Minister rejects call for nuclear weapons
Military expansion will involve only `conventional' arms
OTTAWA Canada has no intention of developing its own nuclear weapons, Defence Minister David McGuinty said Tuesday, after the country's former top soldier suggested the government should consider a major shift in longstanding policy by one day arming itself with nukes.
Speaking to reporters on the way into the government's weekly cabinet meeting, McGuinty stressed how the ongoing expansion of the Canadian Armed Forces will focus on “conventional” weapons.
“Canada has no intention of pursuing nuclear arms,” McGuinty said in French.
In English, he added that “Canada has been a nonnuclear proliferation state for a long time,” alluding to the 1970 Treaty on the NonProliferation of Nuclear Weapons. The accord prohibits countries without nuclear weapons from acquiring them and commits them to the peaceful use of nuclear energy.
“We are going to continue to build conventional weapons, we are going to continue to rearm, we are going to continue to reinvest, we are going to continue to rebuild our Canadian Armed Forces,” he said.
McGuinty was reacting to reported comments from former Chief of the Defence Staff Wayne Eyre, who said during an industry conference in Ottawa on Monday that Canada should consider acquiring its own nuclear weapons — not now, but possibly in the future.
The comments were reported in the Globe and Mail and La Presse, and come as Canada looks to crank up defence spending by more than $59 billion over the next five years. Prime Minister Mark Carney has argued Canada must reduce its reliance on the U.S., where President Donald Trump has imposed and threatened punishing trade tariffs and mused about making the country the “51st state.”
“I would argue that we will never have true strategic independence, absent our own nuclear deterrent,” Eyre was quoted as saying.
“Here in Canada, let's keep our options open.”
Eyre did not respond to an interview request from the Star on Tuesday.
Alex Wilner, a security expert and professor at Carleton University's Normal Paterson School of International Affairs, said it would be a “monumental shift” in Canadian policy for the country to arm itself with nuclear weapons. Except for a period during the Cold War when Canada housed American nuclear warheads, the country has never been armed with the destructive weapons — and has never developed its own nukes.
But in light of “dramatic shifts” on the world stage, where powers like the U.S. might not be as reliable as in previous years, it might make sense to consider how Canada can maintain its security, Wilner said.
For Canada to pursue nuclear weapons would also send a signal to the world that it no longer fully trusts the current nuclear protection that comes from the North American Aerospace Defence Command (Norad) with the U.S. and membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Wilner noted how Sweden is in talks with France and the United Kingdom on nuclear deterrence, which he argued suggests the Nordic ally doesn't “truly trust” NATO's current pledge of collective defence to include nuclear protection.
“States are hedging, basically. And that's what I think the former chief of the defence staff is saying,” Wilner said. “It's kind of an insurance policy. … We don't need these now; we need to think about what it might mean to need them later.
“It's speculative thinking. It makes sense. The world's upside down,” Wilner added. “We need to be thinking of all whatif scenarios.”
Like Wilner, however, Western University professor Erika Simpson — an expert in defence policy and president of the Canadian Peace Research Association — noted that Canada shifting to acquire nuclear weapons could encourage other countries to do the same.
Writing by email, Simpson said other NATO countries like Germany, Poland and Baltic countries that share borders with Russia would likely also try to get their own nuclear weapons if Canada decided to arm itself with nukes using its own uranium and technology.
She argued that instead of further proliferation, it would be better for nucleararmed countries to negotiate ways to “reduce their strategic and tactical nuclear weapons, including the stockpiles of smaller nuclear weapons” in Europe that are controlled by the U.S.
Eyre made his comments days after the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists — a group that warns of the dangers of nuclear holocaust — set its “Doomsday Clock” to 85 seconds to midnight, “the closest it has ever been to catastrophe.”
The group cited ongoing conflicts, including the RussiaUkraine war, clashes last year between nucleararmed India and Pakistan, and a “fullblown arms race” among major powers.