Mr. Eliot Pence
Chair and members of the committee, thank you for having me. My name is Eliot Pence. I grew up in Victoria, BC, and I have spent my career building defence companies. Most recently, I helped scale Anduril Industries into one of the most influential defence technology companies in the world, before coming home to start Dominion Dynamics. We’re a Canadian company based in Ontario, focused on the north. We build rugged systems for challenging places, like the Arctic. Let me put my ask on the table right away. We don’t need lungs; we need purchase orders—contracts—small ones to start. Vast ones—we will earn the big ones. We just closed a $21-million seed round with major Canadian and US investors, including the BC pension manager, BCI. It’s the largest defence investment at this stage in Canadian history. We’re opening up a 25,000-square-foot factory in Kanata in March, and a development office in Toronto. We’ll start with dozens of hires, and as we scale, we expect that to grow into the hundreds by the end of this year or early next. Private capital is moving, because the need is obvious and the market is here in Canada. But we need your government, along with the other provincial and municipal police forces, to buy our technologies. Auranet—which is what we build—is a network of rugged northern sensors that share data in real time. Think of it as an always-on tripwire for the Arctic and the Far North of Ontario. We also build an autonomous wingman aircraft—a drone designed to fly alongside fighter jets or on its own, taking the risky jobs so people don’t have to. And we have designed and deployed the software that ties all of this together in allied systems. We’ve run field trials in northern Ontario, and we’re deployed in the Yukon today, but we should be deployed here too. Ontario is an Arctic province, whether we use the language or not. The province has nearly 1,300 kilometres of Arctic shoreline on Hudson Bay and James Bay. In a time when Arctic sovereignty is a top priority, Ontario’s coastline is a tremendous opportunity, but also a responsibility. Across northern Ontario, there are roughly 200 unmanaged or lightly managed airstrips. They are lifelines for medical evacuations and shipments of food and fuel, but they can also be targets for trafficking or other illicit activity if no one is watching. Our technology can watch, quietly and affordably, and they can queue a response only when there’s something to respond to. Recently, Dominion Dynamics has spent some time with a community in Peawanuck, on the Winisk River, just south of the Hudson Bay. This is one of the northernmost communities in Ontario. Community leaders talked about the unidentified drones and strange, unidentified aerial traffic. Sometimes it could just be prospectors with the drones, sometimes not. Just like during the Chinese weather balloon episode in 2023, there are unidentified objects in the skies over Ontario. Leaders in Peawanuck and other northern communities are asking a simple question: Can we know, in real time, what’s over our heads and using northern airstrips at night? We’ve been working with them to track and identify those objects. Ontario can help by treating communities like Peawanuck as early adopters of our technology, but of Canadian-owned and Canadian-controlled technology. That same logic applies across the province. The OPP and regional police can use Auranet for airstrip and perimeter monitoring, share intelligence about unmanned aircraft systems and augment the drone programs they already run; wildfire management can treat Auranet as a standing tripwire for heat, smoke and movement, with small aircraft for confirmation; and at remote aerodromes we can log traffic, flag unauthorized night ops and provide video and telemetry when something isn’t right. So what do we need from Ontario, practically? Start with a pilot order, an investment in Auranet nodes across a handful of priority sites, like airstrips and critical infrastructure. Put clear performance milestones in the contract; when we hit them, expand. Second, create a fast lane for testing and contracting technology. The federal government is moving toward a defence industrial strategy that emphasizes speed and technology that is Canadian-owned and controlled. Ontario can build its own provincial strategy that nests into that and focuses on provincial security and emergency response. Third, protect the IP we’re building here. Loans are great for working capital, but companies that are building world-changing IP need a better contracting environment. We need to keep Ontario-created IP in Ontario; that’s how you build the defence industrial cluster in this province. Canada is finally investing in the things we’ve talked about for over three decades. Private capital, including institutional investors, are now backing early defence companies here. Dominion is one of them, but there are several others that are also getting funded. The question for Ontario is simple: Do those dollars turn into Ontario manufacturing, Ontario IP and Ontario missions, or do promising firms move production and patents south because contracting is faster? Ontario’s 2026 budget is a chance to answer that—not with another program for next year, but with a first purchase order this spring and a clear provincial policy that says that Ontario is an Arctic gateway and we will field useful capability at speed. I’ll end where I began: with the ask. Give us a small, fast contract. Let’s prove the tech Ontario missions this spring and scale what works. And let’s start speaking plainly about who we are: Ontario is an Arctic coastline; it is an Arctic province. Let’s start acting like it and building the capacity to keep people safe in a harder world. Dominion Dynamics is ready to do our part. Thank you. I’m happy to take your questions.
Official source