone wants to talk about drones but this is bread-and-butter stuff that the army desperately needs,\u201d Leuprecht said.<\/p>\n
He added that Ottawa needs to stop being squeamish about entering into long-term munitions contracts.<\/p>\n
\u201cCanada is notorious for, `Oh yeah, we\u2019ll order 3,000 shells this year and the next year we\u2019ll order 5,000.\u2019 If you\u2019re industry, you\u2019re not going to invest hundreds of millions of dollars if you have no idea how much you\u2019re going to be able to sell,\u201d Leuprecht said.<\/p>\n
McGuinty unveiled the funding at an IMT plant in Ingersoll, a community still reeling from layoffs at the General Motors\u2019 CAMI Assembly factory. He pledged the new facility will lead to some 400 jobs.<\/p>\n
McGuinty did not answer when asked about the prospect of converting the CAMI plant to the manufacture of military vehicles.<\/p>\n
But the minister said the federal government is in talks with major car manufacturers about converting auto facilities to defence production and \u201cwill have more to say about this in due course.\u201d<\/p>\n
The funding breakdown has IMT receiving up to $305 million for a new factory to produce metal casings for 155 mm projectiles.<\/p>\n
General Dynamics Canada will get just over $1 billion in funds.<\/p>\n
The biggest chunk of that, $642 million, will go toward a plant to make 155 mm high\u2011explosive projectiles.<\/p>\n
A further $355.7 million goes to setting up the nitrocellulose facility, while $57.9 million has been set aside to create Canada\u2019s first plant making the M231 and M232 charges used in 155 mm artillery rounds.<\/p>\n
The funding all falls under the new Canadian Defence Industry Resilience program, part of the Liberal government\u2019s new defence industrial strategy aimed at building up domestic military supply chains and production capacity.<\/p>\n
The Liberals are seeking to spotlight components of that strategy with a series of funding announcements this week.<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 18, 2026.<\/p>\n
Kyle Duggan, The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OTTAWA — The federal government is pouring $1.4 billion into the munitions industry to build up the domestic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":544858,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194295],"tags":[45,49,48,32508,24803,46,47,20739,714],"class_list":["post-546307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ottawa","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-chemicals","tag-defence","tag-economy","tag-national","tag-ottawa","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=546307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546307\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/544858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=546307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=546307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}