National Defence Research Roundtable
Overview
In 2025, Canada committed to major long-term investments in national security and defence research as part of a wider national investment in Canadian defence and security. This includes new spending through BOREALIS, DND, ISED, and the Tri-Council. At the time of these announcements, the government had not yet defined the principles, priorities, or mechanisms that will guide how this funding is spent.
Across Canada, post-secondary institutions and national organizations are already hard at work on security and defence research, but these efforts often unfold in isolation. HESA believes there is a clear opportunity and need to connect, share, and coordinate these efforts – that is why we convened the National Defence Research Roundtable.
The Roundtable brings together post-secondary leaders, national organizations, leading research centers, funding bodies, and other key stakeholders from government and industry to tackle the big question: how do we build and fund a coordinated, nationally aligned defence research ecosystem?
Contact us:
Questions about the National Defence Research Roundtable? Interested in participating in future roundtables? Get in touch with us at defenceroundtable@higheredstrategy.com.
HESA launched the National Defence Research Roundtable initiative in late 2025. You can read more about our first meeting and our upcoming meetings below.
Upcoming Meetings
The next National Defence Research Roundtable will be held on March 23, 2026, at Carleton University. This meeting will focus on integrating whole-of-society defence models into the post-secondary research ecosystem, and how the sector moves towards this kind of collaboration and coordination.
This meeting will feature speakers from international post-secondary institutions that have already begun this work, dialogue with Canadian experts about the practical realities of implementing such models in Canada, and discussion about what the post-secondary institutions and stakeholders present can do together to forward this work.
The full schedule, including session times and speaker information, is available here. This meeting is open to all interested stakeholders.
We will be convening another meeting in May 2026 focused on connecting post-secondary institutions with industry stakeholders. Watch this space – and One Thought To Start Your Day – for announcements.
Previous Meetings
December 15, 2025 – Ottawa
The 2025 National Defence Research Roundtable convened representatives from Canadian post-secondary institutions, leading research centers, national organizations, and granting bodies to discuss how to coordinate and advance defence research in this country and to develop sector-wide advice on how Canada should structure future defence and security research investments.
Through thematic discussions and collaborative policy design sessions, roundtable participants outlined the structures, investments, and enabling conditions needed to build a coordinated and nationally aligned national defence and security research ecosystem.
