Canada assessing N. Korea threat daily, PM says

No move toward joining missile defence program

• Canada is conducting daily t hreat assessments of North Korea’s provocative missile tests, including its most recent flight over Japan, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Tuesday.

But the prime minister steered clear of a divisive issue: the U. S. missile shield for North America, which successive Canadian governments have sidestepped for more than a decade.

Trudeau and Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland criticized North Korea’s latest missile test.

“These are things that endanger not just regional stability but world peace,” Trudeau said in French as he hosted Jordan’s King Abdullah in Ottawa.

“This is an issue that is of concern to us daily and we will continue day by day to continue what we need to do keep Canadians safe.”

Trudeau said last week that Canada’s “long- standi ng” position on staying out of the U. S. missile defence program would not be changing any time soon.

“North Korea’s reckless violation of its neighbours’ territorial sovereignty and its direct threat to Japan’s citizens have threatened both regional and i nternational peace and security,” Freeland said in a statement Tuesday.

The latest in a series of missile tests came as South Korea and the U.S. conducted war games. U. S. President Donald Trump, who had a 40-minute conversation with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, said all options are on the table.

Last week, the House of Commons defence committee held a rare summer sitting to discuss North Korea and whether Canada should consider joining the U. S. missile defence shield.

The issue has been a volatile one in Canadian politics since the Liberal government of Paul Martin in 2005 surprised the then- Bush administration with its de- cision to opt out of the proposed BMD program.

At least one current Liberal MP and one former senator have said Canada should consider joining the program.

Leading Canadian experts remain divided.

Fen Hampson, director of the global security program at the Centre for International Governance Innovation, said the government should undertake a careful analysis of the idea. A decade ago, there was a “strong strategic rationale” for not joining the U.S. program because it could be seen as “undermining deterrence or getting into an escalating arms race,” he said. That was then. “North Korea has exceeded every expectation in terms of its ability to both develop nuclear weapons — they’re obviously moving quickly to miniaturize them — and developing intercontinental missile capability.”

Douglas Roche, a f ormer Canadian senator and disarmament ambassador, said there’s no way Canada should reconsider ballistic missile defence because the technology doesn’t work and it does nothing to encourage nuclear- armed states to cut back their arsenals.

“It’s a stimulant to the nuclear arms race,” Roche said. “That’s the worst thing Canada could do in the current crisis.”