Aerospace & Defence · Intelligence Brief
Canada’s defence industrial window is open. It will not stay open.
The Carney government’s Defence Industrial Strategy commits $500 billion and structurally advantages Canadian firms for the first time in decades. The Build-Partner-Buy framework creates mandatory Canadian content requirements. The companies that position now will shape the supply chains of the next two decades.
Advanced Manufacturing · Canada Forward
Canada’s housing capacity crisis: 500,000 homes a year and a construction industry that cannot build them
Canada builds 259,000 units per year. The target is 500,000. The 82% shortfall is attributable to a productivity crisis, a fiscal commitment already being walked back, and a softwood lumber trade dispute embedded in every construction budget in the country.
Critical Minerals · Canada Forward
From consultation to ownership: why Indigenous economic development is Canada’s structural story
Indigenous-owned businesses generate more than C$100 billion annually in GDP. The trajectory has shifted from participation and employment toward ownership and governance. This shift is documented in project approval records, First Nations Finance Authority bond data, and federal procurement audits.
Canada Forward · Economic Analysis
Canada at an inflection point: the structural conditions that will define the decade ahead
Canada enters the second half of the 2020s with resource wealth the world urgently needs, trade agreement access covering 60+ countries, and a defence industrial base the NATO alliance is prepared to fund. What is not guaranteed is whether policy and institutional capacity will rise to meet that potential.
Capital & Finance · Canada Forward
The Maple Eight manage C$2.4 trillion. Twelve cents of every dollar comes home.
Canada manages C$4.5 trillion in pension assets, third globally. The Maple Eight are fully funded and consistently outperform global peers. The repricing of geopolitical risk and the scale of Canada’s infrastructure pipeline are changing the domestic allocation calculus.
Trade Intelligence · Canada Forward
Record FDI. A C$10 billion annual restriction penalty. Canada’s investment story has two endings.
Foreign direct investment into Canada reached C$96.8 billion in 2025, highest since 2007. Canada ranks second in the G20 for FDI stock as a share of GDP. It also maintains ownership restrictions estimated to cost C$10 billion annually in foregone productivity.
Canada Forward · Economic Analysis
What the next decade decides
Canada’s structural advantages are real. So are the structural risks. The choices made between 2026 and 2030 about housing, critical minerals, defence procurement, Indigenous partnership, and CUSMA positioning will compound in ways that are difficult to reverse before 2035. Two paths. One is available right now.
Agri-Food & Ocean Economy · Canada Forward
Three coastlines, the world’s second-largest EEZ, and an industry almost entirely absent from national trade intelligence
Canada’s fisheries generate C$7 billion in landed value and export 85% of production. The Marshall Decision, the value-added processing gap, Arctic shipping sovereignty, and the 2029 BC salmon phase-out all run through the same sector almost nobody covers as trade intelligence.