The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - Are Drones Reshaping Canada's Defence?

Episode Date: May 15, 2026

Who controls the systems that shape Canada's security, and how prepared are we for what comes next? We examine the growing use of unmanned aerial vehicles, asking what role Canada plays in developing drone technology, whether low-cost UAVs are changing modern defence, and what capacity the country may be lacking. Katheron Intson, CEO and co-founder of Sentinel R&D, explains where Canada fits and what closing those gaps would require. We then look to the past to better understand the present. At the Canadian Tank Museum in Oshawa, we explore what historic military vehicles reveal about Canada's wartime contributions, industrial support, and long-standing approach to defence. And beyond the battlefield, who controls our security online? In this episode of TVO Today's Unravelled, we ask what we give up when we agree to digital terms and conditions, who gains access to that information, and what meaningful protection of our digital lives would look like.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hi, I'm Nam Kiwanuka, host and producer of mistreated, a podcast on women's health. There just hasn't been a lot of money put into researching women's health issues. If women are in pain, it's hysteria, it's an emotional issue. And this is what you see consistently. Women's health is not taken seriously. How did we get here? Find us wherever you get your podcasts, and be sure to check out the video version of the show on the TVO Today YouTube channel. Hope to see you then. Drones are transforming modern warfare. They're precise, pretty easy to mass produce, and far cheaper than the alternatives. So it's no surprise they're playing a key role in current conflicts, like the war in Ukraine.

Around the world, countries see them as critical for military operations. So do Canadian companies have a role to play here? We look at the state of domestic drone production and where it could and should go next. Then we head to the Canadian Tank Museum in Oscewa to learn about Durham region's history of making military equipment and why the museum has dedicated itself to collecting tanks from around the world. This is the rundown. Unmanned aerial vehicles or UAVs may be cheap compared to traditional military hardware, but they can make a real difference. So what does Canada have to offer in terms of drone technology? and production, and could we be doing more? Kath Insin is CEO and co-founder of Sentinel R&D, a defense and aerospace technology company.

And she joins me in studio. How are you doing, Kath? I'm doing well. Thanks for having me. Thank you for joining us. All right, your company manufactures unmanned aerial vehicles, better known as UAVs, help me understand what exactly is that? They're drones.

Drones. A little fancier, though. A little bit fancier. are a little bit fancier. Obviously, drones can mean a lot of different things. Generally, we think of drones as being, you know, something, a flying thing that doesn't have pilots, essentially. Ours look a little bit more like the traditional flying things that don't have pilots. So ours are what's called a fixed-wing UAV, meaning that it has airplane-like arms, which gives it a distance that, say, a quadcopter, DJI-type videography drone wouldn't have.

All right. Well, let's look at some examples. examples of your UAVs. We have some photos here. The first one here, we've got a red RAM-1500 pickup truck that gives us a better sense of this scale. This is not your 250 gram DGI drone that you're flying over some scenic stuff. This is some big stuff here. The second photo that we have is in mid-air as well, like you mentioned, like a plane in terms of its wings. Describe to me, like what's the wingspan here? How long can this stay in the air? Yep. So, So our recum 3.2, that's what's on the screen right now, is a 3.2 meter wingspan drone. So somewhere around 12 feet, if you're thinking in freedom units, and about a two meter length

fuselage. What this does is that this gives it distance and endurance. So when we think about how long this thing can actually stay in the air, it's around five hours operating, you know, over 100 kilometers an hour, which gives it a range of, over 500 kilometers. Unlike the consumer drones, which are there for really videography, looking at views, what are these drones used for? They can be used for a wide variety of applications.

So, you know, everything from surveillance to decoy to electronic warfare or even for combat applications like strike. Okay. Your background isn't in drones necessarily. You have a pharmacology background as well. How did you get into this space? The way that I explain this to people is that I'm slowly kind of becoming a generalist entrepreneur.

So I've now been involved in a couple of startup companies, the first being one that I spun out of my PhD. So like you said, I did a PhD in pharmacology at the University of Toronto, and then I went into a company that was very much biotech. I raised venture capital for that business, which gave me a lot of skills in terms of running a business, fundraising for a business that I still use. But I'm also Estonian. And so when the war in Ukraine broke out, I think it ended up on the news feeds of those of us with Eastern European heritage or citizenship much more predominantly than perhaps other citizens of Canada.

