The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - Is Canada's Military Ready for a More Dangerous World?

Episode Date: October 15, 2026

General Wayne Eyre retired in 2024 after four decades of military service, most recently as Canada's chief of the defence staff. What did his time at the top teach him about the state of Canada's military and the politics shaping it? Then, Ann Fitz-Gerald of the Balsillie School of International Affairs examines Canada's new Defence, Security and Resilience Bank. What role could it play in confronting today's security challenges, and what happens if some countries choose not to join?Donate Today : https://tvo.me/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What a difference a year can make. When you support TVO, you're helping bring trusted stories, inspiring ideas, and lifelong learning to people across Ontario. And as a thank you, you can receive the 2027 TVO calendar. Filled with beautiful photography from the documentaries and programs your support helps make possible. It's a year-long reminder of the learning, beauty, and discovery your generosity supports. Donate $40 or more to claim yours today at TVO.com slash calendar 2027 and make every month a little more inspiring. This summer, the government quietly issued a press release announcing the Canadian Armed Forces was going to rebalance operations to quote, strengthen global footprint. But behind that bureaucratic language was a significant shift in Canada's military priorities.

Because what that means is that Canada will be wrapping up peacekeeping operations in countries, including Kosovo and South Sudan. And that decision raised some serious concerns. Former UN Ambassador Bob Ray, for one, called it a, quote, crucial abandonment of a defining national mission for our international credibility. But not everyone sees peacekeeping as crucial to our national identity or as something that should be one of Canada's top military priorities. One of those people is retired general Wayne Eyre.

He joins us to talk about his new memoir, where Canada should be focusing its efforts, and why he says the idea of Canada as a nation of peacekeepers is a myth we need to put firmly in the past. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Mark Carney has been pushing another idea aimed at strengthening Canada's role on the world stage, something called the Defense Security and Resilience Bank. So all of this is good news. It's good news to protect Canada. It's good news for cooperation. So will this defense bank increase our standing on the world stage?

and what exactly is it and how will it work? We're looking at how Canada's approach to defense is changing and what that could mean for our place in the world. I'm Jay and Jagannawthon. Welcome to the rundown. When General Wayne Eyre retired in 2024, after four decades of military service, he'd been serving as Canada's chief of the defense staff and getting firsthand experience of how our military

and our politics operate. General Wayne, Air, great to meet you, great to have you on the rundown. How are you doing? Excellent. And thank you so much for having me on your show. Of course. Well, congratulations on the book. I want to start from the very beginning. You write in your memoir, into the breach of soldiers' journey that despite coming from a family of Saskatchewan farmers, you always wanted to be a soldier. I was drawn to it at an early age, whether it was patrolling with my brothers and cousins, with sought off hockey sticks on the farm, or being super interested in all things military,

joining Army cadets at the age of 12. I tried at 11, but they wouldn't let me in. And I was hooked. So I joined the Army at 17. And that was a couple of days even before graduation, correct? Well, I was in basic training three days after graduation from high school. So you always knew this was what you wanted to. Yes, yes.

It truly was a calling. Let's fast forward. You retired from the Canadian Armed Forces in 2024 as chief of the defense staff after a military career spanning almost 40 years. You describe it in your book as a journey, a military career as a journey. So I imagine there are some peaks and valleys in there. So I want to start with some of those peaks. What was the highest point of your career?

Well, there was a number of high points. In the Battle of the Medak Pocket, for example. 1990. 1939. Even though we were surrounded by death and destruction, seeing the platoon I was commanding come together, it was a bit of a paradox, being surrounded by death, but never feeling so alive,

and seeing the goodness that we were trying to do, and just the professionalism of our soldiers. It's incidents or events like that where you're surrounded by truly good people, professional people, serving a higher purpose. That's one of the themes in the book is just the quality of the people in our military. It makes it all worthwhile.

I imagine throughout a 40-year career there are also moments that are going to be tough. I know you talk about sort of, there are moments of thinking about resigning, sort of later in your post as well. What was the lowest point? Probably the lowest point was a period between May 25th, 2007, and July 4th, 2007, during which we lost 10 soldiers that were under my command

from 3rd Battalion, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, were associated, affiliated with that battalion. And I would often reflect on that period, especially when I was Chief of Defense Staff, and staff would come and they would start to discuss an ongoing issue and start to catastrophize and we would put it into context. Is it any worse than what we experienced at that point? Is anybody dead or about to die?

