Paul Ziadé: Why Canada’s Defence Complacency Ends with North Vector Dynamics

**Paul Ziadé** (0:01)
What Canada needs to get right is the requisite culture shift. As I said, culture is upstream of everything. So if we're going to be moving more money out the door and giving delegated authorities to commanders and decision-makers further down the food chain, we need to get a strong signal to these authorities that it's okay to take risks and that not all of your bets are going to be successful, and that's okay, that's part of the process. So we need to get this right. Instead of trying to be incredibly risk-averse and maybe go with the 10-year procurement, it's like we are going to take the risk on this small, scrappy start-up.
They very well might fail, but if they win, they're going to win big. And if we do fail, that's okay, that's part of the process, and we're going to learn from that.

**Matt Cohen** (0:50)
Welcome back to Tank Talks. I'm your host, Matt Cohen, founder and managing partner of Ripple Ventures. And today we're sitting down with Paul Ziadé, co-founder and CEO of North Vector Dynamics, who is one of the sharpest voices in Canada's emerging defence tech renaissance.
Paul is a former tenured engineering professor who walked away from a comfortable academic career to build something much harder, and hopefully much more impactful to Canada, a sovereign Canadian air defence systems company that is developing a miniaturized, low-cost, precision-guided missile designed and manufactured in Calgary.
North Vector has already landed multi-million-dollar contracts with the Canadian government for hypersonic propulsion work, and they're vertically integrating everything from seekers to rocket motors, because in Paul's words, Canada needs to industrialize deterrence. This conversation is about more than one startup. It's about what it actually takes to build deep-tech capital-intensive hardware companies in Canada, at a moment when geopolitics, procurement reform, and a flood of new risk capital are colliding. We talk about Paul's unlikely path from building solid rockets in his high-school chemistry lab to launching missiles from drones, and why he chose to keep North Vector headquartered in Canada instead of moving south. We also discuss the cultural and policy friction that still exists in Canada, and what it will take for Canada finally to treat defence as a serious industrial strategy instead of a dirty word. Now, let's jump into the tank for this week's episode with Paul from North Vector Dynamics. Thanks for joining us on the tank today, Paul.

**Paul Ziadé** (2:19)
It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me on.

**Matt Cohen** (2:21)
Yeah, super exciting to talk to somebody like you in the defence space. But before we get started, let's start from the beginning. Paul, where did you grow up? What was your upbringing like? What kind of kid were you? Were you a tinkerer? Were you building things, breaking things?

**Paul Ziadé** (2:33)
Yeah.
First of all, yeah, I grew up just outside Toronto to an immigrant family, moved to Canada in 1980, I believe. My parents arrived in Canada after being displaced by Civil War. And so I've heard a lot of stories about horrors of how quickly things can devolve. And before that, their ancestors were displaced by war and genocide as well. So I would say that while Canada is not perfect, I think my parents have a huge appreciation for Canada and its values, its laws and its relative peace. And I'd like to think that appreciation kind of trickled down to me and my sister as well. We spoke French at home, went to French schools, elementary and high school. I left Toronto to go to university in Waterloo, studied engineering. I still remember that I was doing math in French in my head in the first years of university. I lived there for almost eight years, then came back to Toronto.
Generally speaking, we had a terrific home life. My parents were able to give me and my sister many opportunities and installed a really good work ethic and outlook on life and responsibility. I wouldn't say so much. Yeah, I mean, I was a tinkerer for sure.
I wasn't always taking things apart or building things, but I was definitely engineering inclined, I would say. But I think the thing that defined me most, I think is that laziness was never an option in our household. So while I did play a lot of Lego and Meccano and love building and fixing things with my dad, or reading about science, I would say that my childhood was quite well-rounded. I played soccer very competitively six days a week at a very high level. I was in student government. I played the piano to an advanced level as well. So perhaps not quite the quintessential geeky kid that was destined for engineering or professorial life, but working hard and never giving up from a young age was instilled in me and I think definitely a tell that maybe one day I'd be an entrepreneur.