Security for whom? Analysis of “The Plan for a Stronger Canada: National Security for Canadians”

Canada has released its first national security policy in more than twenty years. But, according to a new analysis by CFSC, The Plan for a Stronger Canada: National Security for Canadians:

1. Misidentifies security as being for the State and the economy rather than for people.
2. Commits Canada to an unprecedented military build-up without a public account of its costs or trade-offs.
3. Leaves the CAF as Canada’s default emergency responder.
4. Is nearly silent on conflict prevention, diplomacy, and peacebuilding.
5. Names climate change as a threat but does not resource addressing it.
6. Seeks to secure the Arctic through military presence rather than recognizing Inuit Peoples’ sovereignty and rights and working in partnership with Inuit Peoples.
7. Expands security and intelligence powers without matching attention to oversight, civil liberties, and conscience.

Read our full analysis (PDF).

We call on the Government of Canada to:

1. Adopt a human-security definition of national security, adding housing, income security, health system capacity, and climate resilience to Canada’s strategic capabilities.
2. Publish a full costing of the path to 5% of GDP, including what it will displace, report annually to Parliament, and use NATO’s 2029 review to reassess the target.
3. Direct a defined share of new defence-related spending—beginning with, but not limited to, NATO’s 1.5% resilience category—to conflict prevention, diplomacy, climate monitoring, and civil preparedness.
4. Establish a standing civil climate protection force (such as the Youth Climate Corps), coordinated through a national climate-security task force, so the Canadian Armed Forces is no longer Canada’s default emergency responder.
5. Restore conflict prevention and peacebuilding as an explicit pillar of national security, with multi-year funding and a peace lens applied across government.
6. Reverse cuts to climate science and international development assistance, and decline to subordinate assistance to trade interests.
7. Ground Arctic security in Inuit leadership, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, community wellbeing, and diplomacy.
8. Drop the target of a 50% increase in arms exports, report transfers to the United States, and
9. Strengthen independent oversight and explicit protection for peaceful protest and conscience.
10. Include civil society and peacebuilding organizations in implementation, and invite a parliamentary study of conflict prevention.
11. Measure security by community wellbeing, through a resilience index built on existing indicators of housing, food security, income, and health access.