No. Okay. Let's take a breath because it's not that bad. So anchor, it was a low point, but it would also serve to anchor me later on during other crises. I have to ask, you know, there's the career on the front lines. There are a career where you are, you know, shoulder to shoulder with your team. There's also this career where there's an intersection of military and politics that a lot of people I don't think understand. You talk a little bit about that.

Was there anything from that time sort of in that latter part of your career that you look back on and think, you know, I necessarily didn't sign up for this or this was some challenging parts? Well, nobody joins the military thinking that they're going to be the interface of the military and the political level. But that's one of the reasons I wrote this book, to capture the inherent tension and messiness of political military relations. Hey, there's been some hype in the media about snippets in the book about disagreements with the Trudeau government. But the real message is the subservience of the military to duly elected civilian politicians. And it's a pillar of our democracy. But it's an unequal relationship. And how to navigate that relationship is, inhuman.

inherently messy, and that's what I talk about. But at the end of the day, the politicians make the decision. I want to talk about pushback. In your book, you push back on the notion that Canada is still a nation of peacekeepers. Tell us why you think that it's a myth. Well, the myth or the belief that we are a nation of peacekeepers came to the fore during the Cold War when we were very involved in peacekeeping missions around the world because that mission set had relevance.

Lightly armed force, often between two warring parties, that had agreed to peace. What we face now, usually, almost always, more than two parties to a conflict. Some will act as spoilers, so very difficult to get the acquiescence of all parties to the conflict. Lightly armed force will find itself outgunned.

As we saw in the Battle of Madak Pocket in 1993, where we were on a United Nations Chapter 6 peacekeeping mission, which devolved into high-intensity combat. And I call that chapter of the death. peacekeeping for a reason, and it's just that. Peacekeeping has not been the same. You know, we in Canada need to take a longer look at our history. It's not just that period in the Cold War.

It goes back to World War I, World War II. Yeah, we have fought wars. We have done some very, very heavy lifting. Let's remember that as part of our national identity. Then, with that being said, what is our role now? So, first and foremost, the role of the military is to, defend the state. That is the ultimate role of any military in any country. And, you know, sometimes we have forgotten that. And we've, we've had the luxury in this country of being

isolated from world events, secure behind three oceans, one permanently frozen, and a benign superpower to our south. While we're living in a globally integrated security environment where what happens the other side of the world can have immediate impact here. And so, you know, for a long time, we were expeditionary in nature, in the Canadian military. We prefer to weigh games. We would create security for Canada on foreign shores. World War I, World War II, Korea are examples. Well, like most militaries in the world, we now got to be focused on the home game more in the Arctic, continental defense. The world seems to be in so much chaos right now, as you sort of explained here. Help me understand, how prepared is Canada right now to deal with us?

So we are facing an unprecedented level of uncertainty in the global security environment because of the confluence of a number of stressors. Geopolitical change, climate change, technological change, acceleration, societal change, all coming together at the same time, meaning the future is very uncertain. And so we've got to hedge against that uncertainty because it could go many different ways. And I believe the government is doing that now in terms of hedging, diversifying, our friends, partners, allies. But also, in times of uncertainty,

the nation's ultimate insurance policy is a strong military. It's going to take a while to get there because we're starting from such a deficit. And so implementing the government direction, which I believe is the right direction, but implementing with a sense of urgency is very much in our national interest.

With that being said, I know this is a question that you have been asked a few times, but how do you deal with all of that when you've got some neighbors to the south? a president who is not a huge fan of Canada right now. Well, that's a very tricky question as well. I write in the book about meeting him in Korea in the demilitarized zone, which some days in the military you get to do interesting things.

But of the very many different future scenarios out there, many of them still have the U.S. as friendly down the road. We just don't know what's going to be happening in 5, 10, 15, 20 years. We're going to have to coexist because the United States is not going away, China's not going away, but let's coexist from a position of being strong enough to ensure our sovereignty, our strategic autonomy, so that we can make our own decisions. And that means investing in our own hard power, military, economic, energy, so that we can do as much as possible by ourselves.

