Canada wants to join Golden Dome missile-defence program, Trump says
Ottawa confirms it's talking to U.S. about major multi-year program
Donald Trump says Canada has asked to join the missile-defence program his administration is building, adding a new chapter to a long-running cross-border saga.
The U.S. president dropped that news in the Oval Office on Tuesday as he unveiled the initial plans for a three-year, $175 billion US project to build a multi-purpose missile shield he's calling the Golden Dome.
"Canada has called us and they want to be a part of it," Trump said. "They want to hook in and they want to be a part of it."
Canada will pay its "fair share," he added. "We'll work with them on pricing."
Ottawa confirmed it's talking to the U.S. about this but added a caveat. In a statement, the federal government cast missile-defence discussions as unresolved and as part of the overall trade and security negotiations Prime Minister Mark Carney is having with Trump.
What this means is still extremely murky. It's unclear what, exactly, Canada would contribute; what its responsibilities would include; what it would pay; and how different this arrangement would be from what Canada already does under the Canada-U.S. NORAD system.
Refused to join
Canada has long participated in tracking North American skies through NORAD, and feeds that data into the U.S. missile-defence program.
But Canada never officially joined the U.S. missile program, which was a source of controversy in Ottawa in the early 2000s when Prime Minister Paul Martin's government refused to join.
That previous refusal means Canadians can monitor the skies but not participate in any decision about when to launch a hypothetical strike against incoming objects.
New developments have forced the long-dormant issue back onto the agenda.
For starters, the U.S. is creating a new system to track various types of missiles — one more sophisticated and multi-layered than Israel's Iron Dome, intended to detect intercontinental, hypersonic and shorter-range cruise weapons.
And this happens to be occurring as Canada's sensors in the Arctic are aging out of use. Canada has committed to refurbishing those sensors.
Rumblings of Canada's interest started months ago
The first public indication that these combined factors were fuelling a policy shift in Canada came in public comments made earlier this year in Washington.
One U.S. senator said, in February, that he'd heard interest in the missile program from a Canadian colleague, then-defence minister Bill Blair.
Blair publicly acknowledged the interest, saying that, given the upgrades being planned by both the U.S. and Canada, the partnership "makes sense."
But the form of Canadian participation is, again, unclear. The U.S. commander for NORAD appeared recently to suggest that Canada's participation will be limited to tracking threats.
One missile-defence analyst says it sounds like an extension of existing Canada-U.S. co-operation through NORAD. Still, says Wes Rumbaugh, it's interesting that Trump chose to draw attention to it. Trump mentioned Canada's role several times, unprompted, during his announcement Tuesday.
As for the president's three-year timeframe, Rumbaugh calls it a long shot. He predicts that only part of the system could be built in that period, and that it will take more years, and more funding, to complete.
It could take much, much more funding. The Congressional Budget Office estimates this project could cost hundreds of billions more than the $175 billion US figure cited by the president.
"This is still a significant challenge," said Rumbaugh, a fellow in the missile defence project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think-tank in Washington.
"We're talking about sort of a next-generation and a widely enhanced missile-defence system. We're talking about a step-change evolution in American air and missile defence systems that will require significant investment over potentially a long time period."
Canada confirms Golden Dome discussions
Nearly three hours after Trump's announcement, Ottawa confirmed the discussions are happening. An evening statement from Carney's office said Canadians gave the prime minister an electoral mandate to negotiate a comprehensive new security and economic relationship with the U.S.
"To that end, the prime minister and his ministers are having wide-ranging and constructive discussions with their American counterparts," said the statement.
"These discussions naturally include strengthening NORAD and related initiatives such as the Golden Dome."
A Canadian cabinet minister involved in similar discussions in the early 2000s says it's high time the conversation resumed.
"I see this as a positive," said David Pratt, a Liberal defence minister in the first Martin cabinet.
He favoured Canada's participation in a North American missile defence system back then but says the government blanched out of fear of political blowback, with its minority government fragile.
He said the refusal to join came with a cost. In part, NORAD lost part of its potential vocation, as missile interception became a U.S.-only activity, and related research and manufacturing opportunities flowed to the U.S., he said.
The specific U.S. ask of Canada was never fully defined back then, he said. Pratt recalls negotiations having just gotten underway about what role Canada would play and whether it would merely host sensors or also interceptors on its soil.
"I'm hoping we'll see NORAD assume what should have been its rightful role," he told CBC News.
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