The Decibel - Making Halifax into Canada’s defence city

Episode Date: August 10, 2026

Steeped in military and naval history, Halifax is increasingly used as the backdrop for announcements of defence investment. The city is poised to benefit from substantial investment thanks to Mark Carney’s commitment to meeting NATO targets. But as more development arrives, is Halifax able to support the demands of an increased strain on its infrastructure and housing supply? Chris Wilson-Smith went there to find out. He’s a business reporter and the author of one of The Globe’s daily newsletters, Business Brief. He’s on the show to explain how Halifax is trying to make sure it makes the most of this moment. Questions? Comments? Ideas? E-mail us at [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

So I was walking downtown Halifax my first night, looking for a pub for research purposes. And the downtown Halifax is one that is filled with construction, cranes everywhere. But it's also beautiful. The ocean is not far off. Citadel Hill is right there. And it's very easy to get sort of lost in everything that you can see. Chris Wilson-Smith is a business reporter and author of The Globe's Daily News newsletter, business brief. He was recently in Halifax to report on some changes in the city.

And his trip was memorable. I found myself just sort of walking all of a sudden on the side of a road and a car whizzed by me, a blue Toyota Camry and it almost clipped my elbow and a guy yelled at me, hey, hey, hey, buddy, you know, you know there's a sidewalk, right? You handsome idiot. And he didn't say handsome. This is a family podcast. And he was right. There was a sidewalk, but when I looked for it, it was hidden behind a fence. His near-miss experience emphasized something he would really come to understand over his time in Halifax. This story sort of reminded me on the first night that this is what a town, a city, and the throes of growth looks like. And this is what the opportunities are and certainly the challenges as well.

The city has transformed significantly since the pandemic, as thousands of people from the rest of Canada moved there to work remotely. Now, it's on the cusp of another transformation. This time, it's the military industrial sector. Halifax is set to get large investments as Canada boosts its military spending. It's being touted as a generational opportunity that could have wider regional benefits, but only if Halifax can overcome some substantial challenges. Chris is our guest today on the show. He'll explain why it might be easier said than done

for Halifax to become Canada's defense city. I'm Cheryl Sutherland, and this is the Decibel from the Globe and Mail. Hi, Chris, great to be talking to you today. It's great to be talking with you. So, Chris, to start, let's catch people up on some recent Halifax news. So the city is getting some large military investments. What are we talking about here and how much money does it represent? Well, just to start with the most recent and significant funding that Ottawa is announced in Halifax and for the nation is the purchase of 12 submarines, the new fleet of submarines that Canada is purchasing from a German manufacturer.

These submarines are highly complex, massively expensive. we're talking about dozens of billions of dollars with B. The submarines alone could cost of $40 billion, $50 billion. The maintenance and operation of them alone could double that. So we're talking about a massive amount of money, the most single defense procurement that Canada has made in its history. So billions. And that's on top of billions.

Carney has already announced on defense spending to make sure that Halifax and Vancouver on the on the west coast are both prepared to host and maintain these these submarines as part of Canada's commitment to its NATO allies to dramatically increase the amount that Canada spends on its military so that it can reach those commitments on a global stage. So we're talking about a lot of money here for Halifax, but why does this matter for the rest of the country? When you're talking about the success of Halifax right now and into the future, we're talking

about the success of Canada as it sees it, and that is a Canada that is reaching its NATO commitments, a Canada that is defending the Arctic against incursions from Russia and China, a Canada that is more reliant on itself in both terms of trade and in terms of defense. So Halifax succeeds, Nova Scotia succeeds, and the rest of Canada succeeds for decades. Nova Scotia has sort of earned this reputation as being sort of weighing the rest of the country down, economically speaking. And it's true that Halifax and Nova Scotia have struggled to find strong economic wind. It's equally true that a strong Atlantic Canada means a stronger country. That's just the way our federation works.

If we can't get Halifax right, I don't think we can get sovereignty right, at least as far as defense goes. it's a crucial, crucial strategic port, strategic location, both for trade and defense. And if we can't protect from Halifax, we can't protect Canada. Okay, so let's focus on the pros of these investments. How much would it help Halifax if all of these military investments do land there? It would represent a return to the golden age of maritime sale, which is the 19th century or so. And that is a time when Halifax played a substantial role in the founding of a modern Canada, as we think of it in terms of trade and in terms of defense.

Halifax was once the foundation of Canada. It gave rise to two of Canada's big six banks. It was where fortunes were made before more of Canada's population move westward. So it really would be fair to say Halifax was built for this. It was built for this moment. It was built for, it sounds like a slogan, but it was built for a defensive purpose for the fact that it opened so much possibility in terms of trade with countries overseas and countries to the south of the border.

So it would represent a return to those times when Halifax was contributing more than its history. But how did Halifax go from a central economic hub to what it is today? Very simply, more people moved inward as more towns were set up and hubs were set up on the inside of Canada, where farming could be done, and eventually the money followed that. But a sort of ironic part of that is that John A. McDonald's tariffs on the import of fish from other countries as well as the U.S., kind of robbed the momentum that Halifax had. it took the wind out of the sails. So it had the effect of also really, really sinking the East Coast fisheries. And what about the shipbuilding industry that existed back then? What happened to that?

