New defence tech company opening factory in Kanata

A new defence company building a facility in Ottawa says it has the technology to help defend Canada’s north. CTV’s Dylan Dyson reports.

Dominion Dynamics, a new defence and technology company, is set to open its first factory in Ottawa this March.

The new 25,000 square-foot facility will be located in Kanata north at 103 Schneider Road and plans to employ 100 people by the end of 2026.

Dominion Dynamics primarily builds sensor systems that it plans to deploy in Canada’s arctic to monitor the vast tundra, with the ability to alert military decision makers.

“What we’re looking for are anomalies in the environment,” explains Eliot Pence, Dominion Dynamics’ founder and CEO.

“Whether that’s drones or balloons in the sky, whether that’s submarines, under water or under ice, or obstructions on runways, on roads, on anything.”

The announcement of comes alongside this week’s World Economic Forum, where U.S. President Donald Trump has persisted with his plan to acquire Greenland for international safety purposes, adding that the U.S. has also overseen Canada’s safety.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Mark Carney suggested that Canada has the means to defend itself, announcing that Canada will double its defence spending by 2030 and will do so in ways that build up domestic industries.

Pence says his company is in prime position to aid that cause.

“We have underinvested in the Arctic for about a generation or two, and we have some sense of what’s happening up there, but generally speaking, not that much sense of what’s happening.”

“In many ways, I think Trump is saying something that most Canadians have known, we need to have more independence. We need to have more diversification,” says Pence.

Dominion Dynamics’ decision to set up shop in Ottawa follows the city’s move to position Ottawa-Gatineau as Canada’s defence innovation hub.

“We have amazing companies that have world firsts; companies like Dominion Dynamics and MDA Space and Telesat that are going to be speaking about technologies and solutions developed here by talent here,” said Sonya Shorey, Invest Ottawa’s president and CEO, at Ottawa’s state of the city address Wednesday.

“We are going to increase the readiness of our forces. We are going to lean in and we are going to build our economy. We are going to lean in and protect our sovereignty — that’s the Arctic sovereignty,” adds Shorey.

While also being in close proximity to work with the federal government on new technologies, Pence says choosing Ottawa was easy.

“The city has tons of defense tech, knowledgeable domain experts, and we were deliberative about setting up a factory here because of that.”

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