Canada’s geography alone justifies a defense posture far larger than its modest population might suggest. At 9.98 million km², it is the world’s second-largest country; its 243,000-km coastline is the longest on Earth and it borders the United States for 8,891 km, plus Greenland and France’s Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon offshore territories worldservicesgroup.comen.wikipedia.org. Yet only about 41.5 million people live here www150.statcan.gc.ca. That mismatch between vast territory and limited human capital creates outsized demands for surveillance, search-and-rescue, and sovereignty assertion across the Arctic, three oceans, the Great Lakes–St Lawrence system and sparsely populated northern borders.

1. Getting to (and beyond) 2 % of GDP

Until now Canada has spent roughly 1.3–1.4 % of GDP on defense canada.cacanada.ca—well below the NATO benchmark—but Prime Minister Mark Carney’s 9 June 2025 pledge to hit the Alliance’s 2 % target this fiscal year resets the baseline reuters.com. Meeting that goal is timely: Russia’s grey-zone activity in the Arctic, accelerating Chinese trans-polar shipping and the United States’ explicit expectation that allies shoulder more collective-security burden all put pressure on Canada to field credible forces that can operate independently in its own backyard while interoperating with partners.

2. Bring the Coast Guard inside the security portfolio

The Canadian Coast Guard (CCG) is currently a civilian special-operating agency under Fisheries and Oceans Canada, with about 6,500 personnel, 119 vessels and 23 helicopters, tasked with safety, navigation aids, ice-breaking and pollution response en.wikipedia.org. Parliamentary witnesses and defense scholars have long argued that this “orphan” status hampers strategic coordination, especially in the Arctic openparliament.ca. Transferring the CCG to the Department of National Defense would:

unify maritime domain awareness and command-and-control with the Royal Canadian Navy and NORAD maritime warning;
streamline procurement of Arctic-capable ice-breakers, drones and satellite assets;
give the Coast Guard a clearer constabulary role (akin to the U.S. model) while preserving its civil-maritime safety mandate through dual-badging arrangements with RCMP and Fisheries officers.

3. A “national service” Coast Guard expansion

To patrol the planet’s largest coastline effectively, the CCG will need a dramatic expansion—not just in ships but in people trained for Arctic navigation, SAR and crisis response. Canada could recruit a 20,000-strong “National Service Coast Guard” on a two-track model,

4. Leveraging defense for industrial renewal

A credible 2 %+ defense program can be a catalyst for the industrial up-scaling Canada urgently needs. Arctic-rated shipbuilding, drone manufacture, critical-minerals supply chains and dual-use green technologies all dovetail with the country’s comparative advantages in freshwater, hydro-electricity and a highly educated workforce. The defense procurement pipeline should therefore be paired with:

A Defense Industrial Accelerator—fast-tracking SME innovation into the supply chain;
Regional Shipyards 2.0—distributed ice-capable ship fabrication in Atlantic, Great Lakes and Pacific yards;

Indigenous and Northern Partnerships—building hangars, ports and fiber-optic corridors on an “In the North, by the North, for the North” principle that mirrors the CCG’s own Arctic Strategy ccg-gcc.gc.ca.

Bottom line: Canada’s sheer size and strategic environment make a robust, integrated maritime-defense architecture non-negotiable. Meeting—and in time surpassing—NATO’s 2 % benchmark, relocating and enlarging the Coast Guard under National Defense, and using its expanded workforce for nation-building projects together form a fiscally intelligent blueprint for safeguarding territorial integrity while jump-starting the next phase of Canadian industrial growth.