And being Eastern European, I have a really good sense of what it's like to lose your home, to lose your country, to lose your sovereignty, to lose your identity, and the multi-generational impacts of war. So there was this big question in the back of my mind around how we could help Ukraine. Now, my brother is also Estonian, and unlike my background in biotech, he's always been much more defense-focused. And so, you know, I mean, I have a scar on the bottom of my foot from stepping on one of his military tanks as a kid. He's just this encyclopedia of military strategy and defense technology knowledge. And he became much more entrenched in the goings-on of the conflict. He spent 18 months spying in Russian telegram channels, pretending to be a Russian aerospace executive, talking with Russians spying on the companies there.

And we got a really good sense of what it looked like. Ukraine might be missing in terms of their capabilities. And it turned out that this translated to the West. So he approached actually originally our other business partner, Chris Pye, who was his then boss around starting this type of company. And where I really started to get excited was in the scale of the business and the potential applications of the type of work that he was doing across NATO. So I became involved just over a year ago.

Okay. Now, your company is based in Ontario. It is. All right. So I want to talk a little bit. Ontario, but also Canada, full of small businesses and tech innovators. As you mentioned, not your first company here. But getting support can be tough.

And so I want to get a better to say, is this country actually ready to back manufacturing companies like yours? It's a good question. I will say that the engagement that we have had from our Department of National Defense to date has been extremely positive. It's made me very optimistic about. small businesses or startups starting a company here in Canada. On the provincial side of things, we've also seen some good early indicators of that support.

There are actually a number of provinces that are looking to lean into aerospace and defense during this time, which is really, really exciting. But yeah, I would say while there are going to continue to be problems with things like procurement, growing pains of suddenly having an increased defense budget, I would say that I'm optimistic that Canada is serious about changing the way that we've been doing things. Well, it's been recently announced that Canada will host the Defense Security and Resilience Bank, still trying to figure out which city that will be,

whether it's Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, or Vancouver. But what are your thoughts on an international defense financing hub right here in Canada? What does that decision gesture or what's that direction show for you? When we raised our first round of capital 15 months ago, and we were starting to look at who would even do our day-to-day banking operations, it was a very pessimistic landscape for Defense Tech 15 months ago. We had banks that would refuse to even give us a checking account. And so I see the DSRB as potentially solving quite the issue, which is a willingness to underwrite projects that traditional banks still don't have. have the appetite for. I've seen some of the policy documents that indicate change within some of

Canada's biggest banks to provide better support to Canadian companies. And there are still some gaps in terms of the things that they will finance and the type of support that they will give. So I'm actually quite optimistic, again, about the DSRB, the Defense for Resilience and Security Bank, in solving a lot of these issues. Now, there are some questions, there are some questions around the gaps that these folks are filling simply because there are private lenders that are already fulfilling a lot of these needs with businesses. They're not necessarily the most accessible for small companies, but they do already exist. And so where I think there's an opportunity is in a bigger institution that is backed by NATO countries that directly interfaces with our big banks and has

those ongoing conversations. Do you mind me asking how much money are we talking about in terms of your company when we're talking about raising capital? I'm assuming there's a few zeros there. There are a few zeros. Obviously, you know, the needs of your business kind of indicate the amount of capital that you need to raise. But also, I think for businesses that have global ambitions, not just a Canadian company, but a global company that builds in Canada first, I think you need buy-in from, you know, other countries, other business people within those countries. And those folks can make great partners to Canadian companies that are looking to build something big and to scale.

All right. Well, talking about buy-in, Canada released its defense industrial strategy. So three, the main point is build, partner, buy. Curious, is Canada prepared to manufacture defense or military equipment as of today? Well, one of the things that really shocked me as we got to, as we got a better sense of the Canadian landscape, was that we appeared to be the only Canadian company both designing and building a fully completed drone. That was really, really surprising to me. What does everyone else kind of doing? We manufacture, you know, sensors, parts, the sorts of things that go on drones or parts of the drone airframes themselves.

