Well, the rationale was very much political. There was not a lot of support for BMD. I'll be very frank, when President Bush came to Ottawa, and made a public statement saying we should get on board or else, Canadians got their backs up and any chance of us getting it through at that time was...I told President Bush at the time, when I saw him in Halifax, “Well, thanks a lot for burying me and BMD”, because I was the one who was carrying the missile flag, if you like, in the Liberal caucus, on behalf of the Prime Minister.
I totally believe we should have gone in BMD partly for the NORAD file. There was a time when they divorced ballistic missile defence from NORAD. The fact of the matter is that without participating in ballistic missile defence, we are not guaranteeing the future of NORAD as such. You can't bifurcate these two things, in my view.
What's more, the argument against ballistic missile defence is that it's going to include the Chinese and the Russians. It's going to create a more dangerous world. However, it is so limited in its scope, and is so limited in its capacity that it could only deal with a Korea. It could only deal with a rogue state. It isn't possibly going to deal with the Russian or the Chinese situation.
In my view, the strong political and geopolitical reasons against it are not valid, and we should have it as a defence in case of what is now looking like a very real possibility.