Thank you.
I'll jump right into it. You heard this morning that North Korea does not consider Canada a threat. I don't find that surprising. Canada does not have nuclear weapons; we do not have ICBMs; we do not have bombers, and we do not have aircraft carriers, so, no, we are not a threat to North Korea.
I want to also say from the beginning that what North Korea has accomplished so far is not particularly difficult. It has been seven decades since the first atomic bomb, six decades since the first hydrogen bomb, six decades since the first ICBMs. Of course, North Korea has had some help along the way, notably from Pakistan, and if you believe The New York Times, more recently from a Ukrainian company. What North Korea has done is not particularly challenging.
In terms of some other history, bear in mind that NORAD was established to address, first of all, the threat from Russian bombers. It was a surveillance capacity, coupled with the capacity to send fighter interceptor aircraft out to meet the bombers. When NORAD transitioned to aerospace, part of the mission changed. It remained that surveillance, that sensory function, but the response to ICBMs was not to send fighter jets; it would have been to send a retaliatory nuclear strike, and Canada was never going to be involved in that decision. Through the latter half of the Cold War, NORAD provided the sensory function, and the United States provided the strike response capability and decision-making.
When the United States renounced the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty under the George W. Bush administration and began to build its anti-ballistic missile system based, first and foremost, in Alaska, it saw this as a continuation of that situation, and in fact decided in 2004 that the decision-making function within missile defence would be within NORTHCOM. It wasn't until the following year that Prime Minister Paul Martin decided that Canada would not participate, so the U.S. decided before Canada's decision that we would not be part of the decision-making process with respect to the launch of interceptors.
That is not particularly surprising. Again, North Korea does not regard Canada as a threat. If it were to attempt a missile strike against North America, it would almost certainly be aiming for its enemy, the United States.
In 2004, Canada gave NORTHCOM approval to use NORAD's sensory information collected using Canadian assets, so they didn't need anything more than that.
Another really important point to make here is that the intercepts do not take place over Canadian territory. The missile defence interceptors in Alaska have to shoot forward as the North Korean warhead is coming towards North America. You can't catch up to an ICBM; you have to shoot it when it's coming towards you, so the intercepts would likely take place over the Bering Sea, not over Canada. The missiles themselves are not entering Canadian airspace; they're in space. Canadian airspace goes up around 120 to 130 kilometres, and then it's space. This is not in Canadian airspace, except perhaps in the final returning stage.
Another thing to say in that context—and this is very important—is that any strike on North America, regardless where a hydrogen bomb exploded, would impact all of North America. These are nuclear weapons. They create radiation, and radiation clouds drift. A strike on Seattle is a strike on Vancouver; a strike on Vancouver is a strike on Seattle. A strike on Calgary is a strike on the Midwest of the United States. You just look at the prevailing winds. This idea that somehow the United States would just sit back and say, “We've actually decided we're not going to take out this incoming missile because it's headed for Vancouver”, is implausible in the extreme. An attack on North America is an attack on North America.
Another thing to add here is that technology is improving so very quickly that I do believe it is possible for the United States to develop a pretty high-capability system for striking what North Korea has right now. SpaceX can launch the first stage of a rocket carrying a satellite into space and bring that first stage back and land it on lakes. They can do this, but can they keep up with the incredible rate of improvement of North Korea's technology? We are in that arms race—the U.S. now and North Korea. That itself is doubtful.
The final point I'll close on in my introductory statements is that I don't know—and you might know better than I—whether the United States has made a formal request that Canada join. We were asked in 2004; we said no in 2005. Have we been formally asked to join, and do you want to go as a supplicant asking to join in a situation where we're dealing with an administration that is a hardball negotiator, or do you want to wait for a request or perhaps seek other ways in which you can contribute to the U.S. mission?
I'm happy to talk about other ways to contribute to the U.S. mission in response to questions.
Thank you.