Policy Paper on Canada’s National Resilience

In 2016, NATO allies agreed on seven Alliance-wide baseline requirements for national resilience. These requirements were intended to ensure that member states build the capacity to continue delivering essential services, including energy, food, healthcare, transport, and communications, in times of crisis. Alongside other NATO members, Canada has committed to strengthening its resilience in line with these requirements.

Ten years later, we are seeing an acceleration in world tensions. The nature of warfare is evolving at a rapid and disruptive pace, with profound implications for national security, defence innovation, and international stability.  Along with longstanding and emerging challenges ranging from climate change and digital threats to a changing geopolitical environment, this all contributes to an urgent need for national resilience. Reflecting these developments, NATO’s 2026 revision of the Baseline Requirements considers a wider range of cross-cutting risks, including an increased emphasis on cyberattacks, emerging technologies, strategic dependencies, extreme weather events, and reliance on space-based assets.

Simultaneously, NATO’s renewed spending agreement allocated 1.5% of GDP for defence- and security-related investments, including critical infrastructure and resilience. This created an opportunity for Canada to ensure these investments reinforce the essential services and infrastructure on which Canadians rely both in their daily lives and in times of crisis.

Against this backdrop, the NATO Association of Canada has produced a Policy Paper on Canada’s National Resilience. The document examines seven distinct areas of resilience:

  1. Critical Infrastructure
  2. Economics and Supply Chains
  3. Cybersecurity and Digital Sovereignty
  4. Public Health
  5. Natural Disasters and Broader Environmental Threats
  6. Education and Information Resilience
  7. Youth Engagement and Civil Preparedness

Each chapter assesses how Canada’s current policies and their implementation position the country to meet NATO’s baseline requirements and strengthen domestic resilience. Our authors highlight the many areas of achievement and progress Canada has already made. They also identify areas for further improvement and draw inspiration from Canada’s allies in proposing ways to address remaining gaps.

Below, we offer options to download the full policy paper as well as our short selection of executive summaries and main policy recommendations.

Author

  • The mission of NATO Association of Canada is to promote peace, prosperity, and security through knowledge and understanding of the importance of NATO.

    We strive to educate and engage Canadians about NATO and NATO’s goal of peace, prosperity and security. NATO Association of Canada ensures that we have an informed citizenry able to contribute to discussions about Canada’s role on the world stage.

    As a leading member of the Atlantic Treaty Association (ATA), NATO Association of Canada has strong and enduring ties with sister organizations in many of the alliance countries, as well as members of NATO’s “Partnership for Peace” and “Mediterranean Dialogue” programmes. The NAOC has had a leading role in the recent transformation and modernization of the ATA, and helped to create and develop the Youth Atlantic Treaty Association (YATA).

    The NAOC has strong ties with the Government of Canada including Global Affairs Canada and the Department of National Defence. We are constantly working to create and maintain relationships with international organizations such as the World Bank Group, the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development, NATO Headquarters, the International Criminal Court, and other prominent international NGOs and think tanks.

     

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