On the occasion of CDR’s 30th anniversary, we asked long time CDR team member and Senior Staff Writer, Joetey Attariwala, to sit down with Editor-in-Chief and magazine founder, Peter A. Kitchen, to get his views on the state of Canada’s defence and aerospace industry, how the publication has grown from its early days and what’s in the future.

CDR recently sat down with Canada’s Minister of National Defence, the Hon. Bill Blair, for an exclusive interview on the CDR Radio Podcast. Managing a $1 billion cut to the Department of National Defence’s budget, coping with readiness issues within the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF), and improving the recruitment/retention of CAF members through better housing and childcare: These were some of the many concerns raised by DND Minister, Bill Blair, in CDR’s annual interview.

This episode is sponsored by CAE. Representing more than 75 years of industry firsts – CAE delivers the highest-fidelity flight, mission, and personalized training programs powered by innovation. With cutting-edge technology and world-class training centres, CAE develops and deploys advanced training, simulation, and critical operations capabilities to make the world safer. CAE is the largest Canadian-headquartered defence company, supporting training of all military pilots for the Canadian Armed Forces. At the forefront of sustainability, CAE became the first Canadian aerospace company to be carbon neutral. Visit CAE’s website www.cae.com/defense-security.

Bringing the Canadian Armed Forces’ training programs into the 21st century and harnessing all the possibilities offered by technology to make it more effective and personally targeted, is the mission of RaceRocks. This indigenous-owned, woman-led firm is spearheading the charge towards training modernization at a time when the CAF desperately needs such help to keep up with technological change. We speak with Christina Jones, Vice President of Operations and Sarah Drake, the company’s Director of Design.

For more info on RaceRocks visit: https://racerocks3d.ca/

On this episode of the CDR Radio podcast we are speaking with Alex McPhail, President & CEO of the EXA Consulting Group. Based in Ottawa EXA’s experts help their clients win complex Requests for Proposals (RFP). They support RFPs worth over $50M each, including multi-billion dollar contracts.

For more info on EXA visit: www.exa.group

In this episode of the CDR Radio podcast, we speak with Colin Stephenson, Executive Director of DEFSEC Atlantic, the annual defence & security trade show. DEFSEC is being held at the Halifax convention centre on October 3-5. Colin gives us a preview of what is planned for this year's show. 

For more info on DEFSEC visit: https://defsecatlantic.ca/