Defence Minister David McGuinty says the government intends to rearm the military with more conventional weapons.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
Canada’s Defence Minister says the government has no interest in acquiring nuclear weapons as countries weigh whether to develop such a deterrent.
Retired general Wayne Eyre, the country’s former top soldier, told an Ottawa defence forum on Monday that while he doesn’t advocate incorporating such weapons into the country’s arsenal, Canada should “keep our options open.”
Defence Minister David McGuinty, however, said Tuesday the Liberal government will stick to rearming Canada with more conventional weapons.
“Canada has absolutely no intention of pursuing nuclear weapons,” he told reporters.
He said the government is committed to the international Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which Canada signed and ratified in the late 1960s.
“Canada has been a non-nuclear proliferation state for a long time,” Mr. McGuinty said.
Prime Minister Mark Carney last year injected more than $84-billion into the Department of National Defence to be spent over a half decade. It’s believed to be the biggest short-term cash infusion for the military since the Korean War.
The new spending, which helps Canada meet a higher NATO spending target, will fund pay raises, precision-strike capabilities, upgrades to aging infrastructure and cyberdefences, among other things.
Mr. McGuinty said Canada plans to rebuild and rearm its military, but not in a way that contravenes the international treaty.
With the United States becoming more unreliable as a security partner under President Donald Trump, countries have been considering whether they need their own nuclear deterrent.
After the Soviet Union collapsed, Ukraine inherited a huge nuclear arsenal but agreed in the 1990s to give it up in return for written security assurances – assurances Russia later violated when it seized Crimea in 2014 and launched a full‑scale invasion in 2022.
Janice Gross Stein, the Belzberg professor of conflict management at the University of Toronto, said Canada does not need to keep its options open when it comes to nuclear weapons.
“Nuclear weapons are a poor bet for Canada under any conceivable circumstances,” Prof. Stein said. “We will never use them, and their deterrent value is greatly exaggerated.”
She pointed to nuclear powers India and Israel.
“In the cases of India and Pakistan, or Iran and Israel, having nuclear weapons did not prevent an attack on the homeland.”
According to the Department of Natural Resources, Canada’s uranium resources are the fourth-largest in the world, after those of Australia, Kazakhstan and Russia. Canada is currently the second-largest producer of uranium, the department’s website says.
Mr. Eyre in remarks Monday said the world is moving through a dangerous “disordering phase” in which old norms are eroding, alliances are under strain and the risk of miscalculation is rising.
In that environment, he argued, Canada must build both strategic independence – the ability to act without allies – and strategic autonomy – the freedom to align with, or diverge from, partners on its own terms.
Japan reaffirmed its decades-old pledge never to possess nuclear weapons in December after domestic media reported that a senior security official suggested the country should acquire them to deter potential aggressors.
The unnamed official said Japan needed nuclear weapons because of a worsening security environment but acknowledged that such a move would be politically difficult, public broadcaster NHK and other outlets reported, describing the official as being from Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s office.
With a report from Reuters