Canada will purchase drones as part of an effort to beef up security at the Canada-U.S. border. That’s a promise Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc made to Donald Trump in a three-hour dinner meeting at Mar-a-Lago to try to dissuade the incoming U.S. president from imposing punishing tariffs on Canadian goods, which could cripple our economy.
With that pledge, Canada tacitly acknowledged an increasingly conspicuous gap in its defences, namely a near-total failure of military and federal law enforcement bodies to embrace drone technology, as many other countries have already done.
Kelly Sundberg, a Mount Royal University criminologist who specializes in migration and border security and is also a former Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) officer, said U.S. officials he regularly speaks with have genuine concerns about what he characterized as Canada’s “sheer neglect” regarding border security.
“They really are concerned with the lackadaisical approach that Canada takes to [border security], especially our migration control,” he said in an interview with The Hub.
“How are we going to address these issues? Drones very well might be a part of it.”
Unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, are rapidly transforming defence and security strategy around the world—in settings ranging from surveillance on the U.S. side of the border to the battlefields of Ukraine. Yet neither the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) nor the two agencies charged with guarding our borders have kept up with the global revolution toward adopting drones, despite the possibility that these small machines could make a big contribution toward fixing Canada’s military and security deficiencies.
On the battlefield
Security analysts say drones are valuable for their ability to enhance users’ situational awareness, without risking the life of a pilot or crew. Small, low-cost drones can have an impact well beyond their size. The Ukrainian army, for example, has demonstrated how enemy tanks can be destroyed with a $560 drone (a tiny fraction of the cost of a Javelin anti-tank missile at some $285,000).
Drones for military or security purposes can be divided into two main types. The first is large fixed-wing units that can reach the size of an airplane, which are used for long-distance intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions—”ISR,” in military terms. Some purpose-built military drones can even be armed with guided missiles.
The second type is smaller first-person view (FPV) drones, also known as “mini” or “micro” drones, which are useful for enhancing the situational awareness of ground forces. These can also be used as weapons on an ad hoc basis, as many around the world have witnessed in recent years via social media videos of small Ukrainian drones—often commercial models that have been adapted for military uses—striking Russian soldiers in their tanks and trenches.
A soldier of Ukraine’s 57th motorised brigade operates an FPV drone on the front line in the Kharkiv region, Ukraine, Thursday, Nov. 7, 2024. Efrem Lukatsky/AP Photo.
Many military analysts have said drones are already transforming the tactics used in modern warfare, as forces around the world look to harness their outsized impact. Defence analyst Wesley Wark, a senior fellow at CIGI and a fellow with the Balsillie School of International Affairs, called the current conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East “the first drone wars in history.” Without drones, Wark said in an interview with The Hub, Canada could lose its “capacity to operate as a modern armed force.”
With no drones currently in use (or at least publicly acknowledged), the CAF are already years behind the curve. Canada’s acquisition of airplane-sized drones for coastal defence and other long-distance missions will not be complete until 2028 at the earliest. This comes at a time when NATO partners have urged Canada to upgrade its defence spending to reach the alliance’s 2-per-cent-of-GDP guideline.
David Perry, president of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, an independent foreign policy think tank that has received funding from the defence industry, said it is now late in the game to be buying Canada’s first long-distance drones. “I wouldn’t say that we’re falling behind. I’d say we have fallen behind because most of our allies purchased this kind of asset years ago,” said Perry.
On the border
While unlawful border crossings from Mexico to the U.S. are 10 times more frequent than those leaving Canada for the U.S., crossings at the Canada-U.S. border have virtually doubled since 2022, from 109,535 to 198,929.
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has used MQ-9 Predator drones, a model closely related to the SkyGuardian, to patrol the Canada-U.S. border since 2009.
Two agencies guard Canada’s side of the border. While the CBSA is responsible for security at official points of entry, including border crossings and airports, the RCMP is charged with monitoring the long stretches in between—which means watching for the unauthorized entry of drugs, weapons, and people.
The CBSA doesn’t use any drones, as the agency confirmed in response to questions from The Hub last week.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), which shares border security responsibilities with the CBSA, does operate drones, but they’re used for a multitude of tasks and only occasionally dedicated to patrolling the Canada-U.S. border.
The RCMP has increasingly used drones—which it refers to as “remotely piloted aircraft systems,” or RPASs—over the last decade, for a variety of tasks, including emergency response and investigations of crime scenes and collisions. But it only occasionally uses drones for border security: of the 1,194 drone flights it conducted in 2022, the most recent available data, just 10 percent (or approximately 120) were for border security purposes.
In this respect, Canada’s enforcement agencies are actually behind smugglers, who have adopted small drones to bring guns into Canada.
According to information the RCMP supplied at The Hub’s request, the federal policing agency has more than 900 drone systems in its inventory, of various models.
“Some of the RCMP’s current inventory of RPAS could be suitable for border surveillance,” wrote a spokeswoman via email. But the RCMP would not say which types and models of drones it operates.
The Saskatchewan branch of the RCMP, however, revealed two types of drones it uses when it announced last year that it will equip each of its 113 detachments in the province with at least one drone. These were the Mavic multi-rotor drone, made by DJI, a Chinese company that the Pentagon has designated as a supplier to the Chinese military, and the Sky Fury, a larger fixed-wing type with vertical takeoff and landing capabilities. Its manufacturer, Yangda, is also based in China.
The RCMP was already looking to enhance its drone capabilities before Trump’s comments. In September, it posted a search, or “challenge,” for Canadian companies to develop a drone with a flight range of at least 400 kilometres, and with a top speed of at least 100 kilometres an hour.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith recently announced a $29-million border patrol unit to guard entry points in that province, which she said will deploy drones.
