Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is expected to reveal which company will be awarded a contract to construct 12 submarines for Canada’s navy when he makes an announcement on Monday, according to a report from the Globe and Mail published Sunday.
The timing of the announcement is significant — Carney is scheduled to travel to Turkey for a NATO leaders’ summit on Tuesday and Wednesday, and sources cited by the Globe and Mail indicate the submarine contract decision will come before his departure.
A request for comment sent to the Prime Minister’s Office had not received a response at the time of reporting.
Two companies are vying for the lucrative naval contract: Thyssenkrupp Marine Systems (TKMS), a joint German-Norwegian venture, and Hanwha Ocean, a shipbuilder based in South Korea.
Canada has been under pressure from the United States to boost its defense spending. The country has already met NATO’s military spending benchmark of 2% of gross domestic product ahead of its original schedule. NATO leaders have collectively agreed to raise defense and security-related spending to 5% of GDP by the year 2035.
In addition to the submarine announcement, Canada is working to gather approximately 10 founding nations for a proposed global defense bank, with plans to unveil that initiative at the upcoming NATO summit.