We're really good at those things. And so all of that is to say that we have some amazing companies already. But in terms of who's building completed products, it seemed like we were the only ones, at least in the fixed-wing drone space. All right. I am curious, you know, Prime Minister Carney has been making deals, South Korea as one of them, to shore up defense equipment. I'm curious, is there a time? When does it make sense to partner or buy abroad?

Well, one of the biggest concerns that I think people have had about the defense industrial strategy would be over-prioritizing Canadian companies to the detriment of our Canadian Armed Forces members. Obviously, we need the equipment that they're using. regardless of the kind of political discourse of the day, we need them to be properly equipped. And so making sure that it makes sense to build those capabilities in Canada

instead of partnering, making sure that we have the right technologies to put into their hands versus partnering with folks who may have combat-proven technologies, who may have better interoperability with some of the other equipment that we are buying, all of those factors need to be.

be considered. And I think that the signal has to come from the Canadian Armed Forces. So when they're taking a look at the overall landscape of equipment that's available, what are they seeing as potentially being the most useful? You work in the drone space, so you are a person of precision, and you at a recent conference said that Canada is starting to get, quote-unquote, wichy-washy about how it defines sovereignty. Right, and I need to kind of qualify those comments. Specifically, I was speaking to the investor landscape. I have a few other comments that I'll also mention. But when we look at the Canadian finance landscape,

we're seeing that many of our publicly funded venture capital institutions are still excluding defense, even though we've said that this is a national priority. Even though we have given our industry direction to build for Canada, we still see that they get very squeamish when it comes to actual defense. So, you know, we can't just invest in dual-use companies that are more palatable.

I mean, I could take my old biotech company and call it dual-use if I use the right marketing and ways of describing it. But we do definitely need to prioritize building businesses that are serving the needs of our Canadian Armed Forces, member, whether that's in the Arctic, whether that's in combat. those are the things that need to be prioritized.

On the other hand, when we look at the defense industrial strategy, and this is actually my one criticism of it, is that we're very vague about how we define a Canadian company. So you can still be an American defense prime that falls under the definition of a Canadian company simply because they have a Canadian office. So there, I would say that we need to be really careful about who we support in this new era of work.

if we are to build a few great Canadian companies and many great Canadian small businesses. I would say those concerns we have definitely heard on this in this studio at this table in the past. Let's go to a bit of the battlefield here. In Latvia, there was a 10-day military training exercise called Crystal Arrow, where our NATO allies there are learning from Ukrainians about the usage of drones in warfare. What does that tell us about where our NATO allies are right now when it comes to modern warfare? I can speak to several exercises and my own experiences in Ukraine interacting with the armed forces of Ukraine and unmanned systems forces. And I can speak specifically to drones.

The Ukrainians are building the best drones on the market to date on a cost shot basis, meaning they're building the best cheapest drones that are available. I can also tell you just, again, from having what? some of Ukraine's unmanned systems forces operating drones, that this is Ukraine's greatest generation. They are the best drone pilots in the world, and we must

support this ally if we are to learn from them. Here in Canada, we used to boast about the prowess of our snipers, for example. We had the best snipers in the world. That was a capability that we were very proud of and that the world recognized

us for having. We are seeing snipers, for example, being replaced with a lot of drone piloting operations. And so we need to stay ahead of the curve and learn from Ukraine because what's at stake here is a change in world order if we don't adopt to the newest techniques of warfare in the battlefield. You mentioned supporting Ukraine. I am curious, are your drones, are you selling your drones to Ukraine as well? We have drones in country being tested right now. Are there other countries that your drones are at? There are. We also sell to other NATO countries as well.

All right. One of the things about sort of how quickly things are changing in this sort of modern warfare landscape, in that same crystal arrow military exercise, which happened a few days after, where drones in Ukraine that were intended for Russian targets were diverted into Latvia. Technology is evolving so quickly. So how do we stay on top of it? That is a big question. I think that there are some lessons that we can take from the Ukrainians.

