New rifles on the way for Canada's soldiers as defence spending ramps up
CBC
A program intended to replace the entire stock of the Canadian military’s aging assault rifles is being sped up, CBC News has learned.
An internal Department of National Defence presentation references a move to quickly order the first tranche of weapons under the Canadian Modular Assault Rifle program.
The commander of the Canadian Army, Lt.-Gen. Mike Wright, confirmed in an interview with CBC News that the program, which has languished on the books for years, will now proceed with speedy delivery expected from a Canadian manufacturer.
"We're on the cusp of signing a contract that will see those rifles start to be delivered to the Canadian Army as of next year," Wright said.
That would be almost two years ahead of the last published schedule and is being made possible by the injection of more than $9 billion into the military as part of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s drive to reach NATO’s two per cent defence spending benchmark.
A Defence Department equipment briefing, dated July 2025, says the plan is to order up to 65,401 modern rifles with the possibility being left open to increase the delivery up to 300,000 should the government proceed with a plan to drastically scale up the size of the military supplementary reserve.
The internal presentation doesn’t contain a price tag, nor a precise delivery time, but the department’s defence capabilities website said the program could be worth between $500 million and $1 billion.
The Canadian Modular Assault Rifle is intended to replace the current stock of C7 and C8 rifles, which date from the Afghan war almost two decades ago.
Wright sees both the rifles and new day-to-day CADPAT camouflage pattern uniforms as important morale-boosters.
Wright didn't reveal who the contract might go to. But Colt Canada, located in Kitchener, Ont., is in the running and has a long-standing relationship with the army. Buying Canadian would help the Liberal government's pitch to rebuild the country’s defence industrial base.
Such an order would also provide a bit of political cover fire as the department pushes forward with the army’s demand for U.S.-manufactured rocket-propelled artillery, known as HIMARS.
In October, the U.S. Defense Security Cooperation Agency, an arm of the State Department, gave Canada permission to buy up to 26 of the M142 rocket systems. A letter of offer needs to be extended before the contract can be signed.
The army isn’t expected to take delivery until 2029, but the $2.7-billion program is politically uncomfortable because of the federal government’s stated aim of diversifying military equipment purchases away from the United States.
"We're saying the HIMARS system is the long-range precision strike system that we need for land operations," Wright said.
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