While Calgary is best known as an oil and gas city, a growing aerospace and defense industry has largely gone unnoticed.
The city currently has 158 companies operating in the aerospace and defense sector, according to Calgary Economic Development. Industry across the province contributed $3.1 billion to gross domestic product in 2024, the agency said.
“There is a tremendous amount of aerospace and defense activities that most people don’t even know about,” said Jeff LaFrenz, president of VizWorX, a technology company whose software includes a virtual reality platform that can allow soldiers to hold battlefield meetings while safely inside their armored vehicles.
LaFrenz said the energy industry tends to “dominate a lot of the discourse,” which can stifle developments in the aerospace field.
That could be changing.
This week, Boeing, Ottawa and Calgary Economic Development announced funding for a new initiative in Calgary to accelerate the commercialization of Canadian-made defense technologies and help local companies find new customers in the sector.
The company has to spend a certain amount of money in the Canadian aerospace and defense sector as part of a contract signed with Ottawa, to replace the country’s aging maritime patrol planes. This is the latest in a series of announcements across Canada and is expected to be just the first of the company’s “Alberta-focused announcements,” a Boeing spokesperson said.
Wave of aviation announcements
This comes in a year where the city has also seen a slew of announcements in the commercial aviation space. Calgary has long been home to WestJet, the country’s second-largest airline, which this year placed its largest aircraft order in its history.
Also this year, Lufthansa Technik announced a multimillion-dollar deal to build an aircraft maintenance facility at the Calgary airport, and Canadian Aviation Electronics (CAE) announced it would build a 126,000-square-foot aviation training facility in the city.
Meanwhile, De Havilland Canada plans to begin construction in the spring on a 1,500-acre aircraft manufacturing facility 30 minutes east of the city that is expected to become the company’s new headquarters.
Nicole Holinaty, director of Calgary aircraft maintenance companyAny HeavyAero said there is a lot of overlap between the commercial and defense sides of the aerospace industry.attempt.
“An airplane engine is an airplane engine,” Holinaty said.
Holinaty said the company recently began “getting into the defense space,” but that an ongoing challenge is the bureaucracy associated with becoming a defense contractor. He hopes Boeing’s marketing initiative will help them expand their network.
“There are a lot of obstacles in terms of bringing your innovation to the defense market,” he said.
It is hoped that the initiative can also bridge the gap between different industries. According to Kimberley, an oil-water separator used in the energy sector could be reused for shipbuilding, for example, or a radar system used in defense could be used in mining. Van Vliet, whose organization “ConvergX” will handle the commercialization program.
People are a barrier
But if the city wants to become a bigger player in the industry, one obstacle could be human resources. De Havilland Canada, for example, employs about 500 engineers companywide and many of them are approaching retirement age, said vice president Neil Sweeney.
“That’s the only thing that can really hold the industry back…not just in Alberta but in Canada,” he said.
The company will build a new site somewhere between Chestermere and Strathmore that could create up to 1,500 jobs.
The majority of aerospace manufacturing employment in this country is in Quebec, followed by Ontario and Western Canada, according to a report of Innovation, Science and Economic Development of Canada. aerospaceelectronic maintenance, representativeAir and check are most common in Western Canada, according to the report, although it does not specify a particular province.
Montreal is the country’s aerospace center (and the third largest of the world, after Seattle and Toulouse).
Aviation expert John Gradek said that while Calgary is still far from competing with Montreal, for example, he believes the city is moving up the country’s rankings.
But without more dedicated post-secondary training to train a new generation of aerospace workers, he said it will be difficult to see the sector grow.
“There is no shortage of opportunities,” said Gradek, a professor of supply networks and aviation at McGill University. “There is a shortage of talent.”
Still, as Ottawa commits to spending more money on defense and prioritizing Canadian National Industrial Benefits — there is optimism that the sector as a whole will grow and that Calgary (and Alberta) will get a bigger piece of the pie.
“We have an opportunity as a province to really unite around aerospace and defense,” said LaFrenz, of technology company VizWorX. “I think we can rival any place in the world if we choose to.”
