Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury at the company’s office in Montreal. Mr. Faury says Canada is facing a ‘turning point’ in its military sovereignty and has to strike cooperative agreements with like-minded allies to achieve its goals.ROGER LEMOYNE/The Globe and Mail
Airbus SE EADSY has its sights on winning more defence work from the federal government in the years ahead as the European aerospace giant pushes to deepen its relationship with Canada, already one of the company’s key global hubs for commercial aircraft assembly.
Guillaume Faury, the company’s chief executive, met this week with senior lawmakers in Ottawa in a bid to better understand the government’s defence industrial strategy and its objectives. He said he came away believing Airbus can be “a very good partner” with Canada, and build on its existing presence in the country.
“Canada is now at a turning point moment” in its military sovereignty and has to strike cooperative agreements with like-minded allies to achieve its goals, Mr. Faury told a small group of reporters Wednesday in Montreal. “It seems to me that it is very legitimate for Canada and Airbus to have things to do together and to write a long-term roadmap.”
Airbus sees the most immediate opportunities in helicopter manufacturing in the near term, Mr. Faury said. The company builds several different types of helicopters for more than 140 armed forces across the world, including attack aircraft as well as reconnaissance and utility models.
There are also opportunities in transport planes, tankers, and in space equipment, Mr. Faury said. Airbus, Leonardo and Thales announced last year that they would combine their satellite and space businesses into a new joint venture to rival Elon Musk’s Starlink.
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government is boosting defence spending as a way to increase Canada’s sovereignty and fuel the growth of domestic industry at a time of heightened economic and political volatility. Mr. Carney has said the country can no longer rely on the United States for protection.
Mr. Faury met senior lawmakers in Ottawa this week to better understand the government’s defence industrial strategy.ROGER LEMOYNE/The Globe and Mail
The federal government’s spending for the 2025-26 fiscal year represents the first time in roughly 35 years that Canada has devoted 2 per cent of its gross domestic product to defence. The last time was the end of the Cold War.
Canada is now spending more than $63-billion annually to rearm and modernize its Armed Forces capabilities, according to a North Atlantic Treaty Organization report released last week. That’s up more than 65 per cent since 2014.
“The threats we face are numerous and growing – ranging from incursions into our Arctic to attacks targeting our cyberspace,” Mr. Carney said in a speech in Halifax last week. “The world has changed, and that Canada must change with it.”
Canada is where Airbus has its largest footprint outside the European Union. The company employs roughly 5,000 people in the country, most of them in Quebec.
Its main manufacturing site is about 50 km northwest of Montreal in Mirabel, where it makes the A220 single-aisle jetliner after taking over the program from Bombardier Inc. in 2018. It also makes helicopters in Fort Erie, Ont. that are used in such things as firefighting and offshore energy operations.
Airbus has a big defence business globally, representing about 18 per cent of its total annual revenue of 73.4 billion euros in 2025 (roughly $118-billion). The unit has experienced significant challenges in recent years, hurt by heavy losses in satellites as well as supply chain constraints, and the company has looked at how it can create scale to resolve some of the issues.
The Canadian government awarded a $3.6-billion contract to Airbus’s defence and space business in 2023 for a fleet of nine planes to be used by the military for midair refuelling, medical evacuations, and strategic transport. The deal includes the acquisition of four new Airbus A330 tanker transport planes and five used A330 jets, with the first delivery expected in 2027.
Ottawa, which is replacing its aging CC-150 Polaris fleet, added separate contracts last week worth $1.5-billion for the long-term support of the tanker and transport aircraft, to be called CC-330 Husky. L3Harris MAS Inc. won the bulk of the work for maintenance while Airbus received a share worth $375-million to supply engineering and airworthiness support.