BIOGRAPHY
Brigadier-General Peter Holt (Ret’d) is an Associate and Senior Counsel with David Pratt & Associates, a government relations and strategic consultancy firm located in Ottawa, Canada. A dynamic, innovative leader with over thirty years of experience managing large organizations and budgets in the Canadian Armed Forces and Department of National Defence, his demonstrated strengths are in the areas of strategic visioning and planning, leadership of technical organizations and Project Management.
Fluently trilingual, Peter has worked in both French and German in Europe and in bilingual positions in Canada. He has a Level II (Secret) security clearance.
Peter is also Principal of Peter Holt Consulting; he has provided strategic advice on specific issues and projects to a wide variety of customers in Canada and abroad, including Airbus, Logistik Unicorps, MAN military vehicles, Hill & Knowlton, CFN and various other firms in the defence and security business.
As a General Officer in the Canadian Army, Peter was responsible for the overall management of Land Equipment providing Canada’s Land, Air and Naval forces with combat-ready, well equipped land vehicles, land tactical communications and surveillance systems, uniforms, small arms, anti-armour and artillery systems, engineer bridging, counter and de-mining equipment as well as nuclear, biological and chemical protection and decontamination equipment.
As Director-General Land Equipment Program Management, he was responsible for a division of 1100 military and civilian employees delivering $1 billion worth of in-service support annually to maintain or upgrade fleets worth over $6 billion. He took the lead in planning equipment deployments for Canada’s contribution to NATO operations in Afghanistan. During his military career, Peter commanded technical units of all sizes from 30 to over 1,000 troops as well as doing both general staff work and project management. His specialty in project management was armoured vehicles, starting with the Leopard 1 purchase in the 1970’s up to the LAV 3 Project, which he managed from 1998 to 2001.
Peter was Colonel Commandant of the Corps of Royal Canadian Electrical and Mechanical Engineers of the Canadian Armed Forces from August 2008 to October 2014. In July 2015, he was selected to be Honorary Lieutenant-Colonel of 33 Service Battalion here in Ottawa.