{"id":611307,"date":"2026-04-18T00:34:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T00:34:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/611307\/"},"modified":"2026-04-18T00:34:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T00:34:12","slug":"canadian-military-procurement-faces-persistent-challenges-audit-warns-national","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/611307\/","title":{"rendered":"Canadian military procurement faces \u2018persistent challenges,\u2019 audit warns – National"},"content":{"rendered":"

An internal federal government\u00a0audit\u00a0delivered late last year warned the work of buying and upgrading\u00a0military\u00a0technology was still being plagued by bureaucratic\u00a0hurdles.<\/p>\n

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The report was released as the federal government forged ahead with reforms meant to speed up purchases of\u00a0military\u00a0equipment.<\/p>\n

The review began in the waning days of former prime minister Justin Trudeau\u2019s government and was delivered in late 2025.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0audit\u00a0said it found \u201cpersistent\u00a0challenges\u201d in the\u00a0procurement\u00a0system, even though it is \u201cevolving rapidly\u201d under Prime Minster Mark Carney\u2019s<\/a> government.<\/p>\n

\u201cDespite significant progress, the evaluation identified\u00a0persistent\u00a0challenges, such as disconnected databases, heavy oversight and excessive project documentation requirements,\u201d the\u00a0audit\u00a0said.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0audit\u00a0warned that even uncomplicated purchases tended to take on average a decade to complete. More complex projects to add new capabilities took anywhere from one to three decades to close out, it said.<\/p>\n

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Asked for comment about the\u00a0audit, Conservative defence critic James Bezan said it\u2019s \u201coutrageous that our women and men in uniform need to wait between nine and 27 years to get the equipment they need to defend Canada.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The\u00a0audit\u00a0said it examined 84 projects it could easily track \u2014 which is not necessarily a representative sample due to the complexity of the government\u2019s paper trails.<\/p>\n

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A spokesperson for Stephen\u00a0Fuhr, secretary of state for defence procurement, said the audit \u201chelped inform\u201d some of the policies being advanced through the new Defence Investment Agency.<\/p>\n

Spokesperson Laurent Blanchard said this agency has \u201calready accelerated several procurements to equip the Canadian Armed Forces with the tools it needs to defend our sovereignty.\u201d<\/p>\n

The agency is a new government office, created last fall, to streamline decision making and improve military procurement. It has already been at the centre of a number of high-profile purchases, such as the acquisition of a half-dozen Bombardier Global 6500 jets.<\/p>\n

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Blanchard credited the agency with speeding up the purchase of new modular assault rifles for the army by about two years.<\/p>\n

Carney\u2019s government has been moving to accelerate defence purchases to meet steep annual spending commitments to the NATO alliance, and to advance large priority purchases down the field.<\/p>\n

Defence Minister David McGuinty said at an event on Wednesday the government is moving major purchases along as fast as it can, and is slashing years off the process of buying a multi-billion dollar fleet of submarines for the Navy.<\/p>\n

The government has settled on that submarine project as a showcase for how intends to speed some procurements along.<\/p>\n

The Liberal government\u2019s structural reforms are also far from complete. It\u2019s expected to table legislation this spring to beef up the new defence investment agency, which is meant to streamline\u00a0procurement\u00a0decisions and speed up purchasing.<\/p>\n

That office is currently embedded within an existing department but is expected to legally become a stand-alone, independent office.<\/p>\n

Bezan dismissed it as an \u201cunnecessary\u201d layer of new bureaucracy that won\u2019t address core problems.<\/p>\n

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The\u00a0audit\u00a0cautioned that some policies \u2014 designed specifically for emergency acquisitions during crises \u2014 are \u201cconstrained by limited scope, heavy governance and lack of cross-departmental coherence.\u201d<\/p>\n

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It warned that even projects flagged as urgent \u2014 or as an \u201cunforecasted operational\u201d requirements aimed at addressing \u201ccritical\u201d short-term gaps in\u00a0military\u00a0capabilities \u2014 aren\u2019t guaranteed to move quickly and still have to \u201cnavigate the full bureaucratic maze.\u201d<\/p>\n

Flagging purchases as urgent can sometimes slash\u00a0procurement\u00a0timelines from a decade or more down to three years or so. But the\u00a0audit\u00a0warned it does \u201cnot deliver on its mandate\u201d and that some purchases have not \u201cprogressed as intended, which raises questions about the suitability of the current framework.\u201d<\/p>\n

The\u00a0audit\u00a0painted a picture of understaffed project offices overwhelmed by paperwork and the large number of stakeholders with which they have to consult.<\/p>\n

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\u201cSuccess is relative and is not satisfactory according to program staff,\u201d it said. \u201cThe system is not designed for speed.\u201d<\/p>\n

The report said five projects it examined related to the mission in Latvia that were flagged as urgent were expected to take between 30 to 40 months to reach initial operating capability. It did not say what the projects are.<\/p>\n

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The\u00a0audit\u00a0examined two specific policies in detail. The first is \u201cagile\u00a0procurement\u201d for IT projects and the second is called \u201ccontinuous capability sustainment\u201d \u2014 which was outlined in the last defence policy update and is meant to upgrade equipment as it goes through its regular maintenance cycles.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0military\u00a0typically waits until a platform or technology is about halfway through its life expectancy before upgrading its systems. The\u00a0audit\u00a0said that if the two policies were better supported, they could make an \u201cimmediate impact\u201d on improving\u00a0procurement.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t&copy 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An internal federal government\u00a0audit\u00a0delivered late last year warned the work of buying and upgrading\u00a0military\u00a0technology was still being plagued…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":611308,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[27264,49,48,35169,2659,44,714],"class_list":["post-611307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-audit","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-david-mcguinty","tag-mark-carney","tag-news","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611307","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=611307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611307\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/611308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}