When Prime Minister Mark Carney told Canadians that “more than seventy cents of every dollar of military capital spending goes to the United States,” he was not merely reciting a statistic. He was defining a strategic reality: that Canada’s ability to project sovereignty increasingly flows through American factories, software codes, and logistics chains.

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A Narrow Statistic, a Broad Truth

‍On its face, the claim is defensible. Over the past five years, three colossal U.S. procurements—the F-35A fighter, the P-8A Poseidon maritime aircraft, and the MQ-9B SkyGuardian drone—have consumed the lion’s share of capital outlays. These programs alone account for nearly three-quarters of new equipment spending. In fiscal years when those cash flows mature, the ratio can indeed reach 70 to 75 percent.

Yet Carney’s number refers only to capital acquisitions, not the full defence budget that covers personnel, maintenance, and infrastructure. In other years, when Canadian shipyards or training enterprises dominate expenditures, the American share falls dramatically—sometimes below twenty percent. The “70 cents” figure, therefore, is a rolling average across a cycle of large-scale modernization programs rather than a permanent state of dependence.

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‍Dependency or Design?

‍Critics call the statistic evidence of unhealthy dependency. But Carney’s framing suggests a conscious strategic interdependence—a recognition that deterrence in the twenty-first century is built on interoperable systems and shared industrial ecosystems. Canada’s F-35s and P-8As are not simply purchases; they are passports into the most advanced digital battlespace networks in existence.

Nevertheless, the concentration of procurement in U.S. channels exposes vulnerabilities. A depreciating dollar or an American export-control bottleneck can paralyze Canadian capability delivery. Moreover, the opportunity cost for domestic industry is steep. Every billion sent abroad is a billion not cycling through Canada’s small but innovative defence-tech base.

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‍The Budget Paradox

‍Paradoxically, a low overall defence budget can make the 70-cent ratio even more plausible. When fiscal ceilings constrain total spending, a few headline procurements dominate the capital column, skewing the share toward their U.S. primes. In other words, scarcity amplifies dependency: the less Ottawa spends in aggregate, the more its limited dollars concentrate in foreign contracts that are politically and operationally “too big to fail."

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The Industrial Diplomacy Dilemma

‍Carney’s statement also carries diplomatic weight. By acknowledging that most procurement dollars flow south, Ottawa implicitly reassures Washington that continental defence remains indivisible. Yet, it simultaneously invites European partners—particularly NATO’s industrial heavyweights—to question whether Canada’s market is genuinely open to trans-Atlantic diversification.

The remedy lies not in autarky but in industrial diplomacy: leveraging domestic offsets, co-production, and technology-transfer clauses to convert foreign procurement into domestic capability. Canada’s shipbuilding strategy, allied R&D funds, and Defence Innovation Acceleration initiatives can, if properly synchronized, rebalance the ledger without severing U.S. supply chains.

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‍Toward a Smarter Sovereignty

‍The deeper issue is not where Canada buys its weapons, but whether those purchases build sovereign resilience—the ability to sustain operations and policy choices independent of external vetoes. In that sense, Carney’s 70-cent remark is both diagnosis and warning. It captures how intertwined Canada’s defence and economy have become with America’s, while challenging policymakers to ensure that interdependence remains a choice, not a constraint.

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‍Final Thoughts

‍In the arithmetic of deterrence, the value of each dollar matters more than its destination. If seventy cents buy access to an integrated North American deterrent that keeps Canada secure and relevant, the expenditure is strategic. But if it perpetuates a cycle of industrial dependence and fiscal inertia, it becomes a liability.

Canada’s next defence policy review must decide which equation it intends to balance.