At Most Ambitious: Town Hall, Dominion Dynamics CEO said procurement must move in weeks, not decades.<\/p>\n
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Speaking at BetaKit\u2019s Most Ambitious<\/a>: Town Hall on Monday, Dominion Dynamics<\/a> founder and CEO Eliot Pence said that in an era of modern warfare, Canada can no longer afford sluggish defence procurement.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re in a moment in time in which we want to privilege Canadian companies, and we have not done that for a long time,\u201d Pence told the audience during a defence tech panel moderated by BetaKit reporter Madison McLauchlan. \u201cWe took a long time to buy things, and we, generally speaking, privileged \u2026 not Canadian companies.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re in a moment in time in which we want to privilege Canadian companies, and we have not done that for a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n Eliot Pence, Pence was joined by fellow defence tech entrepreneur Kath Intson, of Sentinel R&D<\/a>, which recently entered into a partnership with Ukraine\u2019s Airlogix<\/a> to provide drone manufacturing support for the war in Ukraine, and Christian Weedbook, of quantum computing company Xanadu<\/a>. The panel\u2019s conversation covered arctic sovereignty, attracting domestic venture capital, NATO\u2019s weaponry gaps, as well as Xanadu\u2019s involvement in both the US DARPA program and Canada\u2019s quantum champion program<\/a>.<\/p>\n Pence, who founded Dominion Dynamics in 2025, said that in an era of geopolitical instability and increasingly asymmetric warfare, Canada\u2019s Department of National Defence\u2019s procurement process needs to be more nimble and domestically-focused if Canada is to remain competitive, and ultimately, sovereign.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re now at an inflection point where we can\u2019t consider what to buy for a decade, we have to buy it now,\u201d Pence said, adding that procurement cycles should be done in weeks, days, and hours, rather than years.<\/p>\n \u201cWe shouldn\u2019t be considering these things for more than a year. We have to do in-year procurement,\u201d he said. \u201cIt took us 16 years to buy F-35 [fighter jets] \u2026 it took us 20 years to consider what drones to buy. That\u2019s just an irrelevant time frame for modern warfare.\u201d<\/p>\n The best of Toronto Tech Week <\/p>\n
Dominion Dynamics<\/p>\n