The federal government tabled legislation Tuesday that would turn the Defence Investment Agency into an arm’s-length Crown corporation, a move ministers said will make military buying faster and more commercial.
Procurement Minister Joël Lightbound introduced Bill C-40, the Canadian Corporation for Defence Investment Act, in the House of Commons on Oct. 6, according to BetaKit. The agency would keep operating under the Defence Investment Agency name.
The bill would give the agency more independence to negotiate and manage defence production, contracts and investment, using criteria set by the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces. It would move from Public Services and Procurement Canada into the defence portfolio and report to a new associate minister of national defence for procurement, BetaKit reported.
Defence Minister David McGuinty said the agency will be “more efficient, more professional, more commercial, [and] more fleet-footed” in acquiring goods for the military, BetaKit reported. Stephen Fuhr, the secretary of state for defence procurement, told a press conference: “Gone are the days where a government takes three bids, takes the lowest bidder, and we move on with our lives.”
The agency would have its own CEO, an executive chairperson and a board of directors. The board would include the CEO, the chairperson, a deputy minister and up to two other directors, according to BetaKit.
Oversight is one open question. BetaKit reported that Crown corporations fall outside the mandate of the federal procurement ombudsman, so the agency would not be subject to that office. Asked whether the ombudsman’s mandate would expand, Fuhr said he did not have an answer and said oversight would be ministerial. McGuinty said National Defence will still be subject to Treasury Board submissions and committee scrutiny.
The agency was created in October 2025 to fix what industry called a slow, fragmented procurement system. It is led by CEO Doug Guzman, a former RBC deputy chair and Goldman Sachs managing director, and was set up to oversee purchases valued at $100 million or more, according to earlier BetaKit reporting that cited the Globe and Mail.
The Crown corporation plan was signalled in the federal spring economic update on April 28. The Canadian Press reported then that the update set aside $103.8 million over five years, plus $22 million a year in ongoing funding, to expand the agency’s authority and budget. The agency oversees major projects including the next submarine fleet and the Arctic over-the-horizon radar, the Canadian Press reported.
For Canadian technology companies, the stakes are in who gets to sell to the military. Last year’s federal budget earmarked nearly $82 billion to rebuild and rearm the Canadian Armed Forces, with about $7 billion aimed at the defence industrial base, BetaKit reported. Ben Bergen, president of the Council of Canadian Innovators, said in 2025 that procurement has “too often shut out scale-up technology companies.”
Fuhr and McGuinty both cited the ability to recruit talent from outside the public service as a benefit of the new structure. McGuinty this week named Dana O’Born, long the Council of Canadian Innovators’ chief strategy officer, as his chief of staff, BetaKit reported.
The bill’s details rest on a single published account, and no timeline for passage has been reported. The story is developing.
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Sources: BetaKit, Oct. 6, 2026; BetaKit, Oct. 2, 2025; Canadian Press via BNN Bloomberg, April 29, 2026.
