Stephen Fuhr got his “Picasso” nickname back in his days as a fighter pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF).
He’d been ordered to produce detailed attack maps, but his abstract scribbles earned him a call sign inspired by the cubist master, according to former military officials.
Today, the 57-year-old holds a more serious title: Canada’s secretary of state for defence procurement.
In this role, he leads the Defence Investment Agency, an organization created last year by Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government to speed up the procurement of tens of billions of dollars worth of military acquisitions.
It’s been a quick rise for the former CF-18 pilot who, after retiring from the Armed Forces in 2009, drew mockery from members of the military community by vigorously opposing the purchase of American F-35 aircraft.
Multiple sources indicate that relations remain strained to this day between Fuhr and the RCAF, whether over fighter jets, radar planes or helicopter replacements.
In an interview with CBC News, Fuhr said he is always ready to fight for his convictions.
“I’m not afraid to stand out on the hill by myself,” he said. “It’s just a principled place to be. And sometimes it’s lonely, but that’s just the way it is.”
CBC News spoke with a dozen people who have interacted closely with Fuhr over the years. Some requested confidentiality to avoid harming commercial relations with the government, or were not authorized to speak publicly.
Fuhr — who is from Edmonton but now lives in B.C.’s Okanagan Valley and is MP for Kelowna — first became interested in aviation when his grandfather took him to model airplane competitions. He never lost his taste for speed and flight.
In addition to his pickup truck, he enjoys getting behind the wheel of his sporty Porsche 911 or flying his own aircraft, a two-seater Van’s RV-8 featuring a shark mouth on the nose.
Sitting in the cockpit in a hangar at the Kelowna airport, he tells CBC News this plane is his “happy place.”
But he rarely gets time to fly over the nearby mountains. After travelling the world in recent months, his summer schedule was once again disrupted by wildfires in the area. Fuhr’s house in West Kelowna was burned to the ground by a wildfire in 2023 and was only recently rebuilt.
Now, his political career is set to become even more demanding. Under the Liberal government’s Bill C-31, he could soon inherit new powers as head of the Defence Investment Agency to award sole-sourced contracts in order to protect Canada’s “economic security.”
The measures proposed in Bill C-31 would create a “super minister” in charge of military procurement, said Justin Massie, a defence expert at Université du Québec à Montréal.
“He would have more power than Mélanie Joly at industry or [David] McGuinty at national defence, because he would combine many of the powers that were usually or historically delegated across several departments,” Massie said.
Fuhr is in line to oversee a dramatic increase in Canada’s defence budget, amid a promise to reshape the military relationship between Canada and the U.S.
He says he’s aiming for a sweeping transformation of the military procurement system, either by producing more equipment in Canada or by finding new global partners.
“We are going to become less reliant and more resilient,” he said.
“The good news is we have friends in every time zone. And everybody wants to work with Canada.”
Fuhr gets an obvious political boost from being a former CF-18 pilot. Being a member of Canada’s select “top gun” club is an enviable calling card.
Still, sources said Fuhr is seen as an outsider by many prominent members of Canada’s fighter pilot community.
During his four years in a CF-18 squadron at CFB Cold Lake in Alberta, from 1999 to 2003, he was known for standing up to his commanding officer and his career had its share of ups and downs, according to several sources.
Fuhr did not wish to comment on personal issues during the interview.
Some former pilots argue Fuhr lacks “operational credibility” within their community, having never been part of deployments in conflict zones.
He counters by pointing to a defining moment of his piloting career after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, in which airliners were turned into missiles. He said he had trained for war, but not the scenario in which he took to the skies to protect North American airspace as commercial planes were redirected to Canada.
“When you’ve got hundreds of civilian airliners full of people coming your way, and that is now a threat you have to work through, that’s a different mind space,” he said.
After leaving CFB Cold Lake, he worked in Winnipeg managing Canada’s fighter fleet and then training pilots and instructors. He retired from the RCAF after 20 years with the rank of major.
Fuhr made more of a name for himself after returning to civilian life in the early 2010s.
As Canada weighs a choice between American F-35s and Swedish Gripens for its fighter jet fleet, CBC’s David Common goes to NORAD headquarters to ask top generals about the implications of operating a mixed generation fleet for North American airspace defence.
While many in the fighter pilot community were tireless supporters of the F-35, he became a fierce critic.
“It may be a great airplane, it’s not the right plane for Canada,” he said on CBC’s Power & Politics in 2011.
Friends and former colleagues speak of his fixation against the Lockheed Martin aircraft, which had been chosen by the Stephen Harper government to replace the CF-18s.
F-35 proponents say the aircraft is superior to any other Western fighter jet due to its stealth capabilities and the extraordinary amount of data it can process.
Still, Fuhr objected to the purchase for Canada, citing the project’s staggering costs, numerous delays and some of the technical difficulties faced by some air forces. His opinion was based on a thorough review of every major study on the aircraft, including various public reports from the U.S. and Canadian governments on the program’s failures.
He knew by publicly attacking the F-35, he was taking on many of his former air force colleagues.
“From the fighter pilot community, the F-35 has basically been considered the be-all and end-all,” said Mike Reyno, a military magazine publisher and friend of Fuhr.
“What Stephen has done, and this is all with publicly available documentation, is [point out] the F-35 has actually failed to meet almost every critical point along its development.”
A former supporter of the Conservative Party of Canada, Fuhr ran as a Liberal Party candidate in the 2015 federal election alongside Justin Trudeau, drawn in part by the Liberal promise to cancel the F-35 purchase.
He won the Kelowna-Lake Country seat but lost it to the Conservatives in 2019. He then became a consultant for Boeing, among other roles, and continued to criticize the F-35, describing the aircraft as “unaffordable” in 2021.
Two years later the Trudeau government announced the purchase of 88 F-35s, signing a firm contract for 16 aircraft.
Fuhr returned to politics last year, this time alongside Carney, who responded to growing tensions with the U.S. by subjecting the F-35 purchase to a review.
There is no doubt Canada will integrate F-35s into its air force, but the real question is how many aircraft the government will ultimately buy, and whether it will decide to add Swedish Gripen fighters to its military arsenal.
The federal government has started to make payments for key components for 14 additional U.S.-built F-35 fighter jets, sources have told CBC News. The Department of National Defence says it is reviewing future fighter jet purchases in the context of trade tensions with Washington.
Easygoing and approachable, Fuhr is a fixture at defence trade shows, announcements, business trips and media interviews.
He is a prime target for lobbyists and executives hoping for a share of the new defence investments.
“He talks to everyone,” said a lobbyist whose clients find it easier to get meetings with Fuhr than the defence minister.
Numerous procurement files are moving ahead much faster than expected under his leadership, including Swedish GlobalEye radar planes, German-Norwegian submarines and the purchase of over 60,000 assault rifles from Colt Canada.
But Fuhr has ongoing tensions with the RCAF regarding the diversification of equipment supply sources.
“The Canadian Army and the Royal Canadian Navy have welcomed the change,” said Reyno. “I would say that the air force hasn’t been as welcoming to that because the Royal Canadian Air Force basically wants to operate everything the Americans operate.”
Fuhr is not closing the door to new mixed fleets of aircraft or helicopters, while the RCAF has stated its objections to the purchase of Gripens.
“Many of our allies … run a mixed fleet with fighters,” says Fuhr. “I don’t necessarily subscribe to the fact that we can’t do it. We certainly can and we’ve done it and our allies do it now. So it’s a function of ‘do we want to do this or not?'”
Despite disagreements on the matter, a former pilot says he wishes Fuhr the greatest success in his bid to modernize Canada’s sclerotic military acquisition process.
“Stephen Fuhr has to succeed. Whether anyone likes him personally or not, it is crucial for Canada to procure the right equipment to do the right job in a timely manner,” they said.
Fuhr is aware he carries the reputation of an unyielding politician who holds firm views on various procurement projects. He says he is always ready to change his mind — but only if he is given compelling evidence.
“That evidence better actually bring something to the table and be credible. And if it doesn’t do those two things, then I don’t see a reason anyone should change their position,” he said.
Throughout the interview, Fuhr made an effort not to speak directly about the F-35, a particularly sensitive topic given the trade and diplomatic tensions with the U.S.
Still, he smiled as he was asked about recent comments by U.S. Gen. Gregory Guillot, the commander of NORAD, who said F-35s weren’t necessarily the best aircraft to protect the Canadian and American borders.
“He is the commander of NORAD. So I think what he says, I take him at his word,” Fuhr said, breaking into a laugh.