But would drones even be effective for policing the border? A 2018 Cato Institute study concluded that drones “contribute little to border security.” It analyzed publicly available data regarding the CBP’s use of Predators for border patrol between 2013 and 2016. Given that drones had been involved in around 0.5 percent of all apprehensions during those years, the authors wrote that “CBP’s drone program has failed to live up to its expectations.”
The authors noted that while drones can capture images of suspicious activity, “unlike U.S. Border Patrol agents in the field, drones cannot apprehend subjects.” As well, CBP’s Predator drones were often grounded because of weather, and because long flights dramatically shorten their engines’ lifespans. Two of CBP’s 11 Predators had already crashed.
The small contribution to border security that drones do make, the authors wrote, is expensive—at about $45,325 per arrest—compared to other methods, such as human border patrol officers.
Sundberg, the criminologist and former CBSA officer, said Canada doesn’t have a comprehensive strategy to secure its border. Before Canada rushes to buy drones, he said, “Step one [should be to] develop a meaningful plan and completely identify all of the holes in Canada’s migration and border security.”
And given that the Canada-U.S. border is nearly 9,000 kilometres long, stretching across often inhospitable terrain with almost 1,200 official points of entry (including border crossings, airports, and mail processing centres), Sundberg said plugging those holes would be a mammoth task, requiring more personnel and multiple technologies.
“Of course drones are going to be part of the security infrastructure we’re going to have to put in place, but we have a lot of pieces we need to put down on that puzzle before we get to drones.”
A puma drone among other UAVs seen during the Defence on the Dock demonstrations at the Ogden Point Breakwater District in Victoria, Sept. 17, 2023. Chad Hipolito/The Canadian Press.
Drones for the Canadian Armed Forces still several years away
Military analysts are more unanimous that drones are effective for military purposes—and the world has witnessed the proof on the battlefields of Ukraine.
In an interview with The Hub, Wark said Canada has no excuse for falling behind peer countries in developing drone capabilities. “We’ve had lots of time now to really study, in depth, fast-paced developments with regard to drone use and anti-drone capabilities on the part of both the Russians and Ukrainians in their war,” he said. “If there weren’t previous wakeup calls with regard to Canada’s need for significant drone capabilities, surely the last two years in terms of the Ukraine War were it.”
The Ottawa Citizen reported last month that the CAF still have no plans to acquire any miniature drones, despite the conspicuous and pivotal role they have played in the Russo-Ukraine War.
Regarding larger, long-distance drones, the federal government announced last December that it had purchased 11 MQ-9B SkyGuardian drones from the U.S.-based contractor General Atomics Aeronautical Systems (GA-ASI) for $2.49 billion.
“Domestically, the [SkyGuardian] will be used for surveillance and reconnaissance of Canadian maritime approaches and in the Arctic, and will represent a significant improvement to Canadian Armed Forces’ capabilities,” wrote a Department of National Defence (DND) spokesman in response to questions from The Hub.
The model can fly missions of 40 hours or more and can carry weapons. The SkyGuardian can fire Hellfire precision air-to-ground missiles and Paveway laser-guided bombs. The DND expects delivery of the first aircraft to Canada by 2028, and a fully operational fleet by 2033.
Many peer countries have already been using the same or similar drones for years. The United States, United Kingdom, Italy, France, and Spain are among the countries that already use SkyGuarian drones.
Australia—an ally country similar to Canada in size, population, GDP and government structure—received its first long-distance coastal patrol drone this August. Its army drone program already works with five different types of smaller FPV types. This summer, the Australian army rolled out a homegrown drone capable of travelling 200 kilometres to hit a target with a lethal payload, while the country’s federal government announced a $100 million investment in new drone models.
Canada’s potential military adversaries are also well ahead on military drone technology. China is the world’s largest manufacturer not only of commercial drones but also of combat-capable models. Drones are reportedly a major part of the country’s military strategy. One analyst said China is developing a fleet of “tens of thousands” of drones, of at least 50 different types. Drones would be the tip of the spear of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, according to a report in the Chinese Communist Party-owned media.
Russia’s military, having absorbed hard-won battlefield lessons on the value of drones since its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, now operates various types and models for different missions. Although Russia depends on Iranian-made drones now, its defence sector is reportedly making efforts to ramp up its homegrown industry.
Meanwhile in Canada, the 2028 delivery for the SkyGuardians represents a three-year delay on a 2025 date announced earlier, in part because DND believes the units will need to be modified to operate in the Arctic.
Perry pointed out that Canada could have accepted some of the drones without the necessary cold-weather upgrades earlier, so that drone patrols of our Pacific and Atlantic coasts could have begun sooner.
While Canada waits for the drones to arrive, Perry said, our security services continue to have gaps in awareness of what’s happening off our coasts. Perry said drones are part of a suite of technologies Canada should be deploying to sharpen the picture. In a major defence policy update released earlier this year, DND said “Russian submarines are probing widely across the Atlantic, Arctic, and Pacific Oceans and China is rapidly expanding its underwater fleet.”
“You want to understand what’s happening in your own waters, your own coastal approaches,” Perry said. As of now, “we don’t know what’s happening there at a time of very much increased geopolitical tension and great power competition with Russia, which is an Arctic power, and China, which describes itself as a new Arctic state.”
As Canada’s partner in the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD), the U.S. would also presumably want reassurances that Canada is not blind to what’s happening in its waters.
