Madam Speaker, I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak during this debate. I may be able to add something to it. Everyone in the House was given a briefing book from national defence on NORAD and I would like quote one sentence from that document: "Following the second world war in February 1947, both Ottawa and Washington announced the principles for future military co-operation, including air defence". I will comment on that February 1947 agreement because it involved much more than settling the principles we needed for a collective air defence.
Canada shared with Britain and the United States the most intimate military secrets. At the end of the war they knew about radar, they had done the most intimate experiments in chemical and biological warfare research and they shared communications intelligence. Canada was directly linked with the United States and
Britain in intercepting radio signals and decrypting them, as well as decrypting diplomatic signals.
Canada also ended the war as the second nuclear power in the world. Nearby in Chalk River the second nuclear reactor outside of the United States started up in 1945, precisely at the same time that Igor Gouzenko, the famous Soviet cypher clerk, defected to Canada and actually launched the cold war. It was Gouzenko who warned the British and the Americans that the Russians were not allies at all but were planning world domination. That led very directly to the secret accord of February 1947.
The details of that agreement are still unavailable in the archives of Canada and the United States although various historians have been able to piece together what it consisted of. It dealt in the sharing of communications intelligence and signals intelligence. It included the sharing of biological and chemical warfare research. Canadians undertook on behalf of the allies to do most of the chemical warfare testing at Suffield near Medicine Hat.
The agreement also included the setting up various intelligence organizations in Canada which did not exist before. These included the joint intelligence committee which was the clearing house of secret intelligence, and the joint intelligence bureau which examined topographical intelligence, geography and that kind of thing.
Once the threat had been appreciated, that Stalin was a dictator much along the lines of Hitler, it was realized that the United States was the next likely target. The Americans decided that the attack was likely to come over the Arctic. Therefore, Canada in a very real sense had no choice but to co-operate with the United States in setting up some sort of air defence plan in the Arctic.
I have actually seen a document in which the former prime minister, Mackenzie King, advised his deputy minister of foreign affairs that Canada had to come to an agreement with the United States because American planes were already mapping Canada's Arctic and if Canada did not come to a military agreement on the defence of North America with the United States it would be a serious erosion of our sovereignty.
However, the agreement for the defence of North America, which finally took place in 1957, was not that hard to come by in the sense that Canada, the United States and Britain were already intimate allies in terms of secret intelligence. We shared then, as I hope we still do now, the most intimate military secrets without question. I can give you an example of that actually, Madam Speaker, and I will in a moment.
When the North America air defence system was set up it consisted primarily of three lines: the DEW line, the distant early warning line which was a series of radar stations in the high Arctic that looked over into the Soviet Union as far as they could go. The idea was to spot the masses of Soviet bombers as they approached Canadian territory. Then there was the mid-Canada line which was a series of automatic radar stations that would indicate which direction these masses of bombers were flying, whether they were going to Chicago, New York or wherever. This was followed by the pine tree line with one station up near Barrie, not very far north of Toronto. That line was designed to zero in on the interceptors. We had aircraft stationed at North Bay that were designed to shoot it out with the incoming Russian bombers. That was the situation toward the end of the 1950s.
It was apparent that this was a very expensive thing to put together. What I have to stress again is that this required the most intimate co-operation between the Americans and the Canadians. By 1960 it became apparent that it was going to be very difficult to shoot down the masses of bombers. It was at about that time, in the early 1960s, that the Canadian government under Diefenbaker decided to abandon the famous Avro project which was the fighter bomber that the Canadians had developed which was a superb aircraft, no doubt about it, in favour of Bomarc missiles. Canada, at the pine tree line level, became armed with Bomarc missiles. These were the most modern missiles of their time.
Madam Speaker, I am going to tell you something that you do not know. These Bomarc missiles which were stationed in various places in Canada were equipped with nuclear warheads. At the time, the government denied that there were nuclear warheads on Canadian territory but in fact the archives just down the street will show that Canada actually did have nuclear warheads on the Bomarc missiles. The reason for this was that if the bombers came down in waves then a small nuclear warhead could shoot down 30 or 40 bombers rather than trying to bring them down individually.
I mention this to illustrate how absolute was the exchange of secret intelligence between the United States and Canada at that time and how absolute was the confidence that the Americans had in Canada because it actually permitted another foreign country to have missiles on their soil which were capable not just of shooting down Russian bombers, but also capable of attacking the United States. Given the American isolationist or independence mentality, to have that much trust in another country is quite remarkable.
That leads me to why I am glad to have the opportunity to rise during this debate because now we come to the present. The threat has changed and it is a different threat. It is not the Soviet Union perhaps but there are cruise missiles, biological warfare weapons, nuclear weapons going around the world who knows where. The threat still exists so there is good reason to want to renew this NORAD agreement with the Americans.
Earlier in this debate several of my colleagues from the Bloc spoke very strongly for the agreement and felt it could be extended to the rest of North America. It cannot be extended. The history of secret intelligence in Canada has been an exchange of information between the United States and actually less so with Britain.
Those who would argue that we can separate this country and not lose some essential things are wrong. I can suggest the one thing that we would lose, certainly a separate Quebec would lose, is the ability to be a partner in the secret intelligence arrangements that have existed for 50 years between the United States and Britain. I suggest that type of isolation would not only be unfortunate for a separate Quebec, it would be very dangerous.