The ecosystem that has been around defense and trade has never really fully gone away. But when the maritime suffered through those tariffs and the fisheries suffered, many of those shipbuilders were looking for work elsewhere, and many of them ended up in cities like Boston, which was being built. And you have visitors to Halifax who say, wow, this really reminds me of Boston. That's interesting. I had one historian say, well, no, Boston reminds you of Halifax because really it looks like Halifax, because a lot of the shipbuilders were there helping to build houses. Okay, so let's zoom in on the military industrial sector specific. What does the military industry landscape in Halifax look like now?

I went out on a tour of a tall ship called the Silva dating back to the Second World War. But you can see almost immediately the big players right off the bat, and the biggest of them all would be Irving. You can see the sort of the giant white hangers that mark Irving's area. And it sits right next to the Canadian Navy facility there. And as you go further and further out, you can start to see why, wow, it is all right there. And what does Irving make there? They make River Class destroyers. These are very important ships for the Navy in terms of, again, a multi-billion dollar deal that Canada made to have Irving build those ships there.

And they're an essential part of Canada's current plans. The first River Class destroyer was recently unveiled just a month. there so ago. It will be in the water within a few more months. So you actually went to one of those shipbuilding yards as part of your reporting. Give me a sense of what it was like. Oh, it was incredible. I mean, first of all, just to even get into the Irving shipyards, it's kind of like passing through a border that puts lots of countries to shame. You have to sign declarations, have your picture taken, answer various questions and you're supervised at every step of the way and you put on enough safety gear to tour a volcano, you'd think.

Why are they so strict? What's the reason for all that? They work on a lot of classified things. And I wasn't about to see a lot of classified things myself, but it's a real risk for companies like this, and that's why it takes years for several companies to. for so many companies to gain trust from the government to be able to even work on projects related to the military. And once you go in, in the most impressive hall, at least to me, was the assembly hall.

It made me feel like a little kid walking in. You start at one end where with a sheet of steel, along this assembly line, this sheet of steel starts growing as more things are attached to it and it's shaped. And literally, by the end, you're left with a giant ship. Wow. So in each point along the way, the machines get bigger and bigger. And I mentioned the story, these are the tools of giants. I didn't really know how else to describe them.

You look up and it's just kind of that awe that you get from looking at something like, you know, an amazing statue or a work of art. It was certainly something that brought me back to, you know, sort of like a childlike feeling. if only because I was the size of a child next to them. It's so interesting to hear, describe that, because I can really picture it in my head. And just to think that there's these huge ships they're building and then they're supposed to go out in the water and not sink.

They're so heavy. But anyway, it's just a really great description. Well, it's just the mind boggles. It's like a really high-stakes Lego, too. It kind of was a humbly experience to imagine all the thought that went into that. In Halifax, is it more than just shipbuilding? Like, are there other defense companies? Absolutely. And when you see the Irvings and the Navy, those are the most visible ones. But as the ship comes, you know, if you're on a tour, for example, and you're sailing back to shore, you might see if you know where to look, the buildings where a cluster of startups are and some of the most innovative companies in Canada where, in particular, at the sort of intersection of Murr,

and defense where there's some really amazing work being done by startups that that can help, for example, detect mines in places like the Strait of Hermuz, where we know that... There are sea mines there, yeah. There are sea mines there, and there are companies there such as Crack and Robotics that is, it was founded in Newfoundland, but it has two offices in Halifax, and they do lots of testing. and I went to see the company by the harbor in one of these buildings while I was there. So we have really, really, really amazing companies doing an interesting work there that are also situated either directly across from the Irvings or the military facilities

are right next to them. There are a handful of startup hubs themselves that help each other and help each other navigate the system and navigate what it is that the federal. government needs, what it is that the military needs, and sometimes those are two different things. It is a remarkable sort of system of inventive people who, just geographically speaking, are very close to the major companies that stand to benefit, but are also standing to benefit themselves billions of dollars into what the sector would call prime contractors, prime defense contractors, the Irvings of the world. They'll get the sort of the big, big share of the money, but that can only

mean that they'll require themselves an ecosystem beneath them of suppliers of both physical things and ideas. So if a smaller company, you know, based directly next to the shipyard has this brilliant idea to make work more efficient, they stand to win out as well. We'll be right back. So, Chris, we've talked about the economic boom that's happening right now, some of the companies that are popping up. But you've also hinted that there are some challenges that the city faces right now. Can you start by giving me a list of what the biggest ones are, maybe kind of the top three? Sure thing. And I should say that even before we started talking about defense, all three of these were sort of choke points for the city. And those would be mainly infrastructure, things like roads and sewage.

skilled trades, the lack of people who can build these things, and housing, an affordability crisis that I'm sure many Canadians can really too. So what is the cause of the housing and affordability issues in Halifax? Halifax has been one of Canada's fastest growing cities, just to give you an idea, by some estimates over the last decade, over 100,000 people have been added to the city. It began mainly with higher immigration targets, which existed for years before immigration targets were lowered a couple of years ago. In Halifax, it was exacerbated by COVID and a lot of remote workers. Yeah, I remember a lot of people moving from Toronto to Halifax at that time.

