Defence and Continental Security

Defence is the largest genuinely new sovereign function and the one most easily to be poorly costed. A percentage of GDP is an input to a political commitment, not to a costing. What is costed here is the mature force. The people and bases stood up inside the transition window, without equipment, are costed in the Budget and Costing Report, and this allowance sits on top of that establishment rather than replacing it. The difference between the two figures is the equipment programme, which follows a posture decision that is the first legislature's to take.

This section works the other way round: it asks what Alberta’s neighbours would need to see, specifies a force that delivers it, and prices that force.

The defence problem Alberta actually has

Only two countries could mount a conventional ground threat to Alberta: the United States and Canada. Both are the countries Alberta most needs as partners, neither scenario is credible, and a force built to deter either would be both ruinous and pointless. Threats that do not respect geography — cyber, aerospace and long-range systems — are a different matter, and they are what the capabilities below are actually sized against.

Alberta is also landlocked, so an entire branch of armed service — with the shipbuilding, basing and sustainment behind it — does not arise at all.

What remains is a different problem, and a real one. Alberta sits inside a continental security system it did not build and cannot opt out of. The question is not whether Alberta can repel an invasion. It is whether Alberta can hold up its own section of that system, or whether it becomes a gap that somebody else has to cover.

What the United States and Canada would need to see

Four things, and they are capability requirements rather than spending levels. What a partner government looks for is whether specific jobs get done, not whether a ratio has been hit. These are planning assumptions about what would be expected of Alberta, not commitments given by anyone.

1. Airspace surveillance and intercept. Alberta lies inside the approach geometry of continental air defence. A state that cannot see and police its own airspace is a hole in that system, and the cost of covering it falls on a neighbour. This is the single most important item on the list.
2. No security vacuum on the ground. Control of borders and ports of entry, protection of critical infrastructure, and a serious counter-trafficking and counter-terrorism capability — the same concern that governs the pharmaceutical-diversion question raised elsewhere in this paper.
3. Allied-standard handling. Export and technology-transfer controls, classified material handling, personnel vetting and communications security compatible with allied practice. This is the price of admission to shared intelligence and to buying advanced equipment at all.
4. Self-sufficiency in domestic emergencies. Wildfire, flood, search and rescue and major incident response handled by Alberta, so that neither neighbour is called on to do it.

What they would not require

No expeditionary capability and no power projection. No navy. No heavy armoured formations. And no duplication of the strategic enablers — heavy airlift, aerial refuelling, airborne early warning, satellite surveillance — which are used occasionally, cost disproportionately, and are precisely what cooperation exists to share. Alberta would buy access to those rather than own them.

The force that follows from it

1. About 6,000 to 7,500 regular personnel, with a small professional core and a high proportion in air, intelligence and technical roles;
2. About 20,000 to 25,000 trained reserve or militia personnel, providing depth, mobilisation capacity and domestic response at low standing cost;
3. A fighter force of 16 to 20 aircraft, sized to sustain continuous quick-reaction alert rather than to conduct offensive operations;
4. Ground-based air surveillance and control, tactical transport, helicopters and search-and-rescue aircraft;
5. One professional combined-arms land formation, ground-based air defence and uncrewed systems;
6. Cyber, intelligence, electronic warfare, special-operations, engineering, medical and logistics capabilities built to allied standards; and
7. Negotiated access to shared strategic capabilities in place of owning them.

This is a militia-backed territorial and air-defence force, closer in shape to the armed-neutral states of Europe than to a miniature Canadian Armed Forces. Switzerland remains the useful structural comparator: outside the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, inside its Partnership for Peace since 1996, interoperable by choice rather than by treaty [NATO-CH]. Nothing here assumes Alberta joins any alliance, and no alliance spending target is used anywhere in this costing.

What comparable countries actually spend

The cost above can be checked against what states in a similar position pay. The comparison uses one series for every country, so the figures are on the same basis.

World Bank World Development Indicators, series MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS, compiled from Stockholm International Peace Research Institute data, 2024 reference year [WB-MIL]. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization applies a different definition and reports Canada at 1.47 per cent for the same year; the two series measure different things and should not be combined.

Alberta’s costing sits between Austria and New Zealand, above Switzerland, and below what Canada itself spent in 2024. None of these countries is defenceless, and only Canada carries an alliance spending target. The figure is neither austere nor generous by the standards of comparable states.

Three different defence costs

Transition setup: C$58.2 million once, including C$20.2 million of capital, already inside the C$4.96 billion transition budget [BA].

Mature annual defence: approximately C$5.0 billion, which is about 1.05 per cent of gross domestic product. Of that, C$415.5 million is already carried in the federal-replacement ledger, leaving C$4.6 billion as a sovereign-function allowance. The percentage is stated only for comparison; it is the output of the force description above, and it moves if the force does.

Initial equipment build-out: approximately C$10.0 to C$16.5 billion spread over ten to fifteen years. It is capital, not an annual operating bill, and at an average of C$0.7 to C$1.6 billion a year it sits largely inside the C$5.0 billion mature defence budget, which already carries C$0.9 to C$1.1 billion a year for acquisition and replacement. The C$5.0 billion is the cost of running the force, not the cost of buying it outright.

What defence costs

The mature allowance carried into the ledger is therefore C$4.6 billion a year: the C$5.0 billion force, less the C$415.5 million of defence establishment already counted in the federal-replacement ledger. It is drawn down once, in the full annual fiscal ledger at Table 3. It is not re-totalled here.

Continental cooperation

The costing assumes close cooperation with the United States, Canada and other friendly countries so Alberta can share very expensive strategic capabilities rather than duplicate them. Costing does not include considerations related to a status of forces and/or defence cooperation agreement with the US.

Alberta could offer training areas, airspace, bases, radar, cyber capability and interoperable forces in return for negotiated access to lift, surveillance and continental warning systems. Appendix E explains the capability basis and capital build-out.