Canada’s national security would benefit from participation in U.S. President Donald Trump’s “Golden Dome” missile defence plan, policy experts say.
But it will likely take years — if not decades — to fully implement.
“Of course you want an alliance system where you’re working together,” said Rob Huebert, a political science professor at the University of Calgary and interim director of the Centre for Military Security and Strategic Studies.
“We’re a little power next to the world’s biggest power, and that’s just part of the reality.”
The Prime Minister’s Office confirmed Tuesday that the federal government’s talks with the U.S. about a new economic and security partnership “naturally include strengthening NORAD and related initiatives such as the Golden Dome.”
“We are conscious that we have an ability, if we so choose, to complete the Golden Dome with investments and partnership, and it’s something that we are looking at and something that has been discussed at a high level,” Prime Minister Mark Carney told reporters Wednesday.
Trump said while announcing his concept for the estimated US$175-billion system that “Canada has called us and they want to be a part of it,” adding the country will have to “pay their fair share.”
Carney would not say Wednesday how much money Canada would be willing to spend on the project, which he called one option among many his government is looking at to bolster national defence.
How would a Golden Dome work?
Despite tensions over trade and defence spending under the Trump administration, experts say it’s natural for Canada to play a role in a new continental missile defence system, given the evolving threat environment — particularly in the Arctic.
Golden Dome is envisioned to include ground- and space-based capabilities, including potentially hundreds of satellites.
These would be able to detect and stop missiles at all four major stages of a potential attack: detecting and destroying them before a launch, intercepting them in their earliest stage of flight, stopping them mid-course in the air, or halting them in the final minutes as they descend toward a target.
The space-deployed components alone would make the system far more advanced than the Iron Dome, the name collectively used for Israel’s multilayered missile defence system that was developed with U.S. support.
The Iron Dome system itself specializes in shooting down short-range rockets. It works alongside two other systems: The Arrow, which operates outside the atmosphere and intercepts long-range missiles, and David’s Sling, which is meant to intercept medium-range missiles.
Israel says its missile defence system is over 90 per cent effective.
Get breaking National news
For news impacting Canada and around the world, sign up for breaking news alerts delivered directly to you when they happen.
Last year, when Iran attacked Israel with hundreds of drones and ballistic and cruise missiles, the Israeli military said 99 per cent of those projectiles were intercepted.
Richard Shimooka, a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute who studies defence policy, said the Golden Dome system will need to have an effective zero-per cent failure rate, given the far deadlier missiles it will be tasked with intercepting.
“This is orders of magnitude greater than anything Iron Dome seeks to achieve,” he told Global News.
“Israel is a small, contiguous country — most of the missiles that are hitting Israel can travel less than 100 kilometres.”
Shimooka continued: “(For the Golden Dome) we’re talking about missiles that at a minimum have to hit around 4,000 kilometres, that use suborbital trajectories … They’ll likely be nuclear missiles, so you can’t just say ‘oops’ if you miss one, because that means a city is getting levelled.”
The idea of a space-based defence system dates back to former U.S. president Ronald Reagan’s short-lived “Star Wars” project, which was abandoned in the 1980s due to insufficient technology.
When could it become operational?
Trump said Tuesday he expects the system will be “fully operational before the end of my term,” which ends in 2029, a timeline experts say is not realistic.
“I’d be surprised if you’ll see this happen by the end of the next president’s term,” Shimooka said, citing not just budget constraints and cuts being pushed by Republicans in Congress but also the complexity of the proposed system.
What’s more likely, Shimooka and others say, is an initial phase of the plan could be in the earliest stages of operations years down the road, with the full system not up and running until the next decade at the earliest.
How would Canada benefit?
Canada and the United States already work together through the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, which can detect and shoot down some missile threats such as cruise missiles.
However, Canada is not part of the U.S. ballistic missile defence system under U.S. Northern Command, which currently has sole authority to shoot down those missiles.
“We are not in the room for some of the discussions that are pretty critical for North American defence,” Shimooka said.
Former prime minister Paul Martin announced in 2005 that Canada would not join the U.S. system, which was developed primarily to counter North Korea’s intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) program.
In the decades since, experts say the threat environment has evolved to the point where deterrence through defence is necessary.
“The Russians and the Chinese are at our doorstep,” said retired Maj.-Gen. Scott Clancy, the former director of operations for NORAD.
“They use their bombers to approach our airspace, they use their submarines to approach our waters, they go miles off our coastlines and could attack us without warning at any given time.”
The Pentagon has warned for years that the newest missiles developed by China and Russia are so advanced that updated countermeasures are necessary.
In 2023, experts told the House of Commons and Senate defence committees that Canada should look toward multilayered air and missile defence systems that can intercept the growing variety of threats, from drones and submarine-launched missiles to space-deployed weapons, hypersonic missiles and ICBMs.
“If you can counter these things, then it diminishes the reality of the strike happening in the first place by deterring it,” Clancy said.
Counter to what Canada argued in 2005, he added, “You have to achieve real defensive capability to achieve deterrence.”
What could Canada contribute?
In March, Carney announced a $6-billion radar purchase from Australia and an expansion of military operations in the Arctic.
The Over-the-Horizon Radar system is expected to provide early warning radar coverage from the Canada-United States border into the Arctic and is part of the government’s previously announced $40-billion NORAD modernization plan.
Last year’s defence policy update committed to an investment in integrated air and missile defence.
Those capabilities will almost certainly contribute to a Golden Dome system, experts said.
Trump has said he wants all new space-deployed systems to be built in the U.S.
Shimooka said Canada would likely not want to contribute to that effort, given the costs and complexity involved, but could play a role in its operation.
Canadian investment in the Golden Dome could help Canada finally reach NATO’s target of spending at least two per cent of GDP on defence, which Carney aims to hit by 2030.
“It makes sense geo-strategically, it makes sense financially, it makes sense for us as a secure and stable ally within the western world,” Clancy said.
—With files from Global’s Touria Izri and The Associated Press
