Canada in talks with U.S. about ‘Golden Dome’ defence system

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Canada is in talks with the U.S. over President Donald Trump’s proposed “Golden Dome” missile defence system even as the two countries are locked in a bruising trade war and Prime Minister Mark Carney is promising to lessen Ottawa’s dependence on Washington.

At a White House event to tout US$25-billion in prospective funding for the system, which would expand the U.S.’s defences against missile and drone attacks, Mr. Trump said that Canada had asked to join.

“Canada has called us and they want to be a part of it, so we’ll be talking to them. They want to have protection also, so as usual, we help Canada as best we can,” the President said Tuesday in the Oval Office.

He gave few details of Ottawa’s potential involvement, except to say that his administration “will work with them on pricing” and that he was inclined to include the country.

“We’ll be discussing Canada. They want to hook in and they want to see if they can be a part of it. That sort of makes sense,” he said. “It just automatically makes sense and it won’t be very difficult to do. But they’ll pay their fair share.”

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The Prime Minister’s Office confirmed that there are “active discussions ongoing” with the Trump administration over the Golden Dome. In a statement, Audrey Champoux, a spokesperson for Mr. Carney, said the talks were also connected to the North American Aerospace Defence Command, the 67-year-old binational airspace surveillance system.

“Canadians gave the Prime Minister a strong mandate to negotiate a comprehensive new security and economic relationship with the United States. To that end, the Prime Minister and his ministers are having wide-ranging and constructive discussions with their American counterparts,” she said. “These discussions naturally include strengthening NORAD and related initiatives such as the Golden Dome.”

Ms. Champoux said it was too soon to say what the cost to Canada might be or what specifically such a system would functionally mean for the country.

Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne, in Banff, Alta., for a meeting with his G7 counterparts, told reporters that he was there to talk about the G7 agenda and referred Golden Dome questions to Mr. Carney.

The prospective co-operation comes even as Mr. Trump continues to impose tariffs on Canada as part of his global trade war. Despite a friendly first meeting at the White House earlier this month between Mr. Trump and Mr. Carney, the U.S. President made clear he has no intention of lifting the levies.

The Prime Minister won last month’s election on a promise to reorient Canada away from the U.S.’s orbit as Mr. Trump has sought to upend decades of American international policy on everything from trade to national security. During the campaign, Mr. Carney described the U.S. as “no longer a reliable partner.”

Mr. Trump has talked about backing away from U.S. commitments to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization defence alliance, including once saying he would encourage Russia to invade NATO members who do not pay their share. Canada does not meet NATO’s 11-year-old target of spending at least 2 per cent of GDP on defence and has not outlined a plan to reach it.

Still, Mr. Carney has floated a wide-ranging deal covering trade, national security and the border to redefine the relationship between the two countries.

Canada and the U.S. have long been discussing ways to modernize NORAD, which originated in the Cold War and is meant to detect threats inside or approaching North American airspace.

The President has repeatedly called for Canada and Greenland, which are central to U.S. Arctic defence plans, to join his country. Mr. Carney flatly rejected annexation during his meeting with Mr. Trump.

The Golden Dome would connect the U.S.’s existing missile defences and expand them, including with new defences in outer space. The plan is modelled on former U.S. president Ronald Reagan’s never-built space defence program, nicknamed “Star Wars,” and on Israel’s Iron Dome.

Mr. Trump on Tuesday appointed General Michael Guetlein of the U.S. Space Force to oversee the project and lauded US$25-billion in a budget bill currently before Congress. He said the system will be operational in 2½ to three years.

The Congressional Budget Office, however, has estimated that fully building the Golden Dome would cost US$500-billion over two decades.

“It’s something that is great if you can afford to do it,” the President said, sitting next to a map that showed golden missile trajectories over the U.S., and explosions in Ohio, Minnesota and Colorado. “We can afford to do it.”

With a report from Steven Chase in Banff, Alta.