But let's at the same time not discard existing alliances. because we may need them in the future. For the first time in a very long time, Canada hit the GDP 2% benchmark that is set up by NATO spending on defense. And so I imagine there are many Canadians right now who believe in the midst of an affordability crisis. Instead of spending money on military, they would like money to be spent on other things, like housing, health care, education. How do you respond to them? We're going to take a look at the long arc of human history. and when human communities came together,

the first role of those community leaders was collective defense, securing that community. And as states evolved, the first role of government in any country is to ensure the sovereignty of the state. Social spending is great if we can afford to do it. But social spending, absent a secure environment, is irrelevant.

And so in Canada, again, we had the luxury of geography of being isolated from events, But as the world becomes more insecure, more uncertain, we have to ensure that we have the wherewithal to deter those who would cause us harm and to defend our interests as necessary. And so this is our strategic vulnerability going forward, strategic vulnerability for the government, losing social license from the population to be willing to spend on defense. My concern is if in 2008 the berating for president, south of the border disappears, but the very real threats remain, we may lose that impetus

and consequently not be in a position to defend ourselves against a whole array of growing threats. How about allies, new allies? As we talk about trade and diversifying, are there new avenues that we need to be looking at in terms of allies? Well, this is all part of a hedging strategy. And we need to do, and I believe the government is doing this, is diversify that mesh of friends, partners, allies around the world. We may be like-minded or like-minded enough on certain issues or certain crises so that we can partner on those specific ones. And so I see us doing that in Europe, especially with the Nordics, very like-minded, you know, similar challenges with the Arctic. We have to look to Asia Pacific because there's some prime partnerships there. Japan, South Korea,

Australia, New Zealand, Philippines. You know, the list goes to the United, goes on of countries that we could work with deeper. But again, that doesn't mean discarding our existing alliances. It's making the pie bigger as a hedge. You have flagged the widespread lack of security and defense literacy among the Canadian public. Can you give us a few tips here on how we can do better? Well, this goes hand in hand with my earlier comment about losing social license. And we need our population informed about all things defense and security because nobody has

a monopoly on good ideas. And the situation, the circumstances will continue to evolve. Having an educated informed population that can respectfully debate and have dialogue on these issues is incredibly important. That's one of the reasons I wrote the book. That's one of the reasons I'm teaching at the University of Ottawa, young keen students, about all things defense policy related. And we need more talking about this, making sure our population is intellectually prepared

for the future. If you had the ear of Prime Minister Mark Carney's government, what's one thing you would like him to prioritize immediately when it comes to Canada's defense? Well, there's a very long list of stuff that we need. And I think, you know, I believe they're on the right path with accelerating procurement. That has been a limiting factor. But the other piece that I talked about related to defense and security literacy and maintaining that social license is continuing to talk to Canadians about the need, reminding them why we need to do this and make it continuous. It's not going to be a case of following public opinion. It has to be a case of leading public opinion. General Ayer, I want to thank you so much for dropping by our studio.

General Ayer is Canada's former chief of the defense staff. Thank you so much for joining us. Well, thanks for having me. According to Canada's Department of Finance, the new Defense Security and Resilience Bank will help member nations, quote, meet today's defense challenges with speed and resilience. So what's its purview? And what happens if not everyone wants to join? And Fitzgerald, you are one of Canada's leading experts in international affairs. Great to have you here in the rundown. How are you doing? Wonderful to be here. I'm doing fine, thanks. Canada is spearheading a new global defense bank, the Defense Security and Resilience Bank. Help us understand. What exactly is that?

Well, it's an international financial institution, and certainly it aspires to be a large international financial institution. We already have financial institutions, the World Bank, African Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, but these banks have tended to be for development financing, and infrastructure financing, this bank is for defense and security financing. The bank would be made up of shareholders, which are member states and countries, Those member states would encourage their national banks to get behind defense manufacturing and defense production. So this is filling a very critical gap right now because lots of countries, including Canada, have committed to increasing their defense expenditures. But to produce that capability at that level, which is collectively in the trillions,

you need good manufacturing capability and capacity as well. You need to expand out. You need orders to be shortened because you can't gain strategic deterrence with the orders, which on average are several years right now, from uniforms to Patriot missiles, you need that to be brought down to one year. Okay. One of the conversations that's happening right now is that we know that the headquarters of the Spank will be here in Canada. But where exactly the cities? There's a number of cities that have put bids to host headquarters. Which is the most pragmatic city?

