From SAFE to Montreal, Canada’s defence door has opened wider this week, and the summit that opened on October 29 will show whether access becomes orders, partnerships and production. SAFE, the European defence financing instrument, gave Canada a route into European defence procurement. Montreal, with its Alliance for the Future and its ever closer association declaration, gives that route a political framework. The question now is whether the framework produces contracts for Canadian firms, joint production with European partners, and a defence relationship that survives beyond a single summit.
The defence logic is straightforward. Europe is rearming, Canada has energy, minerals, space and aerospace capabilities, and both sides want supply chains that do not depend on a single unreliable partner. Canadian participation in European defence projects offers Europe a reliable supplier and offers Canada a market for its defence industry that is larger and more stable than its domestic market alone. The Montreal declaration’s defence and security cooperation provisions, and its critical minerals agenda, are the practical expression of that logic.
What access means in practice
Access, in defence procurement, means eligibility to bid, to partner and to produce. It does not, by itself, mean orders. Canadian firms must still win contracts against European competitors, meet European standards, and establish production partnerships that satisfy both governments’ security requirements. That process takes years, and it requires investment in capacity, in certification and in relationships with European prime contractors. The summit can open the door, but firms must walk through it, and governments must keep it open long enough for them to do so.
The critical minerals link is central to the defence story. Lithium, cobalt, nickel and graphite, the metals whose EU imports from Canada rose 62 percent in 2025 to 3.3 billion euros, are also the metals inside defence supply chains, from batteries to electronics. An agreement allowing the European Investment Bank to back Canadian mineral projects would therefore serve defence as well as energy, by securing the raw materials on which both depend. The defence door and the minerals door are, in practice, the same door.
The test for Montreal
Montreal will be tested not by its declaration but by its follow through: whether Canadian firms win European defence contracts in the next year, whether joint production projects are announced, and whether the 2027 summit can point to orders rather than only to frameworks. The financial services opportunities flagged at the summit show the economic stakes for the institutions that will finance those projects, from pension funds to asset managers.
From SAFE to Montreal, the door has opened wider. Whether it stays open, and whether Canadian firms walk through it, is the work of the next twelve months, and it will be measured in contracts, not in declarations.
