Liberals ready to go ballistic

Missile file a big burden in time of Trump

While Bill Morneau is said to be living up to his name — “more no” — when approached by colleagues with spending requests ahead of his March 21 budget, the finance minister is actively seeking to spend more money on the defence file.

This absurdity has resulted from the Liberal government’s desire to ditch Canada’s reputation as the cheap date of NATO by increasing the percentage of gross domestic product it spends on defence from one per cent to 1.2 per cent, in line with a commitment made by all NATO countries to work towards a goal of two per cent. The new Trump administration has made clear its intolerance toward what it sees as “free riders” on defence.

The speculation is that Morneau will achieve this by a combination of methods.

Firstly, he will shovel existing spending such as the $1 billion or so spent on the Canadian Coast Guard into the defence envelope, as well as some costs associated with the Canada Border Services Agency.

The second move is likely to cause indigestion for many progressive Liberals. Sources suggest that a proposal to sign on to the U.S. ballistic missile defence program was sent to cabinet last week.

There is no word on whether it was approved but, if it was, the spending implications could show up in the budget, with details to follow in the Defence Policy Review that is sitting on the desk of Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan.

The move to join BMD would be a significant policy reversal for a Liberal government.

Paul Martin’s foreign minister, Pierre Pettigrew, announced that Canada would not be joining President George W. Bush’s BMD program 12 years ago. There were concerns that the “Star Wars” system would “weaponize space,” even though interceptors were, and are, ground- or shipbased.

But the hysteria around Canada losing its foreign policy independence meant more than half of Canadians opposed BMD, alarmed that the nuclear codes were in the hands of a reckless, ruthless, uninformed maverick.

Clearly, none of those concerns apply today …

Regardless of his reservations privately, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has made it his mission to accommodate President Donald Trump and, in their first meeting in Washington last month, they dropped hints that BMD might be part of the deal.

The joint statement from the two leaders said both countries want to “modernize and broaden our NORAD partnership,” as well as relations in cyberspace and space.

As the Senate defence committee found in its report on BMD two years ago, the decision not to participate has harmed Canada’s position in the continental defence organization, NORAD.

The decision on when, where and whether to intercept an incoming missile is not made under the NORAD structure but, rather, by the U.S. alone under its domestic defence body, United States Northern Command.

If a missile is heading towards Calgary, the Canadian military representative at NORAD has to leave the room while those decisions are made.

As the committee said in its unanimous recommendation to partner with the U.S. on BMD: “Canada cannot simply assume that all its territory will be protected by default under the existing U.S. BMD system.”

Expert testimony from Lt.-Gen. Alain Parent said the threat from North Korea, Iran and others is real. The committee concluded it’s time Canada join 27 other nations, including NATO partners, Australia, Japan and South Korea, in BMD, allowing Canadian officials to be at the table when decisions are made.

As Dalhousie University international relations expert Frank Harvey told the senators, Canada has already endorsed the logic, strategic utility and security imperatives underpinning BMD.

“In essence, the government of Canada fully embraces the merits of multinational co-operation on missile defence, as part of Canada’s treaty obligations and alliance commitments,” he said.

The cost implications are not clear and Canada’s contribution may be more technical, such as supplying additional radar tracking stations.

But Morneau had best hope there are some.

In the upside-down economics of the Trump era, he needs to find ways to spend a lot more money on defence and a lot less on virtually everything else.

THE MOVE TO JOIN BMD WOULD BE A POLICY REVERSAL