Well, you're right, that decision hasn't been made yet. All choices under consideration are good ones for different reasons, Vancouver, Halifax, Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto. I think if I were looking at this issue through purely business lenses, Toronto would be the obvious answer. It has the ecosystem that the Defense Bank aspires to have in place and grow insurance companies, specialized investment organizations, private financing banks. The five main banks are here. But Montreal brings tremendous defense and aerospace capability, financing capability. That's where the charter of the bank was agreed in the BDC headquarters. Vancouver is a gateway to our Indo-Pacific partners. The Atlantic provinces in Halifax are the new strategic frontier between central Canada, the Arctic and Europe. And Ottawa, of course, has proximity to the federal government.

So it depends the lenses through which the choice is being made. But purely a business sense, you'd be leaning towards a place like Toronto. Toronto. All right. So far, this bank has been backed by eight other countries. Albania, Belgium, Greece, Latvia, Luxembourg, Romania, Turkey, and Ukraine. And there are some obvious G7 heavyweights like the U.S., Germany and the U.S., Germany and the U.K., that are missing from the Schlesst.

Why don't these countries want to join? I don't think a definitive political decision has been made yet, right? In some of these G7 countries of not to join, but you're right. Their absence is significant at the moment. But if you look back in history, you know, other banks like the Asian Infrastructure Bank had two members to begin with, China and India, and now it has over 60 members. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development started with six members, and now it has over 40 members. So I think there's a difference between the viability of the institution and the longer-term potential.

So I think others are probably waiting for, you know, some are in election years, some have just gone through elections. There's all sorts of different considerations. And you don't need the G7 members for the creditworthiness of the bank. Obviously, they're going to bring a lot in terms of financing. Germany, France, the UK, will bring a lot in terms of defense industry capacity as well. But maybe there is something to be said about proof of concept. I think what will lure them in potentially is whether contributions will be counted as NATO contributions. And that issue is still unresolved.

Well, let's talk about some of the smaller countries we've got on that list, Latvia, Luxembourg. Will they be given equal footing? Usually with these multilateral financial institutions, there are voting rights. The voting rights are usually aligned with and proportionate to the finance contribution made. However, there is always a rule, and I understand it's the case with the Defense Bank as well, that no one country, irrespective of its financial contribution, will hold a vote that would give it so much power. So the power will be capped. Those countries that you mentioned all bring contributions.

Latvia and the Baltic states are at the forefront of important defense and security frontiers. They're bringing whole of society defense contributions at the moment. Ukraine, of course, is innovating more than any state at the moment because of the battleground that it hosts. Luxembourg, big with investments, and certainly that will host the European headquarters of the bank. Talk about some of the bigger countries, potentially that door is still open. Recently we had heard that New Zealand turned down the offer. Does that signal anything? Should we be taking that seriously?

Well, not all members are involved in these multilateral financial institutions. You know, the World Bank was a Breton Woods initiative, so it brought everybody together, mobilizing after the Second World War. But, you know, there's discussions, I understand, that have been in gear with a lot of Indo-Pacific countries, other European countries. I think Japan and South Korea, Australia, that we have entered an agreement in to produce a radar system. That's an important partner. And this is in the name of collective security with like-minded countries, like-minded democracies, and interoperability across that domain. Let's talk limitations.

What are some of the limitations this new bank will have to navigate? For example, you mentioned a number of other banks there, but Europe are. already has the frameworks of the European Investment Bank. For example, will there be overlap? There will be some potential for overlap, but obviously that will have to be policed and monitored and de-conflicted. So, for example, the European Union's safe program,

which involves 150 billion euros, is focused mainly on governments, what governments need. And the demand side, and this defense, Bank is focused more on the supply side and giving private industry actors the wherewithal to expand plans,

to order supplies, to hire people, and give the scale that's necessary for the amount of procurement that's necessary. And that's what the European Union's safe program doesn't do at the moment. The European Investment Bank, it now is a little bit friendlier towards defense financing and defense investment.

but at the same time, it cannot fund weapons and ammunition and things that go boom. So it can fund some dual usage capability and barracks and things that don't cross over that line. And obviously it's the weapons and munitions that are needed in many cases. Let's talk about what's at stake for Canada here. There has been a fair bit of criticism over the years of Canada, not pulling its weight as a middle power. Does this change our image on the global stage for the better? I mean, I think there's potential for Canada to rise up.

