In his new role as Calian Group’s head of defence and space, Chris Pogue wants to ensure founders’ groundbreaking ideas end up being applied where they’re needed most – in the toolkits of people in the field.
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After four decades on the front lines of Canada’s defence and security ecosystem, Chris Pogue has seen firsthand how the ingenuity of this country’s entrepreneurs can make a difference in the lives of fighting men and women.
Now, in his new role as Calian Group’s head of defence and space, Pogue wants to ensure those founders’ groundbreaking ideas end up being applied where they’re needed most – in the toolkits of people in the field.
Hence the Kanata-based company’s latest initiative: Calian Ventures, a new program aimed at helping small and medium-sized businesses serving Canada’s defence sector scale up and sell their inventions to the world.
The new undertaking will be overseen by Pogue, who was tapped to lead Calian’s new defence and space division this summer after an eclectic career that included a 20-year stint in the Royal Canadian Air Force followed by a series of management roles at defence powerhouses such as MDA, General Dynamics and Thales.
Pogue’s enthusiasm is readily apparent during a recent interview with an OBJ reporter. He says the federal government’s commitment to boost defence spending to five per cent of Canada’s gross domestic product over the next decade is just the impetus the domestic defence and security industry needs to craft a “collective vision” for the future.
“I’m pretty excited about the moment we’re in,” Pogue says.
While defence and security companies fly under the radar of most Canadians, they’re big business in this country.
According to a 2024 report from Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada and the Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries, the sector generated more than $14 billion in annual revenue in 2022 and employed more than 81,000 people.
What’s more, Pogue notes, the vast majority of the nearly 600 firms that anchor the domestic defence industry – about 85 per cent – have fewer than 250 employees.
Yet these companies often face a litany of roadblocks when it comes to breaking through and landing lucrative contracts with the Canadian Armed Forces and other big-spending customers – a big reason why organizations with more than 500 workers accounted for the bulk of the Canadian defence industry’s revenues, employment, R&D spending and exports.
Pogue is hoping Calian Ventures can help flip that script, at least somewhat. He envisions the new initiative as a way to bring together a wide range of partners – other defence companies, universities and colleges, financial institutions and business support organizations like incubators – to help more SMEs get their innovations to market faster.
“The real question is, how do all those come together in some kind of a platform for partnership that allows that capability from those small businesses to get into the armed forces in an effective way – that allows those small businesses to build capability that can be scalable enough to meet the Canadian Forces’ needs?” he says.
Pogue knows it’s a big ask. Still, he believes most of the pieces of the puzzle are already there, but have never been assembled into a cohesive whole.
Pointing to initiatives such as the federal government’s Innovation for Defence Excellence and Security program, which has funded more than 600 projects from hundreds of SMEs since 2018, he argues there is an “incredible degree of innovation” among small and medium-sized enterprises as well as “robust” investment in the sector from an array of incubators, accelerators and other government programs.
What’s missing, Pogue says, is leadership. And that’s where he thinks Calian Group can help.
The Kanata firm’s tentacles reach into nearly every nook and cranny of the defence industry – from providing software that simulates battle conditions to manufacturing components such as antennas for some of the most sophisticated satellites in space.
In addition, Calian officials have become experts at navigating Canada's labyrinth of defence procurement rules and regulations – knowledge that could prove invaluable to entrepreneurs seeking to unlock the door to what can often seem like an exclusive club of military equipment suppliers.
Pogue calls Calian Ventures a “unique opportunity” for the company to tap into its network of global customers that include the Canadian Armed Forces and NATO, as well as its capacity to manufacture highly complex military hardware, to give startups with promising IP a chance to show their stuff.
Calian Ventures will initially focus on helping SMEs test, validate and scale technologies in three main areas: command-and-control systems that run equipment in the field; autonomous tools such as drones; and “space resource orchestration” tech that operates satellites. The program will likely be expanded to other use cases over time, Pogue adds.
Calian already works with a number of SMEs on various defence-related projects, he explains. Pogue is now looking to partner with more fledgling firms that “may be already serving the defence customer but are limited in their ability to scale.”
Meanwhile, he says Calian is engaging in “a lot of discussions" with competing companies and other potential partners such as banks and universities that are also keen to pitch in and help boost Canada’s defence ecosystem.
More announcements will be coming soon, he promised, but he declined to get into further details.
“Our underlying model is not singularly about growing a business – it’s about growing an industrial sector. It’s fairly broad,” Pogue says. “It will define itself as it goes. Sometimes people get scared by that level of ambiguity. To me, that ambiguity is necessary to solve challenges that we can’t necessarily predict today.
“I have confidence that we’re on the right path, and we want to help.”
