Bidding War

Swedish industry enters the chat. Diana Matheson's NSL success story. Last events of the season. Poetry!

Bay Watch, a 2011 painting by Charles Patcher, is one of more than 1,700 pieces of art and more than 2,700 artifacts from the collection of the Hudson Bay Company being auctioned off over the next few months by Heffel Fine Art Auction House.

King’s Gambit

It isn’t every day that Swedish royalty pays Canada a visit, but Sweden’s King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia arrived in Ottawa on Tuesday morning for a three day tour. It was not just a ceremonial drop-in or a friendly exchange of maple syrup and meatballs followed by a field trip to the ball room at IKEA; for all the pomp and ceremony, this was a business trip with a deadly serious agenda.

During the visit, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced the signing of a Canada-Sweden strategic partnership, “that extends from defence, to trade, to the environment and beyond.” To underscore the point of it all, Their Majesties were accompanied by the Swedish industry minister and the minister of defence, who were in turn trailed by a string of representatives from a few dozen Swedish companies, many of them in the defence tech space.

The pointy end of the stick here was a full court press on behalf of Saab, the Swedish aerospace and defence company that manufactures the Gripen fighter jet, which is being pitched as a serious alternative to the American-made F-35 that Canada has settled on as the replacement for its long-obsolete fleet of CF-18s. Saab CEO Micael Johansson said that his company would be keen to set up an assembly plant in Canada for the fighter, as well as establish a research and development hub that would provide significant transfers of technology and IP to Canada. Ultimately, he suggested this could create as many as 10 000 jobs here. But, he noted dryly, that would of course only happen if Canada were to actually commit to, you know, buying the plane.

So that puts Canada, and by “Canada” we mean “Carney,” in a bit of a spot.

On the one hand, this should be an exciting time to be in the defence business in Canada. The money spigot for defence spending is wide open like it has not been for generations, with Canada shopping for a number of big ticket items including submarines, helicopters, drones, long range missiles, and air defence capabilities. There are plans being floated to stand up a civil defence corps of as many as 300 000 volunteers. There is a raft of new strategic defence partnerships, such as the one Canada signed with the EU back in June, and the bilateral deal struck this week with Sweden.

And now, the Saab gambit has created an instant cottage industry of observers doing Gripen vs F-35 comparison charts (here is one; here is another) looking at how the two planes stack up on performance, technology, interoperability, price, operations and maintenance costs, and so on. And while these are interesting in their own right, it is not a simple matter of Canada choosing the “right plane” for the range of tasks for which it needs fighter jets.

In part, that is because we have already committed to the F-35 program. While have so far only paid for the first tranche of 16 fighter jets out of a planned buy of 88, any shift over to the Gripen would involve that we have some sort of mixed fleet, which would be very difficult for Canada to handle given its ongoing shortage of qualified pilots, mechanics, trainers, and other key personnel.

But it isn’t just about the practicalities of running two planes. The truth is that, whatever the operational outcomes, snubbing the full F-35 purchase in favour of the Gripen would seriously annoy Donald Trump. His ambassador to Canada, Pete Hoekstra, pretty much said as much this week, during a typically blunt discussion at a manufacturing conference in Ottawa.

This is just one of many areas where Canada’s national security imaginary (e.g. that we could easily “pivot to Europe”) comes up hard against the realities of our strategic geography. Even if we set aside concerns about Donald Trump, or decide that it is worth annoying in the name of sovereignty, Canada has real obligations to continental defence and to NORAD, whose fulfilment would be seriously hampered by us choosing a different plane than the ones the Americans are using. As much as some of us might wish these away, they cannot be.

During her visit this week, Swedish Industry Minister Ebba Busch said, “I believe that in difficult times you should really choose your friends wisely, and this is the reason Sweden is choosing Canada.”

That’s nice, but it’s easy for her to say. Whether Canada should, and even can, choose Sweden, is a much more difficult question to answer. But it is one that Carney can’t put off much longer.

What’s new at Build Canada

In last week’s newsletter, we featured a setup by Ryan Manucha on the pan-Canadian meeting of internal trade ministers that took place on Wednesday. Ryan has published his key takeaways on his Linkedin profile. The tl;dr: “Overall, I’m excited and encouraged, but remain on high-alert for the future of internal trade reform going into 2026”.

Build Canada events are quickly gaining momentum; you may have noticed if you attended Unloud in Montreal, the Canadian Club Lunch in Toronto, or the McMaster Venture Capital Club x Build Canada Fireside in Hamilton this week.

It’s not quite a wrap yet – here’s a few more events you can expect from Build Canada as we approach the end of 2025.

• Sandstone CONNECTS (Nov 26): Currently sitting with over 300 signups, join us at the GRAND Calgary for an evening reception with some of Alberta’s most prominent entrepreneurial talent.

• Vancouver Meet Up (Nov 27): Returning after immense demand. A casual meet up with the Vancouver community.

• Toronto Reading Group (Dec 11): Our final community event of the year. We’ll be focusing on a heavily requested local topic this time around: Housing in our City.

Expect more events to be announced this week including additional reading groups and large events to close out the year.

In a recent appearance, Prime Minister Carney said:

Small and medium businesses lose 30-35 cents on the dollar [for SR&ED] because of red tape… we went to Shopify and said, “Can you help us redesign this process?”
Somewhat embarrassingly they came back in 48 hours and said here it is.

Here’s that proposal that Build Canada worked with Harley, President of Shopify, to create. The budget announced that it’ll be taking measures to streamline SR&ED application process come April 2026. We’re eagerly awaiting these changes.

Canada Spends continues to bring more transparency to government spending. Above, you can see how seniors’ benefits have grown over time, to now be the largest tranche of federal spend. You can check out the discussion here.

Finally: last weekend was a busy one for Canadian sports. On Sunday, the Saskatchewan Roughriders defeated the Montreal Alouettes in the 112th Grey Cup final in Winnipeg. But the day before, the Vancouver Rise upset AFC Toronto in the NSL final, winning the first ever Diana B. Matheson Cup. Not coincidentally, Canadian soccer legend Diana Matheson (waving in the above left photo,) who created the NSL, is this week’s Great Canadian Builder.

What else we’ve been reading

• Maritime Launch Services, a spaceport in Canso, N.S., hosted its first commercial launch on Thursday.

• Alberta and Ottawa are inching toward a pipeline deal that is already drawing opposition from B.C.

• Montreal’s REM — the new light rail commuter transit system — opened this week to rave reviews.

• Peanut allergies are plummeting in children!

• Why “aura and lore” beat brands and institutions in the age of the Main Character

Poetry

Canadians, by Miriam Waddington,

Here are
our signatures:
geese, fish, eskimo
faces, girl-guide
cookies, ink-drawings
tree-plantings, summer
storms and winter
emanations.

We look
like a geography but
just scratch us
and we bleed
history, are full
of modest misery
are sensitive
to double-talk double-take
(and double-cross)
in a country
too wide
to be single in.

Are we real or
did someone invent
us, was it Henry
Hudson Etienne Brûlé
or a carnival
of village girls?
Was it
a flock of nuns
a pity of indians
a gravyboat of
fur-traders, professional
explorers or those
amateurs map-makers
our Fathers
of Confederation?

Wherever you are
Charles Tupper Alexander
Galt D’arcy McGee George
Cartier Ambrose Shea
Henry Crout Father
Ragueneau Lork Selkirk
and John A: however
far into northness you have walked--
when we call you
turn around and
don’t look so surprised.

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