Imagine a family using a consumer drone at their lakeside cottage to capture footage during a day of waterskiing. As the spray from the wake hits the drone and GPS briefly drops, the drone doesn’t drift or crash. It switches to an onboard navigation system, stabilizes itself, and still captures the perfect action shot.
That same navigation capability could also support Arctic monitoring missions or help secure critical infrastructure in remote regions.
This is dual-use technology: innovations developed for commercial markets that can also serve defence and national security needs.
In Canada, dual-use technology often begins with the systems powering devices and services people rely on every day, from sensors and AI chips to robotics and navigation technologies. Designed to solve commercial problems, these innovations can also operate in both civilian and defence contexts, strengthening Canada’s industrial resilience and long-term readiness.
The Dual-use Opportunity
In a world of shifting geopolitics and increasingly complex supply chains, countries need reliable access to critical technologies and the domestic capability that designs and builds them. By supporting the development of domestic IP, we ensure that the foundational technologies of the future are conceived, designed, and owned here at home. This is more than an economic goal; it is a matter of sovereign capability and economic resilience. When we own the intellectual property, we retain control over our supply chains and ensure that Canadian innovations remain a cornerstone of our national interest.
Recent federal investments alongside new initiatives such as Canada’s Defence Investment Agency reflect a growing recognition that strengthening national resilience requires more than strategy. It requires hardware. It requires Canadian companies capable of building, testing, and deploying real-world solutions on Canadian soil.
Why ventureLAB?
Through our Hardware Catalyst Initiative, we provide Hardtech companies in our community access to highly specialized and cost-prohibitive infrastructure enabling them to prototype, validate, and scale physical technologies without relinquishing ownership or intellectual property abroad. At the same time, our network of advisors, investors, and partners provides the connections to build clear pathways for commercial growth.
The barriers ventureLAB helps founders overcome, such as access to specialized facilities and connections to key experts, are the same challenges that must be addressed to build a thriving dual-use ecosystem in Canada. Today, Canadian companies aiming to enter the dual-use space face significant headwinds:
- Insufficient capital runway to afford defence-grade testing facilities.
- Limited connections to the specialized compliance experts required for defence procurement.
- Lack of access to advanced infrastructure for testing military-grade hardware or infrastructure for testing photonic-based devices.
Already across the ventureLAB ecosystem, more than 90 companies are developing technologies with clear dual-use potential; from next-generation semiconductors and AI architectures to advanced sensing, communications, and robotics systems. These firms are solving real market problems today while also contributing to sectors critical to national security and industrial capability. These companies need our support to become viable dual-use players.
The goal is clear: accelerate the commercialization of Canadian-built technologies that serve both civilian markets and defence needs.
In the months ahead, ventureLAB will introduce the companies building these capabilities and explore what their progress reveals about dual-use innovation in Canada.
Because dual-use is not a future concept. It is already here and Canada has the innovators to lead it.
To learn more, read about Canada’s Industrial Defence Strategy.
