Now-former chief of defence staff Wayne Eyre says Canada should maintain flexibility on the question of whether to acquire nuclear weapons.Spencer Colby/The Canadian Press
Canada’s former top soldier says this country should keep its options open on the question of acquiring nuclear weapons, broaching a subject that has largely been closed to debate for decades.
Retired general Wayne Eyre was speaking Monday at a forum in Ottawa. The event’s topic was national sovereignty and Canadian military capability in an age of geopolitical turmoil and shifting alliances.
Mr. Eyre, who stepped down as chief of the defence staff in 2024, said Canada can’t be fully autonomous when it comes to security and defence unless it has nuclear weapons.
“I would argue that we will never have true strategic independence, absent our own nuclear deterrent,” he told the event, which was organized by the Conference of Defence Associations Institute and advisory company Catalyze4.
Mr. Eyre said nuclear weapons are not something Canada should pursue at the moment. But, he noted, other countries are currently wrestling with this question, and it should not be ruled out.
“Here in Canada, let’s keep our options open,” he said.
“We’ve got a good nuclear enterprise here,” he said. “If conditions change, we’ve got the civilian infrastructure. We’ve got the scientists.”
It would be a significant geopolitical shift if Canada were to acquire nuclear weapons, upending Ottawa’s 50-years-plus policy of advocating for non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament. Canada signed the international Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons in 1968 and ratified it in 1969.
If it embraced the bomb, Ottawa would likely be obliged to withdraw from the treaty, which under Article II commits it and other non-nuclear-weapon states to not acquiring or exercising control over nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.
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 said Canada should continue investing in enabling technology as well. “Let’s think about the delivery technology: so investing in our own aerospace, missile technology.”
He said keeping the ingredients for a nuclear program is prudent insurance against risk. “Let’s just have the conditions in place so that if we decide to go that way, we can do it in shorter order than some other countries who have no nuclear enterprise. It’s all about hedging.”
Carney leaves Davos without meeting Trump after speech on U.S. rupture of world order
The former chief of the defence staff 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.
Asked whether NATO can still be relied upon as U.S. support for it wavers, Mr. Eyre urged Canadians not to “blindly discard” the alliance, arguing that containing Russian expansionism in Eastern Europe remains in Canada’s national interest.
He said the entry of Sweden and Finland into the alliance is pulling NATO’s centre of gravity northward and suggested Canada should explore ideas such as a subordinate NATO command headquartered in Iqaluit to oversee Arctic security, paid for through common NATO funding.
Mr. Eyre said he’s not a big believer in Canada building permanent bases in the Arctic. The federal government has announced it is setting up a network of support hubs across the region to help with military operations.
He said hubs in the north can serve as “lily pads of infrastructure” from which Canada can project capability in the region and assert or defend its sovereignty.
Prime Minister Mark Carney last year injected more than $84-billion into Department of National Defence to be spent over a half decade, believed to be the biggest short-term cash infusion for the military since the Korean War. The new spending will fund pay raises, precision-strike capabilities, upgrades to aging infrastructure, and cyberdefences, among other things.
As The Globe and Mail reported last month, the Canadian Armed Forces have modelled a hypothetical U.S. military invasion of Canada and the country’s potential response, which includes tactics similar to those employed against Russia and later U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan.
Mr. Eyre said he thinks a more likely threat to Canada is political instability in the United States that spills over into this country.
Still, he said it’s never wasted effort for the Forces to be considering future scenarios. “The very fact that we’re talking about that when, even a year ago, it was unthinkable, speaks to perhaps the utility of doing something like that.”
As for an attack on Canada, he suggested an invading force could face challenges retaining control. “We’re a large country. Invasion is one thing. Occupation is something else,”" he said.
“What would an insurgency look like in Canada? We learned a lot of things in Afghanistan from the enemy.”