It has been rising up. I think the reputation that Canada has for being a predictable society, a strong economy with a triple A credit rating, all of these things check important boxes here. Canada could bring many jobs and develop an ecosystem for defense financing in the same way that a bubble was created in California, in the Bay Area for Silicon Valley. This would bring that same sort of opportunity. I think the key question here is what Canada can retain here in Canada.

What Canada doesn't want to do is facilitate a shop which empowers the defense industries of other country. We want to keep things here to make this country prosperous too. But that requires some other steps to be taken. I was going to say that has been a problem here in Canada with a lot of brain drain, wherever you look. How do we do that? How do we do it? Well, we look at our strategic sectors and we say, what are we going to produce that is of immense strategic value, not just to Canada, but importantly to our partners?

You can't diversify trade until you diversify products to take those pathways. And we can't duplicate what other innovative. are doing like Ukraine. We need to add value and produce things that the rest of the world needs and wants. So we need to do that in defense and security terms as well. And then lock those important innovations down with good strategic IP protections and also offer advice for interoperability of those innovations in the alliance. So we need to have a voice in the governance frameworks and the technical standard settings. that goes with that. So before, during the post-Cold War period, we thought a voice at the table, a financial contribution, and some sort of material contribution of sorts would do the trick. Now it goes beyond that. You need to bring something very strategically valuable to your alliances,

and you need to offer the rules and the standards that go with that strategically valuable capability or else we will plug in, especially in a digital nervous system, we will plug into the rules and standards of other great power countries, which mean they will profit from our innovations and we want to keep all that profit here. Very quickly, is there something that Canada is already doing and leading that could perfectly sort of position itself as a leader in that space? Yeah, I mean, we're doing a lot of good work in AI. We've produced some of the leading AI scientists in the world, robotics, space capability. And you need preeminence in those three domains to really be a leader in the defense field. We're doing a lot of work on semiconductors and

photonics and positions on different value chains that we can take deep dives in and be dominant on those value chains to the point that everybody relies on us to supply them. We've got great hubs across the country. We are in Saskatchewan, we're producing, nearly producing defense-grade metals. But again, that Saskatchewan Research Council needs the wherewithal to build out, expand, put capital investment in. At scale that the regular commercial banks couldn't do on their own, but a defense bank that can give credit guarantees and private financing, government-backed financing, can do it. if you are in the defense space, this sounds very exciting. But I do have to ask, there might be some skeptics.

We question, what is the defense bank's value here in Canada? How do you view this? Okay, I'll say two points to that. The first thing is that the capability that empowers the defense sector these days is the same capability in many respects, and that's why we hear a lot of dual use and multi-use references, that empowers a lot of the other sectors. compute capacity, data, cybersecurity, intellectual property,

all that is a central nervous system that needs to go into the agricultural sector, into advanced manufacturing sector, all other sectors. So there's important capability that goes beyond defense there. Yeah, government-backed financing and credit guarantees at that level that the defense bank is talking about, and they're talking about 80-20, where the defense bank would back the risk and only put 20% of the risk on the private banks,

the commercial banks. So this would bring some taxpayer exposure. But with the level of defense spending that we as middle powers are expected to be meeting at the moment, and this expectation is an external, particularly from our American partners as well, that's a necessity that has to happen. So Canada has the opportunity to build that defense finance capability

and all the different agencies in the ecosystem that go with that. The key question is how do we keep it here? How do we keep a lot of that value here? It's a question that we will continue to follow. Anne Fitzgerald, I really appreciate you breaking this down for us. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Do you think national defense should be a top spending priority here in Canaan?

Canada, and should peacekeeping be higher on the list? Let us know in the comments or send us an email to rundown at tv.org. Until then, I will see you tomorrow. If you're enjoying this series, please consider supporting TVO 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 TVO.org slash give TVO to make your donation today.