OTTAWA — Ottawa launched a new Defence Investment Agency on Thursday with the aim of centralizing defence procurement and purchasing equipment for the Canadian Armed Forces at a faster pace.

“We’re going to deliver as quickly as we possibly can, using best practices in procurement. And if we have to take a bit of risk in doing that, we’re going to take it,” Secretary of State for Defence Procurement Stephen Fuhr told The Canadian Press.

“We cannot be trapped outside the technology cycle with procurement. If we deliver stuff late, then it’s irrelevant and we don’t want to be there, so … we’re going to move at the speed of relevance.”

Canada’s system of defence procurement is notoriously complex and slow, and is spread out across multiple departments — a product of the peacetime focus on

See Full Page