Backgrounder: Defence Policy Review Consultation Process

The development of Canada’s defence policy review began with the most comprehensive consultations ever undertaken on the subject. Canadians, defence experts, parliamentarians, and our allies and partners from around the world made substantive contributions to the review process. Discussions focused on three fundamental areas:

• The main challenges to Canada’s security
• The role of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) in addressing current threats and challenges
• The resources and capabilities needed to carry out the CAF mandate

Canadians submitted more than 20,000 entries into an online defence consultation portal and over 4,700 participants contributed comments and votes using the online discussion forum.

A total of 107 participants including academics and experts from various fields of expertise participated in eight roundtable meetings in Vancouver, Yellowknife, Edmonton, Toronto, two in Ottawa, Montreal and Halifax. One of these roundtables specifically focused on defence procurement and another on gender and diversity issues. A meeting was also held with Indigenous leaders and groups in order to gain their perspective on defence-related issues.

Parliamentary committees in both the House of Commons and Senate conducted insightful studies and parliamentarians and senators from all parties held more than 50 town hall meetings and community roundtable discussions with Canadians across the country.

Provincial and Territorial governments were engaged and a number of third-party organizations held roundtables, panel discussions and conferences.

Minister Sajjan and Canadian defence officials also engaged their counterparts around the world including the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Japan and France – many of whom recently completed their own defence reviews.

Four reports were developed to summarize the comments received from the defence policy review consultations:

• Public Consultation Roundtable Report
• Public Consultation Online Report
• Gender Based Analysis Plus Roundtable Discussion Report
• Indigenous Discussion Report

Canada’s defence policy is informed by what we heard.