"Defence Minister David McGuinty visited the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) headquarters in Colorado on July 15 when he met with U.S. Gen. Gregory Guillot. McGuinty noted the government “removed all restrictions on air and missile defence of Canada” but specific details were not provided at the time.
“Defence sources, however, confirmed to the Ottawa Citizen that American officials were told that the February 2005 decision by then-prime minister Paul Martin not to join an existing U.S. missile defence system was no longer valid. At that time, the U.S. wanted Canada to join a largely unproven multi-billion dollar system which was to use ground-based interceptors to destroy incoming missiles aimed at North America.”
This particular article is not super worrying in my opinion, but it’s not stellar. It’s kind of scant on details and relies heavily on interpreting the defense minister’s response about missile defense to mean they’re seriously contemplating joining this Golden Dome initiative. I wish they had included the exact question posed. If you remove the context provided by the article, the response itself is relatively sensible:
I’m guessing the question posed was something along the lines of “what’s going on with the removal of restrictions on missile defense?”, but we’ll never know unless they publish the email itself. Also, the article heavily implies the original statement,
is with respect to Golden Dome, but I don’t think it is. See https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/news/2025/07/minister-mcguinty-visits-norad.html, wherein the context of the statement is said to be about NORAD and Canadian missile defense in general, which is again, quite sane even in the context of a potentially hostile neighbor.
Overall I don’t know that I find this specific article hugely problematic but it relies heavily on structural implications about Canada’s intent to join the Golden Dome, but reading the primary sources I don’t believe that is the correct interpretation. I wish they included the full question asked, and response, and I wish they didn’t put McGuinty’s statement at NORAD along with Golden Dome stuff when that doesn’t appear to be what he’s discussing.
I’m not willing to take these allusions at face value, especially not when they’re suffixed with “but we have no details at this time”. There may be something here, but as long as the only source saying this is this article (and its children across the internet), I’m not sold on the fear.
That’s my personal read of this.
What, in your estimation, is the difference between “NORAD modernization” (NORAD, of course, being a joint US-Canada missile defence system) and Golden Dome, a name that Trump made up, but which would be a modernized missile defence system?
Well NORAD is more than just missiles, same with this proposed “Golden Dome” thing. NORAD is radars, missiles, interceptors, and protocols. I’m not sure it would be prudent for us to bail on NORAD at this time - it costs us very little, doesn’t materially impact our readiness against US pressure or invasion, and ultimately does provide at least security theater against non-continental aggressors such as Russia.
Golden Dome is a new thing, involving satellites, space-based missiles, kinetic interceptors, etc. By all accounts it appears to be a boondoggle in the making.
NORAD modernization could be anything from updating protocols or hardware for drone interception, updated training, modernization packages for existing hardware, software updates, etc. - NORAD modernization is probably a good cost/benefit ratio for us in aggregate for our defense, depending on details. If we’re relaxing some form of restrictions around missile defense, this could also plausibly mean the Canadian military stepping up and running more of our own hardware. This would be a good thing.
Golden Dome would be a net-new level of integration for us, and would likely represent closer ties with Americans for a number of different agencies.
I think they’re quite different, at least from a technical standpoint. Political interpretations may vary.
true, we don’t know what has been discussed or agreed to.
Here’s the thing. There is no downside to us as Canadians if we say to our leaders “what the heck is this, we don’t want to be part of the Golden Dome”. Either the govt says “lol we were never actually thinking about joining it” (even though Carney has publicly stated he is open to the idea!), or, they hear the pushback and decide that it’s not worth going ahead with discussions because it’s too unpopular.
Also, it’s one thing to question a news source, that’s fine and is something we should be doing with literally every source of reporting. In this case, I think it’s also worth asking this: is there any benefit to PostMedia’s US owners from this piece being taken seriously? I don’t see how this piece benefits the US whatsoever, quite frankly. In fact I’d argue that it benefits the US if we don’t take this report seriously.
That’s why I’m gently pushing back on the fact that doubt is being cast on this reporting, but no doubt whatsoever is being cast on our elected leaders who, so far, haven’t really lived up to the “elbows up” promises made during the election campaign.