I think that the number one lesson that we need to learn is modularity in our operations. So it isn't enough to simply buy 100,000 of one system. They need to fulfill a wide range of capabilities. And sometimes this actually takes more. interfacing with your end user. So, for example, in Ukraine, there are now engineers that sit on the front line, retrofitting, commercial drones or military drones with other types of equipment. That's not something that I've quite seen in the Canadian Armed Forces yet. I have observed that there are now sometimes these engineer attaches to some units in the U.S., for example.

but that is a major change that we need to make in order to monitor the battlefield, monitor the front line, and adapt accordingly. Many Canadian companies manufacturing military equipment are focusing some of their efforts on the Arctic, as you mentioned. Should Canada and Canadian companies focus more of its efforts here in the country? Absolutely. I think this is low-hanging fruit. We know that the U.S. has historically spent a lot of time monitoring our Arctic,

in conjunction with the Canadian government, of course, and the Canadian Department of National Defense. But that is something that they've always spent a lot of their own money on. They've told us that enough is enough, and we need to be doing this. And so absolutely, this is a priority for Canada. Last year, you were at Parliament Hill, talking at a committee hearing,

talking about sort of this being an opportunity, essentially. And if we let it go, we will, perhaps regret it. And you use an example of 1917 Vimy Ridge. Help me understand how that moments can kind of help us understand what moment we are in right now. I think my point at Parliament was that Canada has always punched far above its weight in the theater of war. We have always contributed capabilities that have led to us winning battles. And while we might be a middle power, there is opportunity to exercise that power in delivering capabilities to our allies.

What we need to make sure we don't make the mistake of doing is developing in Canada just for the sake of developing in Canada. We need to not just onshore capabilities that other companies within other countries can give us. We need to focus our efforts on developing things that are novel and new, whether it's specifically for use in Canada or that can be more broadly applied to our allies. Kath, this has been very insightful.

I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with me. Thank you so much. Absolutely. Thank you for having me. Did you know the Canadian Tank Museum in Oshua has the country's largest collection of historical military vehicles? Rundown producer Britt Weaver visited to learn about how the region supported past war efforts and what these tanks tell us about Canada's military.

heritage. It's very important that people understand that our museum and the things that we're doing educationally in the shows is not to in any way glorify war or promote conflict. The whole purpose is so that people can have an understanding of what our veterans in the past and today served on, what protects them, how the systems work. And it's more to honor their service and sacrifice. I'm Jeremy Bloers. I'm the executive director of the Canadian Tank Museum. It was founded in 1980, but in a different iteration.

The Canadian Tank Museum we know today was actually founded only in 2024. It was known for many years as the Ontario Regiment Museum. But as the collection had grown, so had the scope and the stories that we were telling. Our collection has 163 pieces of actual military equipment. Over 150 of them are operations. are operational. That is one of the largest fleets of running military vehicles in the world. We have pieces of equipment that cover the entire mechanization of military hardware. So everything from jeeps to trucks, to engineering vehicles, to armored personnel carriers, infantry fighting

vehicles, tanks from the Second World War to ones that are being used on battlefields today, advanced lab technology, sometimes even something simple like a Model T-4. The technology advancements is incredible, not just within a span of 100 years, but even within a decade. Some of our older equipment is very mechanical. We're now starting to get machines into the museum that have digital technology, that have advanced sighting systems. The lessons learned that Canadians learned on the battlefield led to the Lav 3 RWS or remote weapon systems, Nunuk, where there was incredible advanced optics that were built into the vehicle. I had a veteran, a member of this museum, tell me the story of using those Canadian optics at night in Afghanistan,

and he was watching a spider across the road with night vision three kilometers away. When things are retired out of militaries, they often go on auction, and private individuals, collectors around the world, they purchase them. And over time, we've been very lucky that people have donated them after they've restored them to the museum. Sometimes we get phone calls that there's an old ruined vehicle in a barn somewhere and do we want it. We'll pick it up and over years we'll restore it.

Also, we have benefactors, those who have served in the Canadian Armed Forces or support the Canadian Armed Forces, who see something in the world, and they have donated the funds so that our museum could purchase those vehicles and bring them here for Canadians to enjoy. We have the General Motors Fox, Mark I, built right here in Oswald, Ontario in 1943.

As you can see, it's not a truck. It's an armored reconnaissance vehicle. Proudly here with the GM logo with the Maple Leaf. This is just one of seven. that remains of the over 1,400 that were built during the war. What's more interesting is that this isn't just an example of a General Motors Fox. This is a veteran that was produced in 43, sent overseas to serve in the Italian campaign, and exactly 80 years later in 2023, it was repatriated to the Canadian Tank Museum

thanks to a very generous donor from Toronto. It started primarily in the First World War. The Canadian forces in the beginning of mechanization required simple things like trucks. We were replacing much of the horses and carriages that were pulling much of our equipment. So they went to civilian makers. So even here in Oscewa, like the McLaughlin Automotive Company, they got contracts to sell some of their vehicles to the Canadian Armed Forces. But in the Second World War, that's where Canada really punched above its weight,

and produced over 800,000 pieces of military equipment for both our forces and our allies. This has always been sort of a military production corridor. So in Oshawa and Durham region, this really is a hub where we have rail, we have air infrastructure, we have ports, and we also have that industrial infrastructure and know-how. This has been an auto town for over 100. years. And so not only do we have the workforce that's trained, we have the capacity. We have the industrial capacity to do exactly what we did in the 1940s and start building things

for our military and for our allies. These were used by the Canadian Armed Forces. They are the basis of the United States striker fleet of vehicles. The makeup of our visitors has been evolving over the last decade. When I was first involved here, we only had about 1,200 visitors a year. Most of them were veterans or military families. We used to joke that we were Durham Regions best kept military secret. Nobody knew we were here. But that's been changing. We've seen our visitor numbers grow by up to 70% year over year.

Last year, for the first time, we had over 20,000 paid visitors, which is not bad for a medium-sized and growing museum. The collection in the museum itself is becoming more well-known, both within Canada and around the world, but also with the conflicts that we're seeing, around the world, things that are on people's screens, on people's television screens. You know, people would like to understand more about not only those conflicts, but have an interest in the technology and the equipment. It touches home when the vehicles in your collection are

still being used in conflicts today. So, you know, our Belgian Army Leppford 1A5 and Soviet T-54, these machines are currently fighting in the Ukraine conflict. So it's unfortunate. and people are coming here now, and something that was built in the 1950s is on the 21st century battlefield. Our museum is a place where people can connect, not just with the history, but they can connect with soldiers. Thank you guys for coming out to Oscewa

and coming here to the Canadian Tank Museum. This is probably a record-opener crowd. We only have a staff of four, four full-time staff. You know, we do have some part-time retirees and students obviously that supplement that. But this museum is run by volunteers. We have 208 volunteers on the books. About 50% of them are former serving members

of the Canadian Armed Forces or our Allied Forces. The other 50%, most of them are military families with a connection both to the history or to the Canadian Armed Forces directly through an ancestor or through a family member. Our oldest members are in their 80s, and our youngest members, might be serving in a local cadet corps and they're 16 years old.

And they find here a home after their service and also got to still work with the equipment. It was sort of therapeutic to them. Our visitors say that to us all the time. Our number one review is not so much about how great the tanks are, but about how their experience was in speaking with the guide, the volunteer, or the veteran who shared their experience with the visitor when they came. I'm Jan. Thanks for watching The Rundown. What topics would you like to see us tackle? Send us your suggestions at rundown at tbO.org. Or as always, you can leave us a comment on our YouTube page.

And coming up next week on the show, we dig into wage theft and surveillance pricing, infectious diseases, and public safety on public transit. I hope you can join us. I will see you next week. Next week on the Rundown. some evidence that up to a thousand different data points are now used to calibrate the price that you see when you book your airline. So that's a new dimension, right? That's being supercharged by data. And sometimes a lot of that data has been willingly volunteered by us when we're engaging in loyalty programs that also share our purchase history. So you're absolutely right that there's distinctions between supply and demand constraints influencing price as well, you know, with food, geopolitical

pressures. There's a lot that goes into a firm pricing something. But again, increasingly we're seeing with experiments the same people like in the same geography shopping at the same store online are being served different prices if you're enjoying this series please consider supporting tv o with a donation to make more insightful and thought-provoking podcast possible tvo is a registered charity and you will receive a tax receipt for your gift visit tv o.org slash give tvo to make your donation today