By Don Newman

May 23, 2025

The backlash to the news that Canada is in talks with Washington to participate in a space-based missile defence system designed to protect North America is an early warning to the Carney government on how difficult it will be to make substantive changes in a large number of areas promised in the recent election campaign.

Prime Minister Mark Carney and the Liberals promised to remake the Canadian economy, negotiate trade and security arrangements, and increase defence spending to make the country into an economic powerhouse. All this would happen while decreasing Canada’s ever-growing reliance on the United States as a trading partner and guarantor of national security.

So, it is no wonder that Donald Trump’s “Golden Dome” project to build a missile defence system and have it up and running before he leaves office in January 2029, is attarcting so much attention in Canada. Announcing his plan recently in the Oval Office, the President also disclosed that talks were underway with Canada to participate. He said that would happen if this country paid its “fair share.” Later in Ottawa, the Prime Minister’s Office confirmed Golden Dome discussions have been, and continue to be, underway.

The idea has set off fireworks. Opponents reached back 40 years to resurrect the Strategic Defence Initiative of U.S. President Ronald Reagan, a missile defence program facetiously named “Star Wars” by opponents in which Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, when asked by President Reagan, declined to participate. A subsequent missile defence program currently in place in the United States was also turned down by Canada when Paul Martin was Prime Minister.

Canadians like to feel morally superior to the United States when they reject participating in controversial defence projects. After all, as the smaller neighbour of a superpower, we grew used to claiming our superiority where we could get it.

But in the defence of North America, we have also felt we are not really placing ourselves at risk. The same Paul Martin, when he was finance minister, queried an American ambassador to this country when pressed to increase Canadian defence spending; “How much would you spend on defence if you lived next door to the United States?”

But if that rationale was once true as Carney pointed out in the campaign, it is no longer true. Now, he said, his government would negotiate new economic and security agreements with the Americans to fit today’s realities. When questioned in some disbelief by reporters, he said that if the Golden Dome could be effective it would be an area where cooperating with the Americans makes sense.

For a rather brief ‘end of history’ moment, the world was safer. But now that has changed.

The people who opposed the SDI initiative in the 1980s and their heirs and successors are bringing out the same arguments they used then. The main concern they have is that it will trigger another arms race, increasing the risk of nuclear war not deterring it. Beyond that, they argue President Trump is an irrational partner, the costs are prohibitive, much of the technology unproven and there are no guarantees the system will work.

Some of those arguments still ring true. Whatever the estimated cost, it will prove to be less than the real cost. The technology is not guaranteed but the Americans helped Israel build their Iron Dome to protect that much smaller country from missile attacks, and it has worked. The technology has evolved a great deal in forty years, not the least because of efforts to develop SDI back then.

What has changed since then is the geopolitical structure of the world. In the mid-80s the “arms race” meant the contest between the United States and the Soviet Union to developed and maintain nuclear arms and delivery systems. A few other countries had nuclear arms, but none had any chance of deploying them against anyone but close neighbours.

The end of the Cold War was brought about in part because the Soviet Union realized it could no longer compete economically with the United States in developing weapons systems, much less anything like Star Wars. For a rather brief “end of history” moment, the world was safer. But now that has changed.

China has emerged as the most dangerous, threatening opponent of both Canada and the United States. A reduced but still-nuclear Russia has replaced the Soviet Union and is allied with China. So is North Korea, a rogue actor in the Northeastern pacific with nuclear capabilities that repeatedly tests missiles capable of hitting targets at farther distances.

In the Middle East, Iran continues its program to develop nuclear weapons. Although it does not admit it, Israel certainly already has that capability and Saudi Arabia will react if Iran becomes nuclear.

This all adds up to the reality that if it works, a “Golden Dome” protecting the United States and Canada makes sense. None of the current or pending nuclear powers will be emboldened or deterred by what Canada does. But there is the possibility that the system would make us safer.

All we need to do is bring our thinking and reasoning up to date. If the government can’t bring Canadians around to that thinking, imagine how difficult pipelines, energy corridors and other changes that will directly affect peoples’ lives are going to be.

Policy Columnist Don Newman is an Officer of the Order of Canada, and a lifetime member and a past president of the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery.