Canada looking to help develop sensors for 'Golden Dome' missile defence, U.S. general tells conference

Canada's participation in U.S. President Donald Trump's planned "Golden Dome" missile-defence system for North America is limited to research involving the detection of incoming threats, the U.S. commander for NORAD told a defence conference on Wednesday.

Gen. Greg Guillot told the annual Conference of Defence Associations Institute annual forum in Ottawa that he and his staff are excited about the proposal, which broadly falls within existing plans to modernize continental defence.

Last month during a visit to Washington, Defence Minister Bill Blair acknowledged that Canada was interested in participating in the plan, saying safeguarding the skies "makes sense."

U.S. President Donald Trump issued an executive order at the end of January mandating the creation of an "Iron Dome for America," which would be a "next-generation missile defence shield for the United States against ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles and other next-generation aerial attacks."

The Pentagon this week re-christened the "Iron Dome" proposal as the "Golden Dome" and a reference was made in Trump's Tuesday joint address to Congress.

During recent testimony before a committee of the U.S. Senate, an American lawmaker indicated he'd received positive signals about Canada's participation, which in this country is politically significant because of the decades-long moratorium on involvement in Washington's anti-ballistic missile program.

Precisely how involved Canada might be has never been explained.

There is an effort underway to modernize NORAD, the decades-old binational aerospace defence pact. Both the United States and Canada intend to install modern over-the-horizon radar stations, seabed-based sensors to detect ballistic missile-carrying submarines in the Arctic and launch a new series of satellites to peer down at potential threats.

"I'll tell you that Canada is very involved with us in talking primarily about the sensor domain awareness dome that needs to feed the rest of the Golden Dome," Guillot said.

The missile defence system would have several components, starting with sensors to detect incoming threats and a variety of interceptors to knock down either the cruise or ballistic missiles.

Guillot said NORAD has put its proposals to the Pentagon. Those plans will eventually be scrutinized by the U.S. Congress and the Canadian Parliament.

There was no reference — in either Guillot's speech, nor the question-and-answer session with retired Canadian general Tom Lawson — to the political tension over Trump's threats to annex Canada through economic force.

Blair, who spoke at the conference before Guillot, was asked to square how the government proposes to become more deeply involved with U.S. defence plans at time when the nation's sovereignty was under threat.

"I square because it's in our national interest to defend our country," Blair said. "And we have a responsibility, first of all, to defend Canada, but we also have a responsibility to our continental neighbours in the United States to make sure that we are prepared to do our part."

He said the Americans are talking about a significant new investment and Canada has a role to play in that, certainly in domain awareness throughout the entire Arctic.

"That is our sovereign territory," he said, adding that Canada has to know what's going on in the region, whether it's in the air, under the sea or on land.