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Category: Defence

Defence R&D: The Long Game

Over the past year, we at HESA towers have been thinking about how post-secondary institutions fit into Canada’s national defence, security, and sovereignty priorities, and the implications for research and skills/training. We’ve also been looking at how other countries have structured their defence R&D ecosystems and sharing some of the lessons those systems can teach Canadian institutions. We’re building on that work this year – stay tuned for an announcement on that at the end of this blog. For the

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September 16, 2026 No Comments

Emerging Global Themes in Defence Research

As you all know, we’ve been keeping an eye on the changing policy environment both in Canada and internationally for university research related to defence, security, and sovereignty in this new post-postwar world. Today, we thought we would share a little bit about the changes we are seeing and how they may end up at least to some extent shaking up some traditional research excellence hierarchies.  One of the keys here, it seems to us, is that whereas traditional defence

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June 2, 2026 No Comments

The Awkward Phase

It’s been interesting for us sitting around the edges of the new relationship between the federal government and the post-secondary community around security issues and watching two sides size each other up. Today, some thoughts on the matter and suggestions to speed up the process. So, let’s start with the internal challenges the two sides have in forging a relationship. On the Government of Canada side, it’s very much the case that the various players in the game are not on

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March 17, 2026 No Comments

Skills for Sovereignty

Hi everyone. The blog is off this week, but given the release of the Defence Industrial Strategy, it seems worth flagging a few early observations – and providing an update on how this is shaping the agenda for our upcoming session of the National Defence Research Roundtable, which is focused on the role of post-secondary institutions in developing skills as part of a new approach to sovereignty and national security. So, the Defense Industrial Strategy (DIS) is finally out. I

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February 24, 2026 No Comments

Campus Total Defence

This blog doubles as an invitation to a very cool event in Ottawa on March 23rd. See the end of blog for details. If there is anything Canada should take from President Trump’s deeply disturbing rants about Greenland over the past couple of weeks, it is that our country is very definitely a target. The fascist government in power in the United States genuinely believes both that might makes right and that the entire hemisphere is rightfully theirs. The threat to national

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January 26, 2026 2 Comments
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One Thought to Start Your Day is our founder and CEO Alex Usher’s popular daily blog, brimming with up-to-the-minute insights and informed opinions on today’s higher education industry.

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