Yeah, I mean, I'm sure, you know, a lot of listeners out there might have had the experience of going on a real estate website and thinking, why aren't I living by the ocean? And in fact, a lot of people had that thought, and they saw that housing, at least then, was more affordable, and it was by the ocean. And they thought, well, if I can do my work from there, why aren't we there? So a lot of people actually did that.

And that combined with immigration, that was growing quite rapidly, also quite rapidly brought up the price of housing and renting. So if housing is so expensive, of why can't the city just build more homes? The developers are dying to. The problem is everywhere you turn is another sort of bottleneck. The developments that are ready for housing aren't connected to the sewage system, the water system that it needs to be connected, that they need to be connected to. One development in particular that I know from speaking with a major

developer there is ready to go, but for the fact that this will make it sound like every Canadian economic problem comes down to a pipeline. But in this case, a water pipeline, a $50 million water pipeline that would hook into the city's main water infrastructure. And that's for one of the developments. And the city would need to pay that. And the city does not have $50 million. The city is running on a major deficit. Nova Scotia is running one of the larger deficits among provinces in Canada. So already you need to figure out, well, who's going to actually pay for that. So I'm guessing that they want the federal government to supply more money? Yeah. And most leaders are sort of hesitant to say that, you know, outright, I think that

the first thing that the leaders there would say is we are working the best we can to figure this out. That's not to say it's all kumbaya. If the federal government, government sees Halifax as being so important to Canada for both trade diversification and for defense, Halifax is kind of a Canadian investment and Canada needs to sort of get behind investing in Halifax. And this isn't to say they're, you know, they're begging for cap in hand, but the point was made often that if the federal government is investing billions of dollars and all this infrastructure and creating all these jobs, the flip side of that coin is that people will need a place to live and enough people will need to be trained to do these jobs and

enough infrastructure will need to be built to accommodate more cars, more people, more pedestrians, more renters, more homebuyers. The list goes on. Yeah, it's something that I guess you forget about sometimes, right? Like you can't just build a house. You have to have the infrastructure underneath, especially for water for that house to be to be there and to function properly. So just connect the dots for me, how does housing and affordability relate to military investment? Well, with all of this investment, this means that they're building things, that more jobs will be created. The problem is those people will need somewhere to live.

They'll need to be able to afford it. And already, if you were looking to move to Halifax, you would have a really hard time doing that. It's a sideways move, moving from some of the more expensive parts of Canada to Halifax. facts right now in terms of how much a house costs. Imagine that situation with even more people looking for houses in the same pool of supply. The prices will go higher if more houses aren't built to match more demand. Okay, let's talk about the labor part of this. Can you unpack why people fear there will be a labor shortage? Well, there already is one. People can't keep

enough skilled trade people on staff as it is. And that's been true across the country for a few decades now. And in Halifax, the problem is acute. At Irving, they told me that the facility that will be built to maintain the submarines alone will require just as many people as they employ to build their ships. And as it stands, there aren't enough people to do that work. It takes several years to train people to that degree to do that kind of high-skilled work. So there are special education systems that these trades people go through, but they're nowhere

near as big as they need to be. We're not seeing enough graduates sort of being put into the system to support this kind of growth. So if we're talking about growing, building up defense, maintaining six subs in Halifax six subs out West is how they would be divvied up. Even more skilled training will be required. How do you do that? What can be done to actually get that to happen? Well, the federal government has made announcements about sort of trying to get more people into what they call red seal certification.

That's the gold standard of skilled training in Canada. The provinces has grappled with that for years. they've introduced tax credits. It's just really hard to get young people interested in the trades, but mainly out east, the challenge is more acute because there's more money to be made, the further west you go into the country. Very interesting.

I wonder if that will change now that there's so much money going into Halifax, but we'll see. Just to end here, Chris, would you say that Halegonians you spoke to were optimistic that the city could overcome these challenges and capitalize on all the military investment? As one person told me, better a busy highway than an empty one, it wasn't the challenge. It was, how do we reach this goal?

How do we meet the moment that this opportunity presents us? Businesses have been saying this is possible here for decades. And now that they feel that Canada is agreeing, they're not saying, I told you so. They're saying, let's do this, let's make this happen. And they're working together. And they're not pretending like these challenges don't exist. They're very pragmatic about it. But at the same time, they don't see that as an option.

They see only the possibility of what could be. And in addition to that opportunity that I heard about from almost every business leader I spoke to is the shared sentiment that Halifax is Canada's defense city. Chris, this has been so interesting. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you. That was Chris Wilson-Smith, a staff reporter for The Globe, and the author of our Daily Business Newsletter Business Brief. That's it for today.

I'm Cheryl Sutherland. Our producers are Madeline White, Rachel Levy McLaughlin and Mikhail Stein. Our editor is David Crosby. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pichenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening.