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.

Authors

  • Justin M.J. Dell

    Justin Michael James Dell is the editor-in-chief of the NATO Association of Canada. He has been employed with NAOC since 2018. He holds a Master of Arts degree in history from the University of Guelph and a Master of Arts degree in global governance from the Balsillie School of International Affairs, University of Waterloo. He is the author of multiple publications on the history of international relations and security ontology. He is currently pursuing his PhD in global governance at the Balsillie School of International Affairs. He can be reached at justin.dell@natoassociation.ca

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  • Bogdana Torbina holds a Bachelor of Arts, Honours, in Political Science and Book and Media Studies along with a Master of Arts in European and Eurasian Studies from the University of Toronto. As the former Chief of Staff of the NATO Association of Canada (April 2024 – September 2026), Bogdana helped expand the organization’s reach and make conversations about domestic and international security more accessible to Canadians across the country. Earlier, she was the Stakeholder Engagement Team Lead (October 2023 – April 2024) and Junior Research Fellow for the Centre for Disinformation Studies (July 2023 – October 2023).

    During her time as Chief of Staff, Bogdana initiated and led an organization-wide operations modernization, re-structured and expanded the triannual internship program, and supervised over 230 interns across internal operations and publications over 7 cohorts. Together with Robert Baines and the NATO Association team, she supported the coordination of over 200 in-person, virtual, and collaborative events on domestic and transatlantic security, cultural diplomacy, and youth engagement. In 2025, she was invited to represent the Association as a speaker at the annual Canadian International Council Couchiching Conference on transatlantic approaches to strengthening democracy and civil renewal.

    Bogdana also conducted research on EU enlargement and socio-economic threats to EU’s resilience at the Centre for European Policy Studies (April 2024 – December 2024) and worked as a Political/Economic Section Analyst at the U.S. Consulate in Toronto (January 2025 – June 2025).

    She is currently currently a Legislative Intern as part of the Ontario Legislature Internship Program (OLIP) and looks forward to gaining insight into Ontario’s legislative process while deepening her understanding of how provincial policy is shaped by domestic and global challenges.

     

    • Links to the 2024 & 2025 NATO Association of Canada Annual Report.

     

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  • Lou Didelot is a Junior Research Fellow with the NATO Association of Canada. She is a second-year undergraduate student at McGill University majoring in Political Science, with double minors in Anthropology and Sociology. Her interests focus on international security, climate-related risks, and global governance. Having lived in several countries, she brings a comparative perspective and is fluent in English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese.

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  • Esha is a Senior Editor for the NATO Association of Canada with the Society, Culture, and Security program. Previously, she worked as a Program Editor and Junior Research Fellow for her current program area, as well as Women and Security. Outside of the NAOC, she is currently completing her Master's of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia. She is an alumnus of Simon Fraser University, the 2023 NATO Field School, and studied abroad at the University of Leeds in England. You can reach her at https://www.linkedin.com/in/eshagrewal/

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  • Daria is a Program Editor Team Lead at the NATO Association of Canada. She coordinates the work of the publications team, which consists of senior editors, program editors, and junior research fellows. Daria initially joined NAOC as a Junior Research Fellow under the Security, Trade, and Economy program.Outside of NAOC, Daria is a Presidential Fellow at the Center for the Study of Presidency and Congress (CSPC), a Washington D.C.-based think tank. There, she conducts research on U.S. foreign policy, focusing on the American response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.Daria is a third-year Lester B. Pearson Scholar at the University of Toronto, studying International Relations and Peace, Conflict and Justice. Previously, she served as a global health research assistant at the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work and interned with the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons.

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  • Keya Patel is the Founder and Program Editor of the Global Health and Security Program at the NATO Association of Canada. She also serves as Senior Editor for the Environment, Climate Change, and Security Program and as Engagement Coordinator for the Security in Community Project.

    Keya is a recent graduate of the University of Toronto, where she completed a specialist program in Economics with a minor in Political Science. Her academic and professional interests lie at the intersection of health economics, public policy, law, and international governance, with a particular focus on global health security.

    During her time at U of T, she held several leadership roles, including Co-President of the Undergraduate Economics Council, President of the Pareto Undergraduate Journal of New Economists, and Co-President of the Global Health Organization. She was also selected to represent the University of Toronto at the Global Model World Health Organization Conference in Geneva, hosted by the World Federation of United Nations Associations. In addition, she contributed to research in education economics as a Research Assistant on the Khoaching with Khan Academy (KWiK)/Numi Project, which explored the use of AI to scale individualized learning.

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  • Maya Khachab
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  • John Walsh is an Associate Professor of Classics and Director of the School of Languages and Literatures at the University of Guelph. His scholarship engages ancient history and classical political thought, with particular attention to the formation of civic institutions, political judgement, and the relationship between intellectual life and public service. He is the founder of the Serving Scholar Program, an initiative supporting members of the Canadian Armed Forces in postsecondary education and fostering structured engagement between universities and military service. His work brings historical analysis to contemporary questions of governance, institutional responsibility, and democratic life.

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  • Darren Sargent is a Canadian Armed Forces officer and Program Manager, National Sovereignty, Security and Resilience at the University of Guelph. He also serves as a university lecturer and contributes to initiatives focused on defence, security, and resilience.

    He holds a Bachelor of Arts - BA, (Honours) with Double-Major Psychology and Political Science from the University of Guelph.

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  • Laiba Awan is completing her Master’s in Political Science at the University of Calgary, where her research explores human security, climate change, and terrorism through Complex Systems Theory. She is a Fellow with Results Canada, contributing to policy on poverty reduction and health equity, and in 2025 she served as a Media Officer at the G7 Summit, supporting high-level media operations. She has also contributed to academic innovation as a co-author with the Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning, including the chapter “Navigating the Rockies of Academia through Collective Care.” Most recently, she was appointed a Junior Research Fellow with NATO Canada under the Environment, Climate Change, and Security Program, and looks forward to further advancing dialogue and policy at the intersection of global security, environment, and climate change.

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