Canada has opened negotiations to buy Leonardo’s M-346 advanced jet trainer, after Mark Carney and Giorgia Meloni met on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Évian-les-Bains. The move puts the Royal Canadian Air Force on a path toward a new lead-in fighter training platform as Ottawa pushes its Build-Partner-Buy procurement model.
The government said the aircraft would give the RCAF access to state-of-the-art training hardware and strengthen sovereign training capacity. It disclosed no fleet size, pricing, contract structure, or delivery schedule. Leonardo has already sold M-346 T Block 20 aircraft to ITPS Canada, creating a domestic training footprint ahead of any federal order. The talks now set up a broader contest over Canada’s